Najib, Irwan's CBT trial postponed to June 19

KUALA LUMPUR - The trial of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah who are facing six charges of criminal breach of trust (CBT) totalling RM6.6 billion has been postponed to June 19.

High Court Judge Datuk Muhammad Jamil Hussin allowed the application for postponement by lawyers Datuk K. Kumaraendran and Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, representing Mohd Irwan and Najib, respectively, due to more than 100 documents not yet being submitted to the defence.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Muhammad Saiffudin Hashim Musaimi told the court the prosecution did not object to the application for postponement by the defence.

"The trial is postponed until June 19 to give an opportunity for the prosecution to examine the documents to be submitted to the defence.

"Two weeks are sufficient for the defence to examine the documents and prepare their defence, the trial will commence on June 19," said Judge Muhammad Jamil.

Earlier, Kumaraendran said that among the documents were Cabinet meeting memos, emails referring to defence witness statements, and recorded statements from witnesses.

"We also informed the prosecution the caution statement was amended by our client during investigation...it was never served to us despite the reminders to them," he said.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Shafee also requested for the court to postpone the trial today as there were a lot more documents that had not been served by the prosecution.

"We expect the prosecution will serve us (the documents by today). There are seven volumes of documents need to be reviewed.

"These missing documents will trigger a lot of adjournments should the trial start today. Unless until we see how the prosecution navigate their case through their documents, we cannot see the light in our defence," said Muhammad Shafee.

The counsel said there were also other ongoing trials involving Najib with the same defence team, namely the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) case and SRC International Sdn Bhd civil suit.

"For 1MDB, we are in the midst of preparing the submission right now and my entire team has been engaged and I must say we are exhausted but we are pressing on to complete the submission in the month of July.

"If Yang Arif insists, we can break up the dates because they are days in between, I'm sure we can locate days, otherwise this trial will only start in 2025," he said.

Muhammad Saifuddin said that his team had submitted documents in four stages from 2018 to 2021.

On Oct 24, 2018, Najib, 70, and Mohd Irwan, 66, pleaded not guilty to six charges of CBT of RM6.6 billion in government funds involving payments to International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC).

Najib and Mohd Irwan were jointly accused of committing all the offences at the Finance Ministry Complex, Putrajaya between Dec 21, 2016, and Dec 18, 2017.

They were charged under Section 409 of the Penal Code read together with Section 34 of the same code which provides for a maximum of 20 years jail and whipping as well as fine upon conviction. - BERNAMA