Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak acquitted of audit tampering

The High Court of Malaysia on March 3 acquitted former Prime Minister Najib Razak of audit tampering, but he will continue to serve his 12-year prison term from another case.

High Court judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan said state prosecutors failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove their case that Najib tampered with an official audit report on the state fund 1MDB.

Arul Kanda Kandasamy, former President and CEO of 1MDB, was also acquitted.

Prosecutors alleged that Najib had ordered a report on the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund by the government's official audit body to be altered in February 2016. Meanwhile, Kanda was charged with assisting the former PM.

The acquittal from the tampering charge does not affect Najib’s current jail sentence.

Najib, 69, is currently serving a 12-year jail sentence for power abuse, money laundering and criminal breach of trust over the transfer of 42 million ringgit (10.1 million USD) from SRC International, a former 1MDB unit, to his personal bank account.

Malaysia's highest court dismissed his final appeal on that case in August 2022 and ordered him to immediately begin serving his sentence.

He is still facing dozens more charges related to 1MDB.

The 1MDB fund was set up by then PM Najib Razak in 2009 with the aim of serving Malaysia’s development. However, it was the centre of the scandalous loss of billions of US dollar believed to be corrupt money transferred to other countries for laundering, leading to a series of investigations in Malaysia and some countries like the US, Switzerland and Singapore./.

VNA