Najib-SRC Trial: Advisor Najib Charged, Accountable SRC Directors Go Scot-Free
(NTH) – Many are still perplexed on why former Prime Minister Najib Razak had been charged for the alleged misappropriation of RM42 million funds of government-link company (GLC), SRC International Sdn Bhd.
Najib was the finance minister and SRC’s advisor, not a director, when the alleged embezzlement took place.
But he has been slapped with 7 charges altogether for a single alleged crime, while the directors, who should be held accountable, have all gone scot-free.
Today, Tuesday, December 3, 2019, marks the beginning of his defence given that Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazai adjudged on November 11, 2019, that the prosecution had proved a prima facie case in the Najib-SRC case.
Najib’s lead defence counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said in his opening statement today that to suggest that the SRC directors, who were highly qualified and experienced individuals, were unaware of their statutory and legal duties to act in the best interest of the company and instead unquestioningly acted on the say so of the company’s former chief executive officer (CEO) Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil and/or based on purported resolutions of a shareholder on matters, which only the board of directors could have and should have decided on, defied logic and reeked of self-serving after thoughts, inspired by their own selfpreservation.
Shafee said reliance on selective provisions of the memorandum of articles and association (M&A) of SRC to suggest that Najib was unilaterally empowered to direct and control the board of directors on all matters is unsupported by a clear reading of those very provisions and ignored that the M&A conversely expressly provided for the management and determination of all investment and policies to be decided exclusively with the board.
He pointed that the testimony of SRC’s ex-chairman and director Tan Sri Ismee Ismail and ex-director Datuk Suboh Yassin vis-à-vis any instructions of directions they received from Najib was based on inadmissiblehearsay evidence and do not amount to any proof.
