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Bloomberg

The judge who convicted former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak over the 1MDB scandal said the plunder of the sovereign wealth fund was so vast that it eclipsed the exploits of Attila the Hun, one of history’s most notorious conquerors.
“The scale of the plunder that took place (financially speaking, of course) made Attila the Hun look like a choirboy in comparison,” Collin Lawrence Sequerah said in the introduction to his 809-page grounds of judgment.
The written judgment was issued on Tuesday, nearly six months after Sequerah found Najib guilty on all charges in the long-running 1MDB trial and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
The former prime minister, who led Malaysia from 2009 to 2018, has already been in jail since 2022 after being convicted in a separate case linked to the fund, formally known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad.


Established during Najib’s first year in office, 1MDB became the centre of a global corruption scandal after billions of dollars were allegedly siphoned from the fund, triggering investigations across multiple jurisdictions.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said his administration inherited about 50 billion ringgit (US$12.3 billion) of 1MDB-related debt after Najib’s government was voted out in 2018.
“At the heart of this scandal, stood not a humble employee of an organisation who saw an opportunity to exploit a flaw in the system, but a man exalted and who held the highest reins of power,” Sequerah wrote.
Najib’s defence in the case had steadfastly maintained that he was misled and duped by fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, or also known as Jho Low, and the management of 1MDB.
No country bumpkin
Sequerah said that the former prime minister was no country bumpkin as he possessed impeccable family and political pedigree as well as superior intelligence given his academic background.
“Any attempt to paint the accused as an ignoramus who was hopelessly unaware of the misdeeds going on around him must therefore fail miserably,” the judge said.
Any other interpretation would mean that the court believed that Najib was capable of being fooled by his subordinates, making him a laughing stock among world leaders – which Sequerah said he undoubtedly was not.
“Given the presence and involvement of Jho Low at critical phases of transactions and dealings involving 1MDB and his obvious proximity and relationship with the accused, including the fact that no action was taken against Jho Low even after the wrongdoings surfaced, leads to the only reasonable inference which is that Jho Low operated and functioned as the proxy, the conduit, the intermediary and the facilitator of the accused in the affairs of 1MDB,” Justice Sequerah said.

The court took note that Low was involved in 1MDB in an unofficial position and went on yachting holidays with Najib and his family.
The defence attempted to portray Najib as a person “too immersed and engaged” in the affairs of running the country to keep an eye on matters involving the management of a sovereign fund and placed blind trust in the company’s management and the board of directors.
This could not hold true in light of Najib’s power as stated in the company’s memorandum and articles of association and his positions as the prime minister, finance minister and chairman of 1MDB’s board of advisers, Sequerah said.
“Therefore, the defence version advanced that the accused was misled and duped by the management and by Jho Low is unmeritorious.”
Najib’s 1MDB trial took more than seven years from the time he was first charged. It had “in all probability surpassed the length of any other trial in the annals of the Malaysian court history”, he said.
Additional reporting by The Star


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In his 809-page grounds of judgment, the judge who convicted the former prime minister said he was no ‘ignoramus’ misled by Jho Low


In his 809-page grounds of judgment, the judge who convicted the former prime minister said he was no ‘ignoramus’ misled by Jho Low.


Najib’s 1MDB plunder made Attila the Hun ‘look like a choirboy’: Malaysian judge

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In his 809-page grounds of judgment, the judge who convicted the former prime minister said he was no ‘ignoramus’ misled by Jho Low

In his 809-page grounds of judgment, the judge who convicted the former prime minister said he was no ‘ignoramus’ misled by Jho Low