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Ushar Daniele

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has dropped his legal bid to serve the remainder of his corruption sentence under house arrest, closing off a closely watched appeal tied to his 2024 royal pardon.
Najib, 72, is serving a six-year jail sentence in Kajang Prison after his original 12-year term for the misappropriation of 42 million ringgit (US$10.6 million) from SRC International was halved by the Pardons Board in 2024.
SRC International was formerly a unit of 1MDB, the state fund at the centre of a global corruption scandal that helped bring down Najib’s government in 2018.
The house-arrest dispute centred on Najib’s claim that an “addendum order” issued alongside his sentence reduction had allowed him to serve the rest of his jail term at home – an assertion that has fuelled debate in Malaysia over royal pardons, executive accountability and whether the former leader was receiving preferential treatment.
According to court documents, lawyers from Shafee & Co informed the Court of Appeal on April 3 that Najib had filed a notice of discontinuance for the appeal.


The notice, dated April 2, said Najib had decided not to pursue his appeal for house arrest, giving no reason for the withdrawal.
“Please note that the appellant named above [Najib] wishes to discontinue and withdraw this appeal against respondents without liberty to refile and with no order as to costs,” the notice said.
Court of Appeal deputy registrar Adilah Mohtar accepted the withdrawal, and the appeal was struck out.
The notice was filed “without liberty to refile”, meaning Najib cannot bring the same house-arrest appeal again.
Najib’s lead counsel, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, told state media Bernama that he could not comment further on Najib’s decision to withdraw his house arrest bid.
“This is beyond my knowledge, I cannot comment,” he said.
Najib began serving his prison term on August 23, 2022, after Malaysia’s top court upheld his conviction and sentence in the SRC International case.
In 2024, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, the then-Yang di-Pertuan Agong – Malaysia’s king and head of state – reduced Najib’s jail term from 12 years to six years and his fine from 210 million ringgit to 50 million ringgit through a decision by the Pardons Board, which advises on royal clemency.
Najib later sought a judicial order compelling the government and six others to implement the addendum order, which he said allowed him to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.
On December 22 last year, High Court Judge Alice Loke dismissed the application, ruling that the addendum order was invalid because house arrest had not been raised or decided at the Pardons Board meeting.
Loke said in her judgment that the king could not exercise the royal prerogative of mercy independently and must act on the advice of the Pardons Board in accordance with Article 42 of the Malaysian Federal Constitution.
As of Monday, Najib had served three years, eight months and four days of his sentence.
The SRC case is one strand of the wider 1MDB scandal, which triggered investigations in several countries and became one of the world’s largest kleptocracy cases.

Malaysian and US investigators say at least US$4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB, a state fund Najib co-founded in 2009, the first year of his nine-year tenure as prime minister.
On December 26, Najib was also found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison in a separate major trial, where he was convicted of 25 charges related to the 1MDB scandal.
The charges included 21 counts of money laundering and four counts of abuse of power involving the illegal transfer of 2.2 billion ringgit from the state fund into his accounts.
In a separate ruling on March 31, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ordered Najib to pay US$1.3 billion to SRC International.
The court ruled that Najib was liable for losses incurred by SRC International, with High Court judge Ahmad Fairuz Zainol Abidin finding that the former prime minister had breached his fiduciary duties, abused his power and misappropriated funds for personal gain.
Najib’s counsel did not immediately respond to This Week in Asia’s request for comment.


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The withdrawal ends the former prime minister’s attempt to serve out his SRC sentence at home after his jail term was halved in 2024


The withdrawal ends the former prime minister’s attempt to serve out his SRC sentence at home after his jail term was halved in 2024.


Malaysia’s Najib drops appeal to serve 1MDB-linked prison sentence under house arrest

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The withdrawal ends the former prime minister’s attempt to serve out his SRC sentence at home after his jail term was halved in 2024

The withdrawal ends the former prime minister’s attempt to serve out his SRC sentence at home after his jail term was halved in 2024