Kuala Lumpur: Former prime minister Najib Razak has again failed to delay his 1MDB trial after the Court of Appeal rejected his stay application.
A three-member bench chaired by Justice Hadhariah Syed Ismail said they agreed with deputy public prosecutor Kamal Baharin Omar that there were no special circumstances to warrant suspending the trial.
“We also disagree with the counsel (Shafee Abdullah) that Najib’s appeal to recuse the trial judge will be rendered nugatory if the stay is not granted,” said Hadhariah, who sat with Justices Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim and SM Komathy Suppiah.
She said there was no compelling reason to suspend the trial and, as such, the application had no merit.
Hadhariah also said public interest demanded that the trial should proceed.
“The trial is at an advanced stage as there were 173 days of proceedings with 46 prosecution witnesses called so far,” she said.
The trial, which is now at the tail end of the prosecution’s case, will resume on Monday.
Shafee later told reporters that he had been instructed by Najib to file a fresh motion in the Federal Court to obtain a stay of the trial.
“The application will most probably be filed on Monday,” he added.
Najib is standing trial for 25 counts of money laundering and abuse of power over the alleged misuse of 1MDB funds amounting to RM2.28 billion deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.
Last week, trial judge Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah dismissed Najib’s application to disqualify him from hearing the 1MDB case after the judge disclosed that he and former 1MDB general counsel Jasmine Loo were partners in a law firm.
Sequerah also refused a stay pending the outcome of Najib’s appeal, which was filed immediately.
Loo, is believed to be a former associate of fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, the alleged mastermind behind the 1MDB scandal.
She was arrested and remanded by police last month for 1MDB related investigations.
Sequerah had also said there are no special circumstances to warrant a stay of proceedings pending the appeal, and ordered the trial to proceed with testimony from former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
In his ruling, Sequerah said Najib failed to discharge his burden of proving that there was a real danger of bias if the judge continued to hear the trial.
He added that Loo had resigned from the law firm about 15 years ago and there had been no communication between him and her on a personal or professional basis since.
Before the Court of Appeal today, Shafee submitted that the stay should be allowed as the subject matter went into the root of the trial.
“There is a real danger of bias. In fact, the judge ought to have recused himself when Loo’s name was mentioned by two prosecution witnesses in the early stage of the trial,” he said.
Shafee added that the stay application is important as Najib had asked for the 1MDB trial to be declared a nullity, started again, or for another judge to replace Sequerah if the recusal bid is finally allowed.
“This makes our case as being under special circumstances,” he added.
Kamal submitted that public interest demands that a criminal trial should not be adjourned over an interlocutory matter, such as stay applications.
“An accused person will also not get the chance to clear their name if the trial is delayed,” he said, adding that in this the accused is a former prime minister.
Kamal also said the prosecution had not decided if Loo should be called to give evidence.
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