Kuala Lumpur: Najib Razak and Irwan Serigar Abdullah’s criminal breach of trust case involving alleged payments of RM6.6 billion to International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) was postponed again after the prosecution said it needed time to declassify certain government documents for use at trial.
Deputy public prosecutor Saifuddin Hashim Musaimi told the High Court that 48 sets of documents requested by Irwan for his defence were “classified”.
“The documents involve the (then) energy, green technology and water ministry, economic planning unit and the Prime Minister’s Office.
“They need to be declassified by officers before we can tender them in the court,” he said, adding that the process would take approximately one month.
Lawyer K Kumaraendran, appearing for Irwan, informed the court that his team had so far received only 145 of the 345 sets of documents requested from the prosecution.
“Some documents were not given to us because they are classified. These documents are important for our defence,” he added.
Meanwhile Shafee Abdullah, representing Najib, informed the court that the former prime minister’s defence was dependent on Irwan, as the latter was the Treasury secretary-general when Najib was finance minister.
Trial judge Justice Jamil Hussin then asked if the prosecution would be able to start the case today in the absence of the documents.
Saifuddin replied that the documents needed to be available so that they could be referred to by prosecution witnesses.
Jamil then rescheduled the trial to run from July 22 to 25.
“I do not want to hear (on the next hearing date) that the documents are not complete. On the last occasion, the trial did not proceed because some documents were not handed over,” he said.
Najib and Irwan were jointly charged in 2018 with six counts of misappropriating RM6.6 billion in public funds involving payments to IPIC, an Abu Dhabi-owned corporation.
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