PUTRAJAYA, March 27 — Then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was a suspect in the police’s investigation of criminal breach of trust (CBT) offences linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the High Court heard today.
Senior assistant commissioner R. Rajagopal, who became the investigating officer for a CBT probe on 1MDB in 2015, said this was because money from the Finance Ministry-owned company had gone into his account as the finance minister then.
Rajagopal — testifying as the 11th defence witness in Najib’s 1MDB trial — confirmed that one of the reasons that he as a high-ranking police officer was assigned to investigate the 1MDB case was because of the high-profile “personalities” involved.
This included Najib, who was the finance minister, since 1MDB was a company wholly owned by the Finance Ministry.
“At that time, suspect, as I mentioned in my affidavit, there was money flowing from 1MDB into Datuk Seri Najib’s account,” Rajagopal replied when answering deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib’s question on whether Najib was a suspect in the CBT case.
Rajagopal later clarified that there were no suspects identified yet when he took over the CBT investigation on 1MDB in 2015, as the investigations were still in the early stages.
But later after the entire investigations took place, Najib was identified as the person who had received money that can be traced back to 1MDB, he said.
MORE TO COME
