It was a courtroom scene that could have passed for an absurd drama - if billions of ringgit hadn’t been involved. The prosecution in Dato' Seri Najib Razak’s 1MDB trial painted a picture so elaborate that one might mistake Jho Low, for the world’s most overqualified errand boy - wrongly perceived as the “mastermind” behind Najib’s 1MDB financial woes.
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According to prosecutors, Low wasn’t, after all, the “mastermind” his reputation might suggest - merely a messenger, a courier of instructions from the prime minister himself. Not your average “runner,” of course; this one handled multi-billion-ringgit transactions, managed troubled credit cards, and juggled personal bank accounts for a sitting prime minister.
AmBank’s former relationship manager, Joanna Yu, earlier testified that Low would buzz her on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) - yes, BBM - to alert her whenever Najib’s account needed “attention.” One message reportedly involved RM3.3 million in jewellery purchases in Italy; another, a US$100,000 shopping trip in Hawaii. In other words, Low wasn’t just a go-between - he was the hotline for high-end spending.
The prosecution argued that Najib’s silence while his financial foot soldiers carried out his wishes was as good as consent. Officials from 1MDB and other agencies, they said, followed these “messengers” because they all knew whose voice truly echoed behind the curtain. Over time, nobody even bothered checking anymore - why confirm what had already become obvious?
Najib’s defence, however, wasn’t buying it. Lead counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah insisted that Jho Low was the “true villain” atop the 1MDB criminal hierarchy, while Najib was merely an unfortunate statesman who had placed his trust in the wrong man - a familiar scene in Malaysian politics.
Alleging political motivation, Shafee accused the authorities of “selective prosecution,” arguing, “The objective is to destroy my client’s political standing so completely that recovery becomes impossible.”
The Saudi RM2 billion donation story resurfaced in court once again, with Shafee asking with righteous flair: “Would King Salman have visited Malaysia in 2017 if Najib had lied about his late brother’s donation?” By that logic, the Saudi royal visit to Malaysia was presented as evidence supporting the donation claim - a claim that had become the talk of the town, and indeed, the whole world.
The courtroom, by now, has seen it all - 300 hearing days, and on December 26, 2025, Justice Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah will finally deliver his verdict.
Until then, Malaysians can only marvel at the curious hierarchy of 1MDB: a billionaire “messenger,” a prime minister with a missing sense of oversight, and a nation still paying the bill for the most expensive scandal it never consented to - proving once again that in politics, it’s never the corrupt who pay, but the people.
By: Kpost
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