Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s legal journey has finally reached its destination. After four years of investigations, 47 charges, a full trial, a prima facie finding by the High Court, a discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA), and now—finally—a “no further action” (NFA) decision by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), the case is closed.
Not one charge. Not two. All forty-seven.
Corruption. Money laundering. Criminal breach of trust. All gone.
It is worth lingering on the sheer scale of this outcome, because scale matters here. Zahid was investigated from 2019. The trial lasted nearly four years. Numerous prosecution witnesses testified. At the close of the prosecution’s case in 2023, the High Court did not dismiss the charges. On the contrary, it found that a prima facie case had been established, legally compelling Zahid to enter his defence.
That finding matters. It is not cosmetic. A prima facie ruling means the court believed the prosecution’s own evidence—evidence gathered, prepared, and presented by the state—was sufficient to justify a defence.
Yet instead of proceeding, the prosecution itself applied for a DNAA on all 47 charges, citing the need for further investigations by the MACC. That DNAA was granted. And now, after those “further investigations”, the AGC has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to proceed at all. Hence the NFA.
The circle is complete. Zahid was charged, tried, found to have a case to answer, discharged conditionally, and ultimately cleared administratively. He can now, with a straight face and legal backing, say that he has been cleared, that time has proven the truth, and that Allah has answered his prayers—as he duly did in a brief Facebook post.
Contrast this with Najib Razak.
Najib’s fortune in the legal system has been of a very different kind. He has lost, repeatedly and decisively. Appeals have failed. Convictions have stood. Prison sentences have been imposed. The possibility that he may spend the rest of his life incarcerated—and even end up bankrupt—no longer sounds dramatic, but plausible.
I raise Najib not to rehabilitate him, but to underline something uncomfortable: it is increasingly difficult to avoid noticing the relationship between legal fortune and proximity to power.
Zahid, today, is deputy prime minister. He is Umno president. He is indispensable to the survival of the current government. Najib, on the other hand, is politically radioactive—if he is released, even through a house arrest, it bodes ill for the goverment.
If justice were merely blind, these two trajectories would not look so politically symmetrical.
DAP, to its credit—or perhaps to preserve its own credibility—has noticed this too. That is why it has publicly objected to the AGC’s NFA decision. DAP legal bureau chairman Ramkarpal Singh has called on the AGC to explain itself, warning that the move does not inspire public confidence and raises serious questions about transparency.
His point is straightforward and devastating: this is not a case where no judicial findings were made. The High Court’s prima facie ruling in 2023 is a matter of public record. It was based entirely on evidence marshalled by the prosecution itself. If that evidence was strong enough to compel a defence then, what has changed now?
The AGC says it conducted a “comprehensive review” of available material. But it has not explained whether, or how, it reassessed the High Court’s findings. It has not explained how evidence once deemed sufficient has now become insufficient. It has not explained why four years of public expenditure, testimony, and court time were justified if the case was never meant to be seen through.
As lawyer Rajesh Nagarajan put it, this contradiction strikes at the heart of public confidence in the justice system. When a case has progressed this far, justice cannot be placed in indefinite limbo—or quietly terminated—without consequences to institutional trust. Otherwise, ordinary Malaysians are left asking a painfully simple question: why pursue the case at all?
The AGC, for its part, insists that its decision was made on professional and legal grounds, in accordance with the Federal Constitution, after considering internal assessments, further MACC investigations, and the flow of funds into Yayasan Akalbudi. It stresses prosecutorial integrity, certainty, and transparency.
Yet certainty without explanation is not transparency. And integrity, when asserted rather than demonstrated, convinces only those already inclined to believe.
If I were running the AGC, I would find another question unavoidable. If prosecutors investigated Zahid for four years, presented evidence that convinced a High Court judge there was a case to answer, and still ended up with nothing—not even one conviction out of forty-seven—then something has gone catastrophically wrong.
Either the case was so badly investigated and prosecuted that it amounted to institutional incompetence, or it was overtaken by considerations that had little to do with law. In either scenario, accountability should follow. Demotions, penalties, or dismissals would not be acts of vengeance, but signals that the system takes its own failures seriously.
But I am not sanguine about that prospect either.
And as for DAP, it has now registered its protest. That matters, at least symbolically. It can no longer be said that it was silent. Whether that protest will amount to anything more than a formality is another matter. I would be surprised if it did.
The narrative, after all, is already complete. Zahid was charged. Zahid was investigated. Zahid was tried. And Zahid was cleared. The machinery of the state has spoken, and it has spoken definitively.
Now it falls to content creators, commentators, and writers to make some noise about it—to point out the dissonance, the timing, the optics, the implications. But by next week, I suspect this too will blow over. There is never a shortage of new controversies in Malaysia, and attention is a finite resource.
When the dust settles, what will remain is not the legal technicalities, or the press statements, or even the protests. What will remain is a quiet, corrosive conclusion lodged in the public mind: that power, more than principle, is the ultimate arbitrator in Malaysia.
If you are close to power, your fortune may resemble Zahid’s. If you are far from it, your fate may look more like Najib’s.
That belief—whether true or merely perceived—is perhaps the most damaging legacy of all.
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