A couple of days ago on June 20, 2025, the high court decided to grant a discharge not amounting to acquittal (DNAA) to former Prime Minister Najib Razak in the SRC International money-laundering case.
The court gave Najib the DNAA not because Najib has been exonerated, but because the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) failed to submit necessary documents, even after six years.
Friday's decision was not the first time that an 1MDB-linked charges filed against Najib have been dropped. Last year, a court allowed another DNAA request due to procedural delays in a corruption case against Najib.
Presiding High Court Judge K. Muniandy did not mince his words when he granted the DNAA. He pointed to years of prosecutorial failure and court delays:
“This case against the accused has been pending in this court for six years since 2019, and not an iota of witness testimony has been pursued but only a plethora of postponements, indicating that the prosecution is not ready with the prosecution of the case.”
He added:
“The prosecution could not proceed with the case or do so within a reasonable time.”
Importantly, Justice Muniandy stressed that while the DNAA does not amount to an acquittal, the court could not allow charges to be held indefinitely over any individual:
“Once an accused was charged in court, the charge could not be hanging over his head for an indeterminate or indefinite period… By virtue of those factors, the most appropriate order is for this court to discharge the accused person without acquitting him.”
PKR MP and former Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli condemned the prosecution's delay and demanded urgent action. According to Rafizi :
“I do not understand why the prosecution has taken this long — since 2019 — to prepare the necessary documents to proceed with the case,” he said.
“This case involves SRC, for which Najib is already serving a sentence after being found guilty in a related trial. From my experience studying and exposing the 1MDB and SRC scandals, SRC has among the clearest money trails.”
“This weakness by the prosecution must be addressed. Many Malaysians do not want to see this case fade away simply because the prosecution — representing the government — failed to prepare its documentation in court.”
For context, the difference between a Dismissal not amounting to Acquittal and an Acquittal, is that if you are acquitted by the courts, it means that the court has declared you to be not guilty, and thus the same charges cannot be filed against you again.
Through a DNAA however, the courts are not declaring you to be guilty or not guilty – they are just dismissing any attempt to get the case heard in court, likely because the case is not not ready or properly prepared – but when the case is ready and prepared properly, the case can be refiled and the courts will be willing to hear it .
As a rule, when the prosecution has filed for a case to be heard in court, it means the case should have been ready and properly prepared.
That even after 6 years, the prosecution couldn’t ready or prepare sufficiently a high profile case, is to the least, a sign of extreme tardiness and incompetence.
According to the Attorney-General’s Chambers, it had no choice but to agree to a conditional discharge for former prime minister Najib over Najib’s conditional discharge najib, because it has to wait for the conclusion of the 1MDB trial, to ensure the integrity of certain documents needed as evidence.The documents were being used as evidence in the 1MDB trial and the prosecution had “no choice but to await the conclusion of that trial to access them”.
Regardless of AGC’s excuses, in the court of public opinion, Najib’s DNAA has been received poorly.
I personally don’t understand why the AGC chamber couldn’t withdraw the case by themselves, instead of forcing the judge to give it a DNAA. They should have known for years that they couldn’t use certain key documents in the trial, so why couldn’t they just inform the public about that years ago, and withdraw the case themselves, while reassuring the public that they will surely refile it again when the time is right.
There is a big difference between withdrawing something yourself and having it being dismissed by someone else.
That the concept of DNAA is being applied to many high profile cases , from Zahid Hamidi to Najib, is making all of us wonder whether delays can now be used as a tactic to evade justice and whether the powerful enjoy a different system where administrative incompetence overrides accountability.
As a whole, Najib’s DNAA is being seen on the street as yet another blow to Reformasi – that rather than a saved and reformed Malaysia, what we will get from Anwar and the Pakatan Harapan is just the same old Malaysia in a different bottle, where the powerful do whatever they want, while regular people will just have to continue listening to their grandfather stories.
Verdict: Pathetic.
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