Former 1MDB CEO Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi is pictured at the Kuala Lumpur High Court October 7, 2019. — Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 — A witness in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) trial agreed with the defence that Datuk Seri Najib Razak cannot be fully blamed for supposedly being conned by fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, the High Court heard today.
Testifying against Najib in the latter’s 1MDB corruption trial, the firm’s former chief executive Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi said he too had complete trust in Low, better known as Jho Low, and 1MDB’s then-executive director of business development firm Casey Tang for business decisions on the sovereign wealth fund.
Najib’s lead defence counsel, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, then suggested to Shahrol that he cannot fully blame the former prime minister for allegedly being tricked by Low as he too was duped.
Shafee: You are CEO. If you had explicit and implicit trust in Jho Low, could you blame my client, prime minister, of having trusted in him? You yourself were conned.
Shahrol: No, I wouldn’t blame him.
Shahrol said he was not suspicious of Low and Tang’s character until the news of the 1MDB scandal broke out in 2015.
He said only then did he start to doubt Low’s character when he was shown documents by the police of money transfers made by the financier, related to the misappropriation of funds from 1MDB.