Toppled Malaysian leader Najib Razak returned to court for the second day of his high-profile corruption trial Monday, with the former premier accused of plundering large sums from a unit of sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n 65-year-old finally went on trial this month over his alleged role in \nlooting the investment vehicle, the first of several court cases he is \nexpected to face over the controversy.The ex-prime minister and his \ncronies are accused of stealing billions of dollars from 1MDB and \nspending it on everything from high-end real estate to artworks and a \nluxury yacht.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The allegations played a large part in prompting \nvoters to oust his corruption-plagued coalition, which had been in power\n for six decades, at historic elections last year. Since then, Najib has\n been arrested and hit with dozens of charges over the scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n ex-leader’s highly-anticipated trial began on April 3, with Najib \ndenying seven charges related to the theft of 42 million ringgit from \nSRC International, a former 1MDB unit.It is just a fraction of the money\n Najib is alleged to have stolen. He arrived at the High Court in Kuala \nLumpur Monday for the second day of proceedings, wearing a dark suit and\n tie, and passed through a scrum of journalists before entering the \ncourtroom and taking his seat in the dock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proceedings began with\n the defence team cross-examining Companies Commission of Malaysia \nofficial Muhamad Akmaluddin Abdullah, who had testified when the trial \nopened, on technical matters related to corporate records.Opening the \nprosecution’s case earlier this month, Attorney-General Tommy Thomas \ntold the court that Najib was “not above the law” despite having been \npremier for almost a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Najib has consistently denied any \nwrongdoing over the looting of 1MDB.The US Department of Justice, which \nis investigating the 1MDB controversy as money was allegedly laundered \nthrough the American financial system, believes USD 4.5 billion in total\n was looted from the fund. \n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Toppled Malaysian leader Najib Razak returned to court for the second day of his high-profile corruption trial Monday, with the former premier accused of plundering large sums from a unit of sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. The 65-year-old finally went on trial this month over his alleged role in looting the investment vehicle, the first of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59133,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59131\/revisions\/59133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}