Judge Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil said it was also never shown that the use of the funds had anything to do with SRC International Sdn Bhd or its business.
“The trial judge took this to mean that the transfers into his bank accounts must have been done with his (Najib) knowledge, otherwise he would not have spent the RM42 million,” he said, in holding that the former prime minister was guilty of committing criminal breach of trust.
Karim said the natural thing for any account holder who had mistakenly or inadvertently received funds into his account was to return it and correct the error.
However, he said, Najib did not do any such thing.
He said this evidence strengthened the inference that Najib certainly had knowledge of the RM42 million transferred into his account.
He said the trial judge was correct in making the inference from the evidence that the money was moved out from the SRC account and finally into Najib’s account.
Karim said the RM42 million, contrary to Najib’s assertion that he used it for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes of the company, had been used for his personal benefit and for his political purposes.
“The appellant had dishonestly misappropriated and dishonestly converted for his own use the entrusted property (RM42 million) which belonged to SRC International,” he said, adding that the bench found no reason to contradict the findings made by the trial judge.
Najib, 68, was accused of misappropriating RM27 million and RM5 million in December 2014, and another RM10 million in February 2015 as a public servant and agent of the government, namely the prime minister, finance minister and SRC International adviser emeritus.
The funds were part of two loans from the Retirement Fund Inc (KWAP) to SRC worth a total of RM4 billion.
Stay current - Follow FMT on WhatsApp, Google news and Telegram