KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22 — The prosecution recently appealed against the Court of Appeal’s decision earlier this month to grant a stay on Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s trial over RM42 million of funds belonging to 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) former subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.

When contacted about the matter, Datuk V. Sithambaram, a lawyer on the prosecution team, confirmed to Malay Mail: “This is an appeal on the stay order granted by the Court of Appeal.”

He confirmed that the appeal will come up for case management next Monday afternoon.

Earlier today, Najib’s lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah had described the prosecution as having applied for a “stay of the stay”.

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“In the Federal Court, they want to appeal, they want to do a stay of the stay,” he said after court proceedings at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex.

Muhammad Shafee similarly told reporters that case management at the Federal Court for the matter would be on Monday afternoon.

On February 11, the Court of Appeal had allowed a stay or temporary suspension of Najib’s SRC trial involving the RM42 million sum, just a day before trial was due to start.

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The Court of Appeal unanimously concluded that it found that there were “special circumstances” for a stay of the trial, as there was the possibility of the trial later becoming null if it proceeds and if Najib succeeds in a related appeal.

Quick recap

Malaysians were awaiting the start of Najib’s SRC trial on the initial scheduled date of February 12.

But it did not start as scheduled, due to events following Attorney-General Tommy Thomas’ pre-emptive move on February 7 to prevent Najib from later trying to delay the trial or have the trial declared null over a technical point regarding the SRC case’s transfer from the Sessions Court to the High Court.

Thomas had withdrawn his certificate of transfer that was used to move Najib’s SRC case from the Sessions Court to the High Court to be heard, which he said automatically caused the case to be sent back to the Sessions Court.

High Court judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali had on February 7 allowed the transfer certificate withdrawal, also using its own initiative to transfer the case back to the same High Court to be heard and ordering the trial to proceed on February 12 as scheduled.

Najib’s lawyers had filed an appeal against the High Court’s entire February 7 decision, and then went to the Court of Appeal to ask for the trial to be stayed until this appeal on the case’s transfer was decided on.

This was then followed by the Court of Appeal’s February 11 decision to temporarily stay Najib’s SRC trial.

In order to have Najib’s trial start earlier, it would either depend on how soon the appeal on the case’s transfer can be decided on, or whether the prosecution succeeds in its appeal against the stay order.

The Court of Appeal will hear Najib’s appeal on the case’s transfer together with three other of his appeals on March 11 and March 12.

Even if the Court of Appeal decides on the appeals quickly, there could be an additional postponement of the trial if there is a further appeal to the Federal Court.

It is also unclear at this stage on how soon the prosecution’s appeal against the stay order will be heard, and whether it will be heard before or after Najib’s appeals including the appeal on the transfer certificate.

To read more about why the Court of Appeal granted a stay of Najib’s trial over the RM42 million sum, click here and here.

As a whole, Najib is facing 42 charges, including the seven charges in the SRC trial.

It will be anyone’s guess if the SRC trial does eventually become Najib’s first trial in the Malaysian courts, as there are also two other criminal cases where trial dates have already been fixed and are coming up soon.

Both cases are to start on April 15 and July 8 ― namely 25 charges over more than RM2 billion of 1MDB funds, and also criminal breach of trust of some RM6.64 billion of government funds.