KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 8 ― Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah clarified today that Solicitor General II Datuk Mohd Yusof Zainal Abiden and senior lawyer Datuk Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin were not appearing for Datuk Seri Najib Razak's defence in his RM42 million SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption trial.
Muhammad Shafee, who is leading the defence team, said that they had been retained for other matters but said he did not know what these included as it was privileged information.
“I think they are engaged on the basis on certain things they need to do,” he said after he was asked to respond to a report by The Malaysian Insight purporting that both “walked out” on Najib's defence team and were no longer actively involved in the trial.
“So I am sure they are still doing something but for appearance purposes, maybe not,” he told Malay Mail at the High Court.
Najib is on trial for seven charges of alleged abuse of position, money-laundering and criminal breach of trust over RM42 million of funds from SRC International, a former subsidiary of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
According to Muhammad Shafee, Mohd Yusof and Kamarul Hisham were initially brought on to assist the defence in striking out the seven charges on the grounds that they were defective and constitute an abuse of the court process.
On April 29, the High Court dismissed Najib's application to strike out the seven charges and Najib subsequently filed an appeal on the High Court's decision to the Court of Appeal.
On July 23, Najib withdrew his appeal as the trial at the High Court had already gone to an advanced stage.
Both Mohd Yusof and Kamarul Hisham were notably absent from Najib's court proceeding for several weeks since mid-July.
Their absence from the defence team was first raised when Najib’s lawyers were expected to continue with the cross examination of the prosecution’s 54th witness, former AmBank relationship manager Joanna Yu Ging Ping on July 24.
High Court judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali had asked the defence if Mohd Yusof or Kamarul Hisham could take over the cross-examination after both of Najib's main lawyers Shafee and Harvinderjit Singh were unavailable.
This prompted another defence lawyer Wan Aizuddin Wan Mohammed to inform the court that he had not received instructions over their availability or about them conducting the cross-examination.
Najib's SRC International trial is scheduled to run until August 15.
