KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak said in court today that he did not use the money allegedly donated by the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to buy votes for Barisan Nasional leading up to the 2013 general elections.
The former prime minister said the donation, amounting to RM2.6 billion (US$620 million), was for his election campaign to avoid his owing any individual or corporate entities in Malaysia any favours, thus allowing him to be neutral.
Najib was answering his lead counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah as to why he decided to return the money.
“As you know, we had just finished GE13 and utilisation of the money was specifically to ensure the continuity of the current government. Personally I was not comfortable with a large sum of money lying in the account.
“A good and sincere gesture was to return the money, bearing in mind my close relationship with King Abdullah, as a lot of money in the banking system will give rise to confidentiality problems and I did not want this to be known due to the sensitivities that could arise from it,” Najib told the High Court today.
The Pekan MP added that he did not want misconceptions to surface about the money, although it is a well-known fact that the Saudi government supports other nations as well and at times this involved even larger sums of donations.
Shafee: Utilisation for GE... what do you mean by that? Vote buying?
Najib: I never condone vote buying.
Shafee: What is vote buying?
Najib: It means you’re directly going to give money to voters to vote for your party. But as a majority and largest party with almost three million members, the requirements to a normal run up to GE is very significant. I wanted a source of income that would make me independent of other donors.
Najib is on trial over seven charges related to SRC International.
Three are for criminal breach of trust over a total RM42 million of SRC International funds while entrusted with its control as the prime minister and finance minister then, three more are for laundering the RM42 million, and the last is for abusing the same positions for self-gratification of the same sum.
