PUTRAJAYA, Jan 20 — Datuk Seri Najib Razak today questioned why he should be blamed for not checking if 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) purported joint venture partner PetroSaudi International was really owned by Saudi Arabia’s royal family, saying in court that this is not his job as the prime minister.
Najib was testifying in his own defence in the trial where 1MDB’s RM2 billion is alleged to have entered his personal bank accounts.
When the prosecution said he had previously confirmed he did not check the alleged Saudi-owned PetroSaudi’s actual ownership, Najib insisted it was up to the 1MDB board whether to enter into the US$1 billion partnership with the company and it was 1MDB’s lawyers’ job to do the checks.
“Yes, but the board has to decide, and due diligence has to take place. When you do a joint venture, one of the basic principles is to check ownership of the company — that was supposed to be done by Wong & Partners. Wong & Partners did not do that, how can I be blamed for that?
“Surely when you do business with another company, you do the normal due diligence, you have to check ownership. It’s not my job as prime minister to do all the checking, the checking has to be done by the people who are responsible to do up the joint venture, to check the legal papers, that’s their job, they are paid for it, why should I be blamed for this?” he said in court today.
Najib gave this response while the prosecution was grilling him on why he had appeared to “assume” a lot of things based on what Low Taek Jho told him.
Deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib was asking Najib about the September 26, 2009 incident, where Low spoke to Najib first in a phone conversation before passing his mobile phone to 1MDB’s then chairman Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh while saying “PM on the line, want to speak to you”.
According to Bakke’s court testimony previously, Najib said in the phone call that he wanted the 1MDB board to quickly consider the proposed joint venture with PetroSaudi and to “firm up a decision on it” and that he was looking forward to the signing of the deal.
The phone call took place just before the 1MDB board of directors’ meeting, where the board then decided to approve 1MDB’s joint venture with PetroSaudi.
After insisting that it was not his job to check PetroSaudi’s ownership and after much grilling by Akram on the phone call, Najib said: “I think you are overstating the phone call too much, no, no, no, nowhere did I tell them forget, go ahead with it. I didn’t say, ‘I’m instructing you to do that’.
“In other words, I encouraged them to make informed decision, but as a board, as a company, when you do joint venture, you have to check ownership of the company, that is the ABC of doing business, but that was not done. How can you blame it on me?” Najib said.
Even as Akram pointed out that the Finance Ministry-owned 1MDB’s sole shareholder was represented by Najib, Najib agreed he was 1MDB’s sole shareholder but insisted that the shareholder should not be the one blamed “all the time”. He added that the 1MDB board and management should carry out their fiduciary duties.
Akram also listed out five things that Najib allegedly told Bakke about the proposed US$1 billion joint venture in that crucial phone conversation before the 1MDB board made its decision, noting that Najib had however only addressed one of these points in his entire witness statement in the 1MDB trial.
Akram then suggested that Najib had influenced the 1MDB chairman Bakke and the 1MDB board’s decision at the time, when the 1MDB board had RM5 billion to spend as it had raised that amount.
“No, I didn’t influence him, I didn’t instruct him, I only indicated to him from a strategic point of view,” Najib said, insisting that the other 1MDB board members were not influenced as he claimed that they did not know of his phone call to Bakke.
Najib said this was because the 1MDB board meeting minutes for September 26, 2009 had not referred to him.

Bakke had however previously said that Najib’s phone call did have an impact on other 1MDB directors and that the phone conversation’s content was shared with the directors, but the 1MDB board had decided not to record the phone conversation with the then prime minister in the meeting minutes.
Asked about his failure to explain the four other items in his phone conversation with Bakke, Najib said: “Tak ada (Don’t have), because I didn’t want to instruct him or unduly influence him, I just wanted him to see it as an important strategic cooperation.”
Was Najib making a lot of assumptions after hearing Jho Low’s request?
Earlier, Akram highlighted Najib’s own written testimony, where the latter had made multiple assumptions, including with Najib saying he “assumed” the 1MDB board would firm up its decision on the joint venture after hearing Low’s briefing from PetroSaudi’s perspective, and where he “assumed” that the board would decide after hearing from PetroSaudi’s representative and after due diligence.
Najib previously said that Low had given him a call on that day to say that Prince Turki had allegedly asked Low to represent his interest and Saudi ruler King Abdullah’s interest at the 1MDB board meeting on September 26, 2009, and that he had agreed to Low’s request to speak to Bakke about the alleged government-to-government initiative between Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as the context for 1MDB’s proposed joint venture with PetroSaudi.
Akram highlighted how Najib had “straightaway” agreed to speak to Bakke with just one phone call from Low and questioned Najib’s insistence that he had wanted the 1MDB board to follow good governance for the proposed joint venture.
Akram asked: “Why do you assume a lot of things? You assumed Jho Low would be telling them, you also assumed Jho Low would be briefing the board on the perspective of the bilateral collaboration, you also assumed they are going to make an informed decision after hearing. You assumed a lot of things. At that time, Jho Low said one thing only, ‘I’m only going to make a presentation’, you straightaway believe it?”
Najib said he wanted Low to present to the 1MDB board and for the board to then decide after that, and he would have preferred Prince Turki to be there at the board meeting but the latter unfortunately could not attend.
Akram: “Even worse, Prince Turki is not himself there, this is a third party, just by saying he’s representing King Abdullah’s interest, you straightaway said ‘ok, pergilah (go) present to the board’.”
Najib: “No. I didn’t say go to the board. The board had already invited him to be there, so let him make the presentation to the board and the board would decide lah one way or the other. I was only concerned with the big picture because at the time, I believed PetroSaudi was owned by Prince Turki and King Abdullah’s family. That was my belief at that time.”
When asked if he had believed PetroSaudi to be Saudi-owned based on what Low told him, Najib said this was what was told to him.
He agreed he had never checked PetroSaudi’s ownership as the 1MDB board had people including its lawyers to do such checks.
Saying that the 1MDB board members were very professional, Najib said this was why he did not think then that the phone call “would lead to anything that would be detrimental to the interests of 1MDB or the country”, and that he stressed that the normal practices of good governance and due diligence must be carried out even as the 1MDB board considers the deal.
Akram again pressed Najib on how he had not given much thought and “assumed a lot of things” upon Low’s request for him to speak to Bakke, and how Najib had asked Bakke to firm up the 1MDB board’s decision.
Najib replied that it was because he wanted to strengthen Malaysia’s bilateral cooperation with Saudi Arabia, and that he had thought there was “nothing wrong with the phone call” as he believed PetroSaudi belonged to King Abdullah’s family.
In 2009, 1MDB signed a joint venture agreement with a similar-sounding company called PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd.
While 1MDB was supposed to pump in US$1 billion that 1MDB for the purported joint venture by sending it to the joint venture company 1MDB PetroSaudi Limited’s BSI bank account, the money was diverted elsewhere, including US$700 million that was instead sent to Good Star Limited (now known to be Jho Low’s company).
The prosecution’s case is that US$20 million originating from 1MDB’s US$700 million sent to Good Star ended up in Najib’s bank account.
Najib’s 1MDB trial before judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes tomorrow.
MORE TO COME