This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 5, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead counsel for former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in his graft trial, hoped that 1MBD fiasco mastermind Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, turns up to give evidence in court.

Speaking to reporters after Najib’s case management at the High Court yesterday, Shafee said bringing Jho Low in as witness will help to establish the truth in the case.

“I don’t know what he will say but I hope that he turns up,” said Shafee. “Because [then] we can find out the truth.

“There are a lot of documents [involved] but you don’t have human beings… [who] can give meanings and context to the documents.

“So if we have witnesses, I suppose it will be good for the prosecution and the defence, I am sure of that,” he added.

When asked if the defence would also question Jho Low if he did turn up, Shafeee said: “It cannot be avoided… I would love to cross-examine him.”

Jho Low is regarded as the central figure in the misappropriation of monies in state-owned fund 1MDB or 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Najib was present during the case management in relation to the 32 charges against him involving the alleged misappropriation of over RM2 billion in 1MDB and RM42 million in the fund’s former subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.

During the case management, Shafee pointed to how the prosecution continued to provide pre-trial documents in compact disc (CD) format despite previous requests for them to be given in hard copy “for easier access”.

According to Shafee, Najib received another CD containing documents pertaining to the charges yesterday, which the lawyer said contained some inaccessible document files – and again without proper indexing.

The prosecution had previously submitted one CD containing documents to the defence when Najib was first charged on Aug 8.

“We are not asking for special treatment, but give us [the documents] in a proper format,” said Shafee.

A war of words erupted in court — deputy public prosecutor Datuk Sulaiman Abdullah responded by saying the document submission was in accordance with Section 51(A) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

He also argued that the prosecution had proposed a pre-trial conference earlier, but the defence has not been forthcoming.

“There was total silence [by the defence on our request for pre-trial conference],” said Sulaiman.

However, Shafee said there is no point to have the conference without full access to the documents.

In a nutshell, a pre-trail conference is a meeting of the parties to a case conducted prior to trial which could be held before the trial judge.

High Court Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali later instructed for the documents to be prepared in hard copy format within two weeks from yesterday. Concurrently, he also set the pre-trial conference between both the prosecution and defence on Oct 25.

The prosecution also requested for Najib’s case to be conducted at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya due to the bigger space there and also because related materials, such as documents, are located in the federal administrative capital.

Judge Nazlan said the matter can be finalised during the pre-trial conference.

Outside the court, Shaffee again expressed confidence that he can defend the case effectively. “I am quite inspired to be able to say that we got a very strong defence.

“They need to prove that whatever funds that were being dealt with was the subject matter of criminal proceeds.

“If you can show the proceeds of the crime, the next thing is to show whoever is being charged has got the knowledge that when he took the money, he knew that it was from proceeds of a crime,” he said.

When asked about Billion Dollar Whale the book on the 1MDB saga, Shaffee slammed the bestseller as “a Hollywood book” that is being “written for a purpose of a movie”.

“These authors are not lawyers… They wrote the book without the purpose of legality,” he said, while recommending readers of the book to instead read the US Department of Justice reports on 1MDB — all three volumes — as it is “more clinical”.

“Of course Najib knows [that monies have been deposited into his account]. That is not the issue.

“[But the authors] don’t understand that Najib is saying he doesn’t know [if] the money was from illegal proceeds - and [there is a] world of difference,” he said.

“If the author choose to be naive or uneducated, they will remain so … You can’t expect truth [from something] that is intended to be a movie,” he added.