This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 23, 2019 - September 29, 2019

STUCK in the middle” was how Datuk Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin described his predicament as he received “threats” from the previous and current administrations following his arrest in June last year.

The former special aide to Datuk Seri Najib Razak said he was not personally threatened by his former boss, “but as a prime minister ... a prime minister would have all the necessary power to at least create some instability. I’m being very polite here”.

“In whatever I do, the threat is always there. I consider myself stuck in the middle. When I was asked about threats, to me it doesn’t matter whatever route I take, there will be threats,” he said.

The route Amhari had taken in the past has led him to the present-day threats, as his testimony over the past two weeks revealed.

If at first, he was conflicted over what he was asked to do in relation to 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), he learnt not to question perhaps because he was moving rapidly up the ladder and receiving generous gratification.

Started out as a junior officer at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in 2008, Amhari eventually became Najib’s right-hand man in 2015, following the death of Datuk Azlin Alias, who was Najib’s principal private secretary and primary liaison person on 1MDB matters.

Amhari said Azlin advised him to follow orders and “just play along” as doing otherwise would cause jeopardy to their families and their careers.

The advice in 2012 related to the opening of a BSI Bank account in Singapore under the instruction of businessman Low Taek Jho, or better known as Jho Low, as standby for the 13th general election. Eventually, more than US$800,000 was deposited in the account, although Amhari maintained that he had no control or knowledge of the deposit nor had he touched the money, as advised by Azlin.

Najib’s lawyer, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, however, pointed out the request to open a foreign bank account for political purposes was odd, given that billions of ringgit of 1MDB funds (which Najib previously claimed were political donations) were being channelled into Najib’s AmBank accounts.

“Datuk Seri Najib already had a few hundred million US dollars deposited in an account here in Malaysia for political purposes. Has it crossed your mind (Amhari’s) that Jho Low was talking rubbish?” asked Shafee.

Growing indebtedness

One of the earliest ties between Amhari and Low that was established in court was a US$200,000 “pay-when-able” loan from the businessman to facilitate Amhari’s purchase of a RM1.85 million bungalow in Kota Damansara eight years ago. The loan has yet to be repaid.

But Amhari was not only beholden to Low. Under Najib’s patronage, he was allowed to set up media solutions company Orb Solutions Sdn Bhd in 2011 — only three years after joining PMO — to promote Najib and his coalition’s interests online. He was the largest shareholder of Orb and received RM20,000 monthly.

One of Najib’s charges in the 1MDB-Tanore trial involves a cheque for RM2 million to Orb in August 2013. It is worth noting, however, that The Edge Financial Daily previously reported the arrest of “Najib’s special officer” for receiving RM62 million of 1MDB funds from 2011 to 2014 via Orb.

Not content with having reached his limit at Bank Negara Malaysia, from where he was in secondment to the PMO, Amhari asked Najib to make him a director at one of the country’s many government-linked companies. Najib acquiesced and in 2016, Amhari secured a directorship with Khazanah Nasional Bhd, through Najib’s recommendation, earning him another RM55,000 a month.

It is interesting to note that Amhari did not see fit to use the RM75,000 — at minimum — that he was receiving monthly to reduce his debt with Low, whom he said he began to feel uneasy about in 2016 when the businessman unexpectedly turned up in China where Amhari had been sent by Najib on a “secret mission” to obtain from the Chinese a bailout for 1MDB in exchange for plum infrastructure projects in Malaysia.

Blind loyalty

Although Amhari portrayed himself as not being knowledgeable in corporate finance or investment banking, he also suggested that he acted as he did despite being uncomfortable with some of the instructions because he was bound by loyalty to Najib.

“We would not question the private appointment of the prime minister and the suggestions made,” he said at one point during the trial.

This was particularly so as he was already in Najib’s “inner circle”.

“In the beginning stages in the PMO, getting access to the prime minister was very difficult,” said Amhari.

“After six months in the PMO, I received a call from Jho Low out of nowhere. At the time, he received the blessing from Najib [to form the Terengganu Investment Authority] and that was my conduit to meet Najib. That was the channel that I used, and the channel that I obtained, as prior to that, I had no access to Najib [directly].”

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