Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on January 24, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Property tycoon Tan Sri Lim Soon Peng and Vital Spire Sdn Bhd were among the recipients of cheques tahat Datuk Seri Najib Razak had issued from his bank account that allegedly received money from SRC International Sdn Bhd.

Shortly before lunch break at 12.45pm yesterday, ad hoc prosecutor Datuk V Sithambaram was going through the cheques that Najib had issued from the bank account.

The prosecutor alleged that the cheque issued to Vital Spire was for the operation of a political news portal. However, Najib, who was then prime minister and finance minister, disagreed with the allegation.

The former premier told the court yesterday that Vital Spire dealt with medicine to treat leukaemia.

However, during the prosecution’s case last year, Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi, a shareholder of Vital Spire, disclosed in his witness statement that Vital Spire received a cheque for RM240,000 to run news portal malaysiandigest.com, as instructed by Najib in 2015.

He said the news portal covered international and local news, and was set up to disseminate news and combat “fake news”. However, it was shut down in July 2018.

Onn Hafiz, 41, is a nephew of former Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and great-grandson of Umno founder Datuk Onn Jaafar.

Other cheques included those written to Lim — who was managing director of Titijaya Land Bhd — political party United Progressive People of Kinabalu Organisation and political intelligence services.

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