Keep seized ‘gifts’ from Najib until sources are proven, Mahathir tells govt

Dr Mahathir Mohamad today said that Putrajaya should retain the cash and luxury goods seized in the 2018 raids on apartments linked to former prime minister Najib Razak if the latter is unable to prove that they were in fact gifts and not purchased with 1MDB funds.

In a Twitter post detailing what he described as the movement of funds linked to the state investment arm, Mahathir said there was no evidence that a thorough investigation had been carried out.

“And so the claim that it was a gift was accepted,” he said, referring to the billions which Najib had said were from the Saudi royal family.

“Then there is the money and expensive articles found in the Pavilion. Initially the police claimed that the money and the articles were bought with money from 1MDB. Later it was claimed that the government could not prove that the money and the purchase of luxury articles were with money stolen from the government – principally from 1MDB.

“And so it was decided to give the money and the gifts back to Najib as they were the gifts to him. As pointed out above, tracing the source of the money was not thorough. It is more likely that they were not gifts.”

On Nov 8 last year, the government failed in its bid to forfeit these items, with the High Court in Kuala Lumpur saying Putrajaya had not proven a direct link between them and the illegally gained funds.

The government had earlier lost another bid in May to prove that the RM114 million seized from a residence linked to Najib was part of the funds stolen from 1MDB.

Najib had said that he was keeping the money on behalf of Umno.

MalaysiaNow reported in August last year that the RM114 million was returned to Najib although it could not be confirmed at the time whether the Pekan MP had given the money back to his party.

“If Najib cannot prove that the gifts were gifts, they should not give the money and the gifts to Najib,” Mahathir said.

“The government should retain the money and gifts until the sources are proven.”

Adding that no one knew where the rest of the money had gone, he said one suggestion was that it had been taken by fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho or Jho Low.

“I suspect that blaming Jho Low is because he could not be reached. It is not possible to investigate him,” he said.