Malaysia’s attorney-general has requested a gag order to ban public discussion of former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s judicial review claim that a document exists, which would allow him to serve his remaining prison sentence at home.
In a report published on Monday, the state media agency Bernama quoted Shamsul Bolhassan, the deputy chief of the civil division of the Attorney-General’s Chambers, as saying that the office had filed a gag order request that would seek to forbid “any party” from discussing the judicial review. Shamsul previously said that the case touched on sensitive issues, the report added.
In 2020, a court found Najib guilty of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering for illegally receiving around $10 million from SRC International, a former unit of the state investment fund 1MDB. In August 2022, Najib lost his final appeal in the case and began his 12-year sentence at Kajang prison in Selangor.
Najib, 71, is pursuing a legal appeal that is seeking to convert his current prison term, which was halved by a royal pardon in January 2024, to house arrest. At the center of his legal case is an unpublished “addendum order” that he said was issued by the former king, Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah of Pahang, alongside the pardon, entitling him to serve the remainder of his sentence at home. In essence, Najib’s legal team claims that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government has purposefully concealed the existence of the addendum order as part of a political vendetta against their client.
Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling handed down by the High Court in July, which dismissed Najib’s previous request that the court confirm the existence of the royal order and, if it is discovered, execute it. The case has now been kicked back to the High Court, where a new panel of judges is expected to rule on the issue shortly.
Speculation about the existence of a “secret” addendum has been the subject of rampant public speculation in recent weeks. During the recent proceedings before the Court of Appeal, the Royal Household of Pahang issued a letter affirming the existence of the addendum, but Malaysia’s home and communications ministries have all denied any knowledge of the document. The Law Ministry claims that it has no record of the addendum, while Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim last week denied that the government has hidden anything relating to the royal pardon, which halved Najib’s 12-year prison sentence.
When Shamsul said that Najib’s case touched on “sensitive” issues, it is unclear whether he was referring to the political implications of the case or the sensitivities involved with the Malaysian monarchy, which is shielded from critical comment by the country’s colonial-era Sedition Act. But the fact that the Anwar administration has moved to obtain a gag order preventing public discussion of the case is a sign of the difficult position that it now finds itself in.
Having come to power promising to crack down on corruption, of which the 1MDB scandal has been the most glaring and infamous example, Anwar now faces the prospect that his government will be forced to execute a royal order permitting a key political foe to serve his prison sentence in the comfortable surrounds of his Kuala Lumpur home.
