KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court here has adjourned former prime minister Najib Razak’s 1MDB criminal trial to Nov 21 because of the unavailability of his lead defence counsel and several prosecution witnesses.
Deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib informed the court that the prosecution had tried to get five individuals to appear today but they were unable to attend court on short notice.
“Two of them are currently outside of Malaysia,” he said, without specifying who they were.
Meanwhile, lawyer Rahmat Mohamed Hazlan told the court that Najib’s lead counsel, Shafee Abdullah, was on medical leave until the end of this week and could not conduct cross-examination of The Edge Media Group chairman Tong Kooi Ong today.
Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah ordered the hearing to continue next week.
Najib is facing 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering over alleged 1MDB funds amounting to RM2.28 billion deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.
Forty-three witnesses have testified since the trial started on Aug 28, 2019.
