KUALA LUMPUR – Former 1MDB chairman Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh told the high court here today that Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had asked him to meet former Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Datuk Seri Hasan Arifin to get ‘guidelines’ for his testimony to the PAC in 2016.
Bakke, 68, said he received the call from the former prime minister about two weeks before the PAC proceeding on Feb 11, 2016.
“I received a call from Najib asking me to meet with the PAC chairman, Datuk Hasan Arifin. He asked me to meet up at the house of Datuk Seri Ahmad Farid Ridzuan, the former managing director of TV3.
“He wanted me to meet up with Hasan Arifin and also with Datuk Farid Ridzuan, just to make sure that we all understood roughly what needed to be shared or said at the PAC, and that was the gist of it. At that time, the concern was to safeguard the reputation of the prime minister,” he said.
He said this when cross-examined by Najib’s lead counsel, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah in the former prime minister’s trial over the misappropriation of RM2.3 billion funds from 1MDB.
The witness also said that he met Hasan twice on different occasions at Farid’s house in Kiara Hills, with former 1MDB CEO Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi present at the first meeting, while the second meeting was attended by 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy.
“I got the impression that Hasan and Farid were just trying to get me to be more accommodative, not to be too hard with the testimony or replies to the PAC, “ he said, adding that he was also told not to make any reference to the prime minister.
To a question on fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, the witness said he was the intermediary between 1MDB and Najib and not a nominee for the Pekan MP.
Najib, 68, is facing four charges of using his position to obtain bribes totalling RM2.3 billion from 1MDB and 21 charges of money laundering involving the same amount.
The trial before Judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah continues. – Bernama, May 18, 2022
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