KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 26): Datuk Seri Najib Razak will appeal his conviction and sentence on the 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering in the main 1MDB case, said his lead defence counsel.
The High Court earlier slapped the former prime minister with a 15-year jail term and a RM11.38 billion fine.
The defence will file the notice of appeal on Monday (Dec 29), senior lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told a press conference after the verdict on Friday night.
If Najib’s appeal at the Court of Appeal is unsuccessful, he will still have the opportunity to make another appeal at the Federal Court.
Looking at his earlier 1MDB-related SRC International case, the two rounds of appeals took another two years till the case truly came to a conclusion.
In that case, he was found guilty at the High Court in July 2020. The verdict was upheld at the appellate court in December 2021, and then again by the apex court in August 2022.
Disappointed but expected, says Shafee
Shafee said while he and others on the defence team were not surprised by the outcome, they were disappointed by their client’s guilty verdict in the case.
The defence is "agitated" to do better in the appeal, he said.
“We think that he (the trial judge) has made so many blunders in his judgment. I call it 'blunders' because I think that's what it is. You cannot have that many mistakes in a judgment of this importance,” the senior lawyer said.
Shafee claimed this is the first case in his 50-year career where he lost on every single point.
“There's not a point that I won. If it were in terms of football, they scored 100 goals, and we scored none. A perfect result for the prosecution today. But having said that, I’m looking forward to this case going to the Court of Appeal,” he said.