News by Adam Aziz

This means the government would then lose out on corporate taxes and income taxes as a big part of taxes are paid by tycoons, he said.

This was revealed by defence counsel in the 1MDB-Tanore trial, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who produced valuer Edward L Morse's letter of appointment to estimate the worth of the oil and gas assets.

Justo provided emails and documents to The Edge and Sarawak Report sometime in February 2015, which helped in the 1MDB exposés that year.

“There could be some charges dropped ... I can’t imagine which charge (where the High Court) can call (Najib) for defence, because all the charges were poorly (executed),” said Shafee.

The defence's argument is basically the authenticity of the documents is being questioned, and the court should not admit them.

This follows a two-day break, during which Najib attended the SRC trial where the defence and prosecution made their oral submissions on the seven criminal charges over the embezzlement of RM42 million from 1MDB’s former unit SRC International Sdn Bhd.

This was also why Najib did not issue any statement to the public when he found out about the issue, counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told a press conference after submitting in court at the close of the prosecution case in the SRC trial.

Sithambaram said the basic fact is that “all cheques issued out of accounts 906 and 898 were issued personally” by Najib. 

Najib’s lead counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah has previously indicated that the cross-examination of former 1MDB chief Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi will take up the whole of this week.

This follows the dismissal of a preliminary objection by DPP Fatnin Yusof against the hearing of Rosmah’s application, made on the technical ground that the applicant did not submit an affidavit to appear as a third party in the forfeiture suit.