Malaysia’s Najib ‘has no money’ to pay fine for house arrest, lawyer says

Former Malaysian leader Najib Razak has no money to pay the fine to secure his transfer to house arrest, his lawyers have said, as they question the delay in releasing the full details of the conditional pardon granted by Malaysia’s king last week.King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar last Friday decreed that Najib would be allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home, on condition that he pay his 50 million ringgit (US$10.3 million) fine.The decision triggered widespread outrage among Malaysians over the purported preferential treatment for the corruption-tainted former prime minister and a fundraiser launched by his former ruling Umno party to settle the fine.Najib’s release into house arrest, however, was far from certain as he currently had no means to raise the funds on his own after the authorities froze access to all of his bank accounts, his lawyers said outside the Kuala Lumpur court complex on Friday.“Datuk Seri Najib on his own cannot afford to pay [the fine] … he has no money,” Najib’s lead lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told a news conference, using the former leader’s honorifics.Last week’s house arrest decree is the second pardon granted to Najib, who was jailed in 2022 after failing to overturn a conviction for stealing 42 million ringgit (US$10.3 million) from a former unit of the troubled state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).Media members wait outside the former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s house in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. Photo: EPAIn 2024, then-king Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah halved his 12-year sentence and reduced his fine from 210 million ringgit to 50 million ringgit.