Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razaj has filed an application Thursday with the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention seeking his release or a retrial over the corruption scandal surrounding the 1MDB fund.
Shafee Abudlá, a lawyer for Najib, who has been imprisoned since he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement in the case, has argued that the court that decided his case and ruled in favor of his conviction committed «serious flaws.»
Najib entered prison last August after an appeals court upheld the sentence against him after finding him guilty of money laundering and abuse of office offenses for taking 42 million ringgit (about 9.2 million euros) from SRC International, a subsidiary of 1MDB, a state fund he set up.
Now, Shafee has indicated that the UN working group is scheduled to meet early this year to address the matter, according to information from the news portal Malaysia Now.
He has also noted that the defense team will deliver a copy of the request to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. «A copy has been sent as a courtesy,» he said.
Najib, ousted by a coalition led by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, has faced allegations of money laundering since ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported in 2015 that $681 million had been transferred to one of his personal accounts.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
