Najib’s 1MDB trial: MACC officer admits doesn’t know if alleged Saudi prince’s passport genuine or if he wrote donation letters

PUTRAJAYA, Feb 13 — Was the man introduced to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) as a Saudi prince in 2015 actually the one who wrote four donation letters promising to give hundreds of millions in US dollars as gifts to Datuk Seri Najib Razak?

Was this alleged Saudi prince’s passport shown to the MACC — but not allowed to be photocopied due to the Saudi royal’s purported “immunity” — a genuine passport or a forged passport?

Fikri Ab Rahim, a MACC officer who was part of a five-man team which travelled to Saudi Arabia in November 2015 to meet the alleged Saudi prince, today told the High Court that he does not know if the passport was authentic or if the alleged prince was truly the letter’s author.

Testifying as the eighth defence witness in Najib’s 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) trial, Fikri said the MACC was in 2015 investigating the RM2.6 billion which had entered Najib’s personal AmIslamic bank accounts and where the money had come from, and was also probing if the four donation letters were genuine.

During the MACC’s and Attorney General’s Chambers’ (AGC) November 2015 trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to verify the four donation letters and if a Saudi prince had donated money to Najib, Fikri said the Malaysian delegation met with three individuals introduced as Saudi princes to them at a palace there.

Fikri said Prince Turki had started speaking, and Prince Turki had introduced the man on his right as Prince Saud and the man on his left as Prince Faisal.

As the four donation letters were allegedly written by Prince Saud Abdulaziz Majid Al Saud, MACC had asked to verify Prince Saud’s identity and this man then handed over his passport — which was passed via Prince Turki and subsequently a palace staff — to MACC officers.

Fikri said he had opened the passport and was satisfied that the passport’s photograph matched the face of the individual introduced as Prince Saud, and said the passport did state Saud’s name although it was longer than the name in the donation letters.

Fikri said he did not recall the passport’s colour but said he could see it was a diplomatic passport.

Asked by deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib, Fikri said he had looked at the passport for five minutes to verify the alleged Saudi prince’s identity, but confirmed he did not ask anything else apart from matching the name and face.

Based on his experience in investigating money laundering cases, Fikri agreed that passports can be forged and fabricated.

Akram: If the passport shown to you that day is a false passport, you cannot determine it?

Fikri: Correct, I’m not an expert.

But when suggested that merely looking at the passport is not enough for him to confirm the alleged Saudi prince was the person who wrote the four donation letters, Fikri insisted he was “satisfied” without elaborating.

Fikri again confirmed he was satisfied that the passport’s photo matched the person before him, and the name in the passport was the same as the name in the donation letters.

Akram: But whether the person in front of you — photo in passport, name in letter — is the one who wrote the letter, you don’t know?

Fikri: Correct.

Among other things, Fikri confirmed he had only seen a photograph of the “world famous prince” Prince Turki before the palace meeting and that the photograph was shown by the case’s investigating officer, and he had never even heard of Prince Faisal’s name before that and had only known of Prince Saud as the alleged person who wrote the four donation letters.

He confirmed the meeting in Saudi Arabia was the first time he had seen these three alleged Saudi princes.

MACC officer Fikri Ab Rahim arrives at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex March 4, 2020. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

While MACC had wanted to record the allegedly Prince Saud’s statement for the investigation, Fikri testified Prince Turki said only Prince Saud’s representative’s statement could be recorded as Saudi princes alleged had “immunity”.

Fikri said he and two other MACC officers Datuk Mohd Hafaz Nazar and Mohd Nasharudin Amir were then brought to another building within the same palace compound, where Prince Saud’s representative Mohamad Abdullah Al-Koman’s statement was recorded.

Fikri said Hafaz recorded Mohamad Abdullah’s statement with Nasharudin’s aid in a room, and he was outside the room and personally not involved in recording the statement.

He said Prince Saud was not present during the recording of the statement.

Fikri said he saw Mohamad Abdullah leaving and entering the room throughout the interview while using a phone, and claimed that investigating officer Nasharudin had told him that the representative wanted to refer to Prince Saud on questions asked by the MACC.

Saying that the four donation letters were shown to the alleged Prince Saud’s representative during the recording of the statement, Fikri said the statement allegedly showed Prince Saud as acknowledging that he had issued and signed the letters for donation purposes.

But when asked by Akram, Fikri confirmed he did not know who Mohamad Abdullah had actually called.

Fikri also confirmed the statement recorded by the MACC did not have Prince Saud’s signature and that it was only signed by Mohamad Abdullah and the recording officer Hafaz.

When Akram then said this meant the statement recorded by the MACC was not of the person who sent the alleged four donation letters, Fikri confirmed this and said it was Mohamad Abdullah’s statement.

While Fikri said he recalled the interview process taking 45 minutes to one hour, the statement recorded by MACC stated that it had taken 20 minutes.

Akram suggested that the alleged Saudi prince’s representative’s five-page statement was actually already prepared and “cut and paste”, since it had detailed information and it would not be possible to have the statement typed out in 20 minutes while the representative repeatedly left the room for phone calls.

But Fikri said he believed it was logical for this to happen within 20 minutes, having said that the recording officer Hafaz was capable.

While agreeing that he had added more information to his similar testimony on the same events during Najib’s separate RM42 million SRC trial previously, Fikri disagreed with Akram’s suggestion that he had “improvised” and improved his court testimony in the 1MDB trial after reading the SRC trial’s judgment.

Those who went on the 2015 Saudi trip were Fikri as the head of MACC’s anti-money laundering division, the RM2.6 billion case’s investigating officer Nasharudin, Hafaz who had a good command of English, Tan Sri Azam Baki who was MACC’s director of investigations (now MACC chief), and Tan Sri Dzulkifli Ahmad who represented the AGC (and later became MACC chief).

Fikri said MACC’s then deputy chief (operations) Datuk Seri Mohd Shukri Abdull (who later became MACC) had told him that it was the AGC who had arranged for MACC’s investigation team to go to Saudi Arabia to investigate and get a statement regarding the four donation letters.

Earlier when asked by Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah if MACC and the AGC was satisfied that the four donation letters were genuine, Fikri said he had received orders from Azam to continue investigations until MACC gets solid evidence.

According to Fikri, Azam had said MACC still needs to get other evidence, apart from the alleged Saudi prince’s statement and the four donation letters.

Earlier, Najib’s lawyer Wan Azwan Aiman Wan Fakhruddin asked if MACC had left Saudi Arabia satisfied that the RM2.6 billion in Najib’s accounts is a donation from Saudi Arabia, based on the statements of Eric Tan Kim Loong and Prince Saud via his representative which MACC recorded in Riyadh.

But Fikri said the four donation letters were inconclusive regarding the RM2.6 billion: “As I said just now, we were satisfied with the action regarding the four documents. However I received orders from Tan Sri Azam Baki to continue investigations as it was insufficient to make a conclusion based on those documents only.”

When asked further if there were any suspicions that the RM2.6 billion was a bribe and not donations, Fikri said MACC continued its investigation as the alleged prince’s statement which said the funds were donation were not enough to complete the probe.

In this trial, Najib has been insisting that the RM2 billion which entered his accounts were not 1MDB money but Saudi donations, while the prosecution has been disputing the four donation letters as fabricated documents.

Najib’s 1MDB trial before trial judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes next Tuesday, where Fikri is expected to continue testifying.