This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on February 5, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Former premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak said he accepted a portion of the Saudi royal family’s donations between 2011 and 2014 due to not wanting to rely on corporate donations for his party’s election machinery.

Najib said as former Umno president during a period leading to the 13th general election in 2013, when his coalition Barisan Nasional (BN) won by a simple majority, he wanted an income source for him to be independent of corporate donors, so he would not “have any IOU (I owe you) with anyone”.

“I don’t want the sense of owing gratitude to anyone. The donation could fulfil our party’s requirements. It doesn’t include vote-buying but includes events that we hold, and the billboards, for example.

“It was important and also a relief that I could call on this source of donation as opposed to corporate figures, which I admit was the practice. I wasn’t doing anything different from what my predecessors had done,” Najib testified in court yesterday during defence lawyer Harvinderjit Singh’s re-examination.

The former premier explained that he disagreed with the prosecution’s suggestion that he had bought votes because the money was used to support heavy requirements of the BN as a party.

Najib received a donation of US$800 million from Saudi ruler King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud through Tanore Finance Corp’s transactions into his AmBank account in early 2013. In July of the same year, he returned an unused US$620 million.

Harvinderjit asked Najib to clarify what had transpired for him to return the unused donation. Najib said the general election had just completed and that the funds received were specifically to ensure the government’s continuity at the time.

Najib: I wasn’t comfortable with such a large sum lying in the account. I decided to do a good and sincere gesture to return the money. The confidentiality issue would arise and I didn’t want this to be known outside because of sensitivities.

Harvinderjit: Wait, you said you don’t want people to find out? Why?

Najib: So there will not be misconceptions about this. The Saudis support other governments around the world and they continue to do so. Nothing was out of context.