Najib: Letters from prince had official letterhead
KUALA LUMPUR: Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has hit back at an article quoting an unnamed investigator claiming that the signature in the documents he provided to prove that he received a donation from the Saudi royal family were not that of Prince Abdulaziz Al-Saud.
Najib said the article, which alleged that all donation-related letters were not signed by the Saudi prince, but by someone claiming to be his assistant, portrayed him in a bad light.
“Those who do not give it a deep thought will be quick to assume that I am trying to deceive the people.
“However, it’s important to note that all the letters received by the bank and myself had the official letterhead of Prince Abdulaziz Al-Saud and the same signatures,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday.
Najib questioned why some important information about the transfer, such as the banking transactions and the accounts from which they came from, were not mentioned in the article.
Checks on the bank transaction slip that Najib posted on his Facebook page showed that the transfer of funds were made in two payments in 2011 from the Saudi Finance Ministry and Prince Faisal bin Turkey bin Al-Saud’s account in Saudi Arabia.
Najib said he could not confirm yet what the investigator had said about the signature, but from his understanding, it was common in business for employees to be given the authority to sign official letters or documents on behalf of their employers.
He said all the fund transfers had never been questioned by Bank Negara Malaysia, the receiving bank.
“The article also chose not to state the fact that I had returned the RM2.6 billion to Tanore Finance Corporation several months after receiving it, and this is reflected in the bank documents that I shared last week.
“This return of the RM2.6 billion is also acknowledged and mentioned by the Wall Street Journal in the book The Billion Dollar Whale.
“This proves that I did not steal or store billions of ringgit for my personal use. Neither am I a rogue or thief, as accused by various parties,” Najib said, adding that despite WSJ’s confirmation in the book, PH leaders and investigators did not disclose this.
Najib said that in June 2011, Prince Abdulaziz and Prince Faisal attended his daughter’s engagement ceremony at Seri Perdana, where he thanked them for handling the donation on behalf of King Abdullah Abdul Aziz Al-Saud.
In the Facebook post, Najib attached a photograph of Prince Faisal and Prince Abdulaziz with his wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, supposedly taken during his daughter’s engagement.