KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Najib Razak was given time off from his trial to attend Parliament tomorrow.
High Court Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali allowed an application to postpone Najib’s trial until 11am tomorrow so that the Pekan member of parliament can attend the Dewan Rakyat sitting.
Najib’s lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah had applied for his client to be given permission to attend Parliament so that he ccould take part in the debate on reducing the age of voting from 21 to 18.
He said Najib should be allowed to attend the ‘historic occasion’.
Shafee said it should be noted that Najib had just been appointed as an advisor to Barisan Nasional (BN) and his views may be sought by the coalition.
Earlier, inan unrelated matter, Shafee again raised the issue of his client not bing given access to information about the latter's bank account.
He said the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had prevented Najib from getting any information about the account and this was clearly an abuse of process by the graft busters.
“There is no law which enables them to do what they have done. We have written to them for details on why they did it but they have been sitting on it since May,” he said.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Datuk V. Sithambaram said the defence should make submissions about the matter via a written application.
However, Shafee said the court should make a ruling without such application as the bank account belongs to Najib and there should be no reason for him to be denied access to it.
Mohd Nazlan later fixed Thursday for further deliberations on the matter.
Najib, 66, is facing seven charges of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money-laundering involving RM42 million of SRC International funds.
The Pekan MP is charged with committing the offences between Aug 17, 2011 and Feb 10, 2015.
He faces 20 years’ jail and fine for the offences, upon conviction.