Lawyer Harvinderjit Singh said Krystal Yap Wy-Sze, who is from Ambank’s relationship department, would begin her testimony in the late morning.
“We will take another two or three hours to re-examine Datuk Seri Najib before calling our second witness,” Harvinderjit told trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.
Ad-hoc prosecutor V Sithambaram also confirmed that the defence had sent Yap’s witness statement to the prosecution last Friday as required under the law.
Yap was a prosecution witness but was not called to testify. She was later offered to the defence.
Earlier, Najib told the court that Apandi Ali was not the first attorney-general to be appointed as Tabung Haji (TH) board member.
“I think his predecessor Abdul Gani Patail was also appointed to TH as board chairman but I need to verify,” he told Harvinderjit.
Najib said this when the lawyer asked him whether Apandi was appointed to the TH board as reward for clearing him (Najib) of any criminal wrongdoing in the SRC and 1MDB cases in early 2016.
Re-examined by another defence lawyer Farhan Read, Najib said he sacked Muhyiddin Yassin and Shafie Apdal from the Cabinet in 2015 because they brought their disagreement with him in the open.
“Cabinet members are bound by collective responsibility but that does not mean they cannot disagree with the prime minister. You cannot do it in public,” he said.
Muhyiddin was deputy prime minister while Shafie was rural and regional development minister.
He said the prime minister had to remove those who disagreed with him publicly to instil discipline in the government so that the Cabinet would be seen as united.
Najib said current Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad had sacked more people from his Cabinet than him. Mahathir was also prime minister from July 1981 to October 2003.
“I am not the first prime minister to fire people from my administration,” he said.
Najib said all SRC directors, including its chairman Ismee Ismail, were appointed to the board on the suggestion of 1MDB.
“They are not my proxy because I did not decide on their appointments but merely on the suggestion by 1MDB which was initially the holding company of SRC,” he added.
Najib is accused of abusing his power as prime minister by giving government guarantees on SRC International’s RM4 billion loan from KWAP.
He is also charged with three counts of money laundering and three counts of criminal breach of trust in the transfer of RM42 million to his accounts from the former 1MDB unit.
Hearing before Nazlan continues.