Testifying at Najib’s 1MDB trial in the High Court here today, Irwan said he was not a party to the conversations between the individuals implicated in the audio recordings and could not verify them.

“I was not present (during the conversations). I heard two sets of voices in each of four recordings, and one of them sounded like Datuk Seri (Najib),” he said.

The court had earlier allowed the prosecution to play the recordings for Irwan to identify the voices on it.

At a press conference in January 2020, then MACC chief Latheefa Koya disclosed nine audio recordings purportedly linked to the SRC International and 1MDB cases.

The recordings allegedly featured Najib, his wife Rosmah Mansor, former deputy public prosecutor Dzulkifli Ahmad and other well-known individuals.

The prosecution wants to admit the recording between Najib and others to rebut the former prime minister’s defence that the monies which went into his personal bank accounts were donations.

Irwan said the others who spoke to Najib in three of the recordings sounded like Middle Eastern individuals.

He said that in the last recording, the man who spoke to Najib in a mix of Malay and English sounded like Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin, Najib’s former special officer.

Amhari had testified in the 1MDB trial.

Asked by Najib’s lawyer, Shafee Abdullah, whether he believed the voices in the recordings were faked using artificial intelligence, Irwan told the court he was not an expert on the matter.

He said he first heard the four recordings when MACC summoned him to draft his witness statement for the trial.

“They (MACC) asked me if I could identify the voices,” he said.

Najib is standing trial on 25 counts of money laundering and abuse of power over the alleged misuse of 1MDB funds amounting to RM2.28 billion deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.

The hearing before Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah continues on July 7.