This was according to testimony from MACC investigating officer Nur Aida Arifin during cross- examination by Najib’s lawyer, Shafee Abdullah.
Shafee: In your witness statement, you stated Jho Low was acting as a ‘pencatur’. What do you mean?
Aida: Jho Low was the puppet master in determining how 1MDB conducted its business operations.
Shafee: Do you mean Jho Low had total control?
Aida: Yes.
During cross-examination by Shafee in Najib’s SRC International trial in 2019, former special officer Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin similarly agreed that Low was the puppet master.
Aida, the prosecution’s 49th prosecution witness, today also agreed with Shafee that Low was only appointed as adviser to Terengganu Investment Authority, which later became 1MDB.
She said that in 2009, Najib had not appointed Low to any position in the company, the core business of which was energy related investment.
Aida disagreed with Shafee’s suggestion that former 1MDB CEO Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi always followed Low’s instruction because Shahrol had previously worked in a consultancy company owned by Low.
Shahrol, who was 1MDB CEO between 2009 and 2013, had testified that Low’s orders were as good as coming from Najib.
In its opening statement, the prosecution had claimed that Najib was in cahoots with Low to steal millions of ringgit from 1MDB. It also described Low as Najib’s mirror image.
The prosecution’s position is that 1MDB’s investment decisions used an abnormal “top-down” approach because all decisions were made by Najib in his capacity as the finance minister and chairman of the company’s board of advisers.
Najib’s defence is that he believed all the money that was deposited into his accounts was donations from the Saudi royal family.
He also asserts that Low and the 1MDB board of directors and senior management colluded to plunder the state sovereign fund.
Najib is facing 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering over RM2.28 billion of 1MDB funds deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.
The trial before Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah continues.