Malaysian court clears path for Najib house arrest as attorney general orders pause

Jailed former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to move from prison to house arrest after his party paid a $12 million fine connected to a royal pardon, though authorities have temporarily put the transfer on hold.

Najib's lawyer, Farhan Shafee, told reporters on Friday that he had received the order and would be "delivering that order to the Kajang prison right now." He said the house arrest could begin the same day if everything went according to plan.

Hours later, however, Malaysia's Attorney General announced that the transfer had been temporarily suspended. In a statement reported by Reuters, the Attorney General's chambers said Najib's current detention in prison "will be maintained as some legal questions regarding the interpretation of Najib's conditional royal pardon need clarifying."

Najib, who denies any wrongdoing, has been behind bars since 2022. He was convicted of corruption and embezzlement of billions of dollars linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad, the state investment fund known as 1MDB that he co-founded while leading the country from 2009 to 2018.

The house arrest order follows a decision in September by Malaysia's King Sultan Ibrahim to pardon Najib, allowing him to serve the remainder of his sentence at home. Najib's party, the United Malays National Organisation, reportedly turned to crowdfunding to cover his 50 million ringgit, or roughly $12 million, fine because his bank accounts have been frozen.

Al Jazeera's Rob McBride, reporting from Kuala Lumpur, said the decision could create significant political fallout. "This has an awful lot of political spinoff, potentially impacting the political scene here in Malaysia," he said, adding that many are asking how current politics may have influenced the pardon.

McBride noted that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who has positioned himself as the country's anticorruption figurehead, has publicly voiced concerns about the pardon. At the same time, there has been speculation that Anwar may have quietly helped the pardon move forward under pressure from Najib's party.

Investigators say about $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB, with more than $1 billion of that sum linked to Najib. The former prime minister has insisted he was singled out for blame in what he describes as a highly complex global fraud scheme.

In a separate major 1MDB trial in Malaysia, Najib was convicted of money laundering and abuse of power and sentenced to 15 years in prison along with a $2.5 billion fine. His lawyers sought to halt that sentence and the fines, citing poor health and his inability to pay, but a judge rejected the request in September, ruling that "the gravity of the offence is a more important public interest consideration."

Najib has appealed that case. According to McBride, he is due to return to prison to serve out the sentence once his house arrest ends in 2028, though whether that will actually happen remains unclear at this stage.