He also denied that he had paid anything for the invitation to meet US President Donald Trump as it had been on official government business.
“I did not need to pay anything for the invitation,” he said during the question-and-answer session in the Dewan Rakyat, adding that his predecessor, on the other hand, had done so in order to get an invitation from former president George Bush.
He is believed to have been referring to Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s trip to the US in 2002.
Najib was responding to a question from Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (PKR-Permatang Pauh), who asked why the prime minister had not received an invitation to stay at Blair House during his US visit, unlike Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
To this, Najib said there was no need to answer such trivial questions.
“Even though I did not stay at Blair House, I was invited to play golf with Trump,” he said, adding that these were not fundamental questions.
Last month, allegations surfaced that Mahathir, who is Pakatan Harapan (PH) chairman, had paid millions of ringgit to secure an appointment with Bush during his tenure as US president.
Megat Fairoz Junaidi, the son of the late Megat Junid Megat Ayub, told The Star that his father had helped Mahathir seal the appointment by meeting “certain people” and paying lobbyists.
He added that the initiative to set up the meeting had started in April 2001.
Mahathir however denied this, saying he had neither instructed anyone to lobby for the meeting nor paid millions to arrange for it.
Megat Junid was deputy home minister when Mahathir led the home ministry in the 1980s, and domestic trade and consumer affairs minister from 1997 to 1999. He died of cancer in 2008.