Mohd Shukri Abdull was speaking after ousted prime minister Najib Razak arrived at the headquarters of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), which has ordered him to explain a suspicious transfer of US$10.6 million (RM42 million) into his bank account.
Shukri told a news conference he had called Najib into the agency to record a statement, not to arrest or charge him.
The MACC action is just the beginning of a new probe into the alleged theft of billions of dollars from 1MDB, a scandal that dogged the last three years of Najib’s near-decade-long rule and was one of the main reasons why voters dumped him in a general election on May 9.
“We had our own intelligence sources, that I would be arrested and locked up, because I was accused of being part of a conspiracy to bring down the government,” Shukri told a news conference, shedding tears briefly during his opening remarks.
“We wanted to bring back money that was stolen to our country. Instead, we were accused of bringing down the country, we were accused of being traitors.”
The shock election result upended Malaysia’s political order, as it was the first defeat for a coalition that had governed the Southeast Asian nation since its independence from colonial rule in 1957.
Malaysia’s new leader, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who at the age of 92 came out of political retirement and joined the opposition to topple his former protege, has reopened investigations into 1MDB and vows to recover money that disappeared from the fund.
Since losing power, Najib and his allegedly shopaholic wife, Rosmah Mansor, have suffered a series of humiliations, starting with a ban on them leaving the country, and then police searching their home and other properties.