Former Treasury secretary-general Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah said based on his experience, the duration depended on the urgency of the applicants to obtain the GG.
Irwan, who held the position for six years until May 2018, said he was unaware of any application that was approved in less than a month.
“It depends, you know, one to three months… sometimes it will take less than one month…. but under normal circumstances it will be about three months,” he said when examined by lawyer Farhan Read.
Irwan said applicants must submit their proposals to the Treasury which would analyse the request for the GG.
He said the authorities would look into the track record of the company and the viability of the project that it intended to undertake.
“We will determine whether the project is sustainable in the long run and whether the company is able to service the interest and finally pay off the loan,” said the third defence witness.
Irwan said the Treasury would also get feedback from other ministries if the project involved them.
He said once due diligence was done, the Treasury would prepare a paper for the Cabinet’s consideration whether to approve or reject the application.
“We will also give our recommendation as to whether the Cabinet should issue the GG,” he added.
Irwan, who is jointly charged with Najib in another case for misappropriating RM6.64 billion of government funds for payments to Abu-Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Co, said no GG was “simply” granted just because national interest was involved.
Irwan said he was only involved when the GG for the second RM2 billion loan from Retirement Fund Inc (KWAP) to SRC was approved in 2012.
Prosecution witnesses had earlier testified that the first GG took three days while the second took eight days, from the time the applications were made and approved by the Cabinet chaired by Najib.
The prosecution led by ad-hoc prosecutor V Sithambaram told trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali they would not cross-examine Irwan, resulting in him being released from the witness stand.
Najib is accused of abusing his power as prime minister by giving government guarantees on SRC International’s RM4 billion loan from KWAP.
He is also charged with three counts of money laundering and three counts of criminal breach of trust in the transfer of RM42 million to his accounts from the former 1MDB unit.
Hearing before Nazlan is adjourned to Monday.