Tengku Adnan’s claim of being a victim of selective prosecution comes hours after Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman had alleged that he was charged with graft because of his political stance in not supporting Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Tengku Adnan said Mahathir had on numerous occasions tried to coax him to leave the party and join the “traitors”, in a veiled jab at Bersatu.

“In the end, the threats made against me if I refused to switch camps became a reality. I was dragged to court on trumped-up charges,” he said in a Facebook post.

Tengku Adnan said that since Mahathir came to power till now, the latter had often labelled him a thief only because he refused to leave Umno.

The Putrajaya MP, better known as Ku Nan, said he knew that if he had joined Mahathir’s party back then he would have secured a ministerial position.

“In fact, my court case would have been dropped in a blink of an eye.”

Mahathir had in February last year quit Bersatu, the party he founded alongside Muhyiddin in 2016.

Last week, Tengku Adnan was acquitted of charges of accepting money from a businessman five years ago.

On Dec 21, the High Court in Kuala Lumpur found Tengku Adnan guilty of receiving the money from Chai Kin Kong, who was Aset Kayamas’ director, despite knowing that the businessman’s companies had dealings with the Federal Territories ministry, which was led by him at the time.