Judge Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil said there was no evidence that the money came from or could have come from the Saudi royal family, nor was there any reasonable basis for Najib to believe in that.

“The funds came from SRC and that is well established,” Karim said in holding that trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali was correct in finding the former prime minister guilty on three counts of money laundering.

One of the arguments the defence put up was that the RM42 million was part of a continuous donation from the Arab royal family that was deposited into his accounts since 2011.

Karim said Najib claimed he had assumed the funds that went into his accounts were part of an Arab donation and, in support, reference was made to the letters tendered as exhibits D601 to D604, which were purportedly written by one Prince Saud Abdulaziz Al-Saud on behalf of the King of Saudi Arabia.

“However, the letter writer was not called and the authenticity of the Arab letters was not established at the trial. Thus, the contents of the Arab letters remain hearsay and inadmissible,” he said.

He said the trial judge considered this defence in some detail before rejecting it.

He found that Najib’s belief that the funds in his accounts were Arab donations was unbelievable when weighed against the totality of the evidence.

“We, too, found this Arab donation defence untenable for the same reasons as the learned trial judge found,” said Karim, who led a three-member bench with Has Zanah Mehat and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera.

Firstly, he said, the evidence clearly showed that the funds originated from SRC and ended in Najib’s personal accounts.

“Now, if they were part of a personal donation from the Saudi royal family to the appellant, then there is no reason for it to be deposited into SRC’s account. SRC is a government-linked company owned by the Ministry of Finance Incorporated,” he said.

Secondly, he said, the alleged bulk of the Arab donation entered and left Najib’s account some time in 2013, well before the RM42 million came from SRC and into his bank accounts.

He said evidence revealed that from 2014 until early 2015, some RM136 million was utilised by Najib despite his belief that only RM42 million came pursuant to the alleged fourth Arab letter (D604).

“We agree with the prosecution’s contention that the circumstances surrounding the fourth Arab letter clearly show that it is a fabrication and that the appellant could not honestly believe that the RM42 million is from the Saudi royal family,” he added.