Rosmah’s lead counsel Jagjit Singh, informed trial judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan that the defence had decided against calling the former prime minister at the eleventh hour.
“We had a brainstorming session over the weekend and elected not to call him as our third witness,” he said.
Jagjit said Najib’s testimony was supposed to be corroborative in nature and other prosecution witnesses had said the same thing as what he had intended to state.
He apologised to Zaini for the last-minute inconvenience caused “due to time constraints”.
He urged the court to adjourn the hearing to Feb 4 for Siti Azizah Sheikh Abod, the former special officer to Najib, to return from overseas to be cross-examined and re-examined.
Zaini allowed the application.
Ad hoc prosecutor Gopal Sri Ram said the prosecution was not drawing any adverse inference by the refusal of the defence to exclude Najib as a witness.
“However, we will put in our submission the net effect of not calling Najib,” he said.
Najib was one of the 10 prosecution witnesses offered to the defence when Rosmah was ordered to enter her defence on Feb 18 last year.
He had been expected to read a 65-page witness statement today to assist the court to exonerate Rosmah of the charges.
He was also the finance minister when Rosmah was alleged to have committed the offences.
Rosmah, 70, is accused of soliciting RM187.5 million from former Jepak Holdings Sdn Bhd managing director Saidi Abang Samsudin, through her former aide Rizal Mansor, as an inducement to help the company secure the RM1.25 billion solar hybrid energy project for rural schools in Sarawak.
She is also accused of receiving bribes amounting to RM5 million from Saidi through Rizal at Seri Perdana in Putrajaya on Dec 20, 2016.
Rosmah is said to have received another RM1.5 million from Saidi at Jalan Langgak Duta here on Sept 7, 2017.
The trial started on Feb 5, 2020 and Rosmah was ordered to enter her defence after the prosecution had called 23 witnesses.
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