Deputy public prosecutor (DPP) Ahmad Akram Gharib argued that Najib’s self-serving narrative should be wholly dismissed, as the evidence showed he was not a man wronged by others but one who had used others to do his bidding.

“He now seeks to escape the consequences of his own design. The accused was not the victim. He was the orchestrator,” he said in submissions before Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah.

Akram said Najib was the single most powerful decision-maker, being simultaneously prime minister and chairman of the 1MDB advisory board.

“His suggestion that others acted on their own volition is both factually impossible and contradicted by overwhelming evidence,” he said.

Akram said Najib had apportioned blame for his present miseries on former 1MDB CEOs Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi and Hazem Abdul Rahman, 1MDB general counsel Jasmine Loo, then chief financial officer of 1MDB Azmi Tahir, and his own former special officer, Amhari Effendi Nazaruddin.

However, the evidence revealed that each of those individuals acted on his instructions or with his explicit approval, said Akram.

“They were his subordinates, bound to act on the prime minister’s directives, transmitted either directly or through his intermediary, Low Taek Jho (Jho Low).”

Akram said prosecution witnesses from AmBank and Bank Negara clearly pointed to large sums of money entering Najib’s personal accounts.

The money originated from companies which were vehicles controlled by Low – not the Saudi royal family as Najib claimed, he added.

DPP Mustaffa P Kunyalam submitted that Najib ran 1MDB “as a coffee shop”, resulting in its affairs falling into a mess as the accused had intended.

“If governance was of utmost importance, the departure of Bakke Salleh, the first 1MDB chairman, in October 2009, should have been a wake-up call to clean up the mess in this company,” he said.

This was after US$700 million went to Goodstar Ltd, a company linked to Low’s associate instead of the intended joint-venture company.

Mustaffa said that businessman Tong Kooi Ong had in March 2015 met with Najib at the former prime minister’s residence and warned about Jho Low’s shenanigans, but was shown the door.

“So can the accused now claim he was also duped by Jho Low? The answer is no,” he said.

Mustaffa also called for the admission into evidence of statements made by Low, the late Azlin Alias (Najib’s private secretary), Terence Geh (former 1MDB deputy chief financial officer) and Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil (mandate holder for Najib’s bank accounts in AmBank) under an exception to the hearsay rule as provided for in the Evidence Act 1950.

“Jho Low, Azlin, Geh and Nik Faisal had conveyed Najib’s instructions on 1MDB to the prosecution witnesses,” he said.

Akram said that even if the court disagreed with Mustaffa’s submission, the statements were admissible under the “Subramaniam” rule.

The Privy Council in 1956 held that a statement made by a person who is deceased or could not be found is admissible if the purpose of introducing it is to establish that it was made and the witness who heard it acted upon it.

DPP Kamal Baharin Omar submitted that Najib is also guilty of money laundering offences as he engaged in acts of receiving, using and transferring “property” from illegal proceeds.

“The ‘Arab donation’ defence is a fiction, contradicted by the financial records and unsupported by independent evidence,” he added.

Najib, 72, is standing trial on four charges of abuse of power and 21 charges for money laundering over funds totalling RM2.28 billion deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.

The hearing before Sequerah was adjourned to tomorrow.