Court grants ex-Malaysian PM Najib house arrest after $12m royal pardon

Malaysia’s jailed former Prime Minister Najib Razak is set to transfer from prison to house arrest after his party paid a $12m fine following a royal pardon.

Najib’s lawyer, Farhan Shafee, told reporters on Friday that he has been given the order and will be “delivering that order to the Kajang prison right now”. His house arrest could start on Friday if everything goes to plan, Shafee said.

However, Malaysia’s attorney general announced on Friday that Najib’s transfer had been temporarily suspended. In a statement, reported by Reuters, the chambers of the attorney general said Najib’s current detention status in prison “will be maintained as some ⁠legal questions regarding the interpretation of ⁠Najib’s conditional ⁠royal pardon ⁠need clarifying”.

Najib, who denies any wrongdoing, has been held in jail since 2022, following his conviction for corruption and embezzlement of billions of dollars connected to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund he cofounded while in power from 2009-2018.

The order comes after Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim agreed in September to pardon Najib, allowing him to serve the rest of his sentence at home.

Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation, has reportedly used crowdfunding to cover Najib’s 50 million ringgit ($12m) fine, as his bank accounts have been frozen.

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Kuala Lumpur, said this decision could cause a political stir in Malaysia.

“This has an awful lot of political spinoff, potentially impacting the political scene here in Malaysia,” he said. “But also there’s a lot of questions being asked about how the current politics have impacted this pardon.”

He said Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, has publicly raised concerns about the pardon within his capacity as the “anticorruption figurehead” in the country. But there has been speculation that he may have, behind the scenes, helped the pardon go through due to pressure from Najib’s party.

Investigators say about $4.5bn was stolen from the 1MDB state fund and more than $1bn of it was linked to Najib.

Najib has said he was solely blamed for a highly complicated global fraud scheme and has denied any wrongdoing.

Separately, he was also convicted in a major 1MBD trial in Malaysia, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $2.5bn fine for money laundering and the abuse of power.

He has appealed the case and his lawyers requested that the jail term and fines be halted, citing poor health and his inability to pay the fine.

A judge rejected his request in September, saying “the gravity of the offence ⁠is a more important public interest consideration”. Al Jazeera’s McBride said Najib is due to return to jail to serve out this sentence as soon as his house arrest ends in 2028, but it is unclear at this stage if this will happen.