Former Malaysian leader talks about his fall from power

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Najib razak was malaysian prime minister for nine years but he was voted out of power in an extraordinary upheaval he’s now facing 32 charges including money laundering and his court in the sprawling investigation into the state investment fund 1mdb i asked him how it was that hundreds of millions of dollars ended up in his personal account how do you explain this

Vast sum of money that came into your personal accounts well as you know around that time there was concerned that the arab spring will might even reach this part of the world and the saudi government decided to support us and i had firm commitment it was going to be a donation and a total sum that came in was about 680 million it was special useful as dollars it

Was used for election for months of the election 621 million was returned so i’m my conscience very clear it was men for a specific reason and it was used for that and the money was returned back and what was the specific reason i mean what was it used on the money that was spent what was it used for basically to ensure continuity of a government that’s moderate

Progressive and the saudis saw us as the model country and they decided to support us so essentially this is a political slush fund i wouldn’t describe as a slush fund but i would describe it as donation to ensure the government of that day continues to be an office do you look back on this whole period with with any sense of regret or shame or repentance you know

The malaysian there were malaysian sort of government bodies that are taking out of basements in the international press now saying malaysia’s been through this terrible dark period of corruption and now we’re back and you know you can trust us again don’t look back at that and think you know that was a mess that i was responsible well if you look in terms of the

Major indicators okay i mean look at in terms of the growth figures last year we achieve five point eight percent the nine years of my premiership the average growth rate was five point five percent if you look in terms of the benefits we’ve given to the people they were essentially benefits that enjoyed but a large proportion of the malaysian people when the the

The police raided your official home and your offices they found all this cash they found these vast amounts of sort of luxury goods handbags and things like that how could you explain that i mean the total value of this cash in different currencies these luxury goods were i mean it was quite enormous lehigh how do you how do you explain that that the existence

Of that of that money well yeah okay first of all in terms of the cash they were all associated with election it’s the practice that my predecessors did the same thing and i’m on record essentially buying votes is that there’s not buying votes oh the machinery required we don’t buy votes please we never buy votes in this country but every political party needs