The 1MDB High Court Judgement.

Sat 27.12.2025.

I have to be specific about this being a "High Court Judgement". 

The 1MDB case has taken 7 years, involved 76 witnesses, concerned RM50 billion, and one Jho Low is still lying very low somewhere. And some 3 million UMNO members are still said to be behind the now guilty Najib. And there are still the Appellate and Federal Courts. And all kinds of legal processes and conflicting minds, hovering around. And the Agong. So it's only a High Court verdict, by one Collin Lawrence Sequerah, yesteday, Friday, 26.12.2025. 

The High Court Judge took 5 hours to deliver the judgement, and found Najib, the former Prime Minister, who is a son of a  former Prime Minister, guilty of  all 21 counts of money-laundering charges, and all 4 counts of abuse of power in making illegal transfers of money. The jail sentences for the 21 cases are 5 years each, and the fine of RM 2 billion.  For the other 4 cases, it's a jail of 15 years each, and the fine of RM 11.38 billion.  The jail sentences are to run concurrently. That's 15 years. After the 6 reduced years being served in the SRC case now.  And failure to pay the fines means 5 more years each. 

This judgement came 4 days after High Court Judge Alice Loke rejected the "addendum" case Najib had pursued in attempting to turn his already reduced jail sentence  in a 2020 SRC verdict to "house arrest". It wouldn't have mattered. 

In my 2024 book "The Sungai Ujung Diary - Talking Politics", I have written about this 1MDB case several times.

On page 200,  "1MDB" was wrtten 11 years ago, on 16.12.2014.

"1MDB - the sequence", on page 209, was written  on 13.3.2015.

"Is the PM A Crook ?", on page 217, was written on 8.8.2015.

"UMNO 2015 AGM, the Najib Show", on page 226, was written on 12.12.2015.

"Najib girds up for GE 14", on page 264, was written on 6.7.2017.

"Sumpah Laknat", on page 379, was written on 10.12.2021.

"Najib Goes To Jail", on page 393, was written  on 23.8.2022.

In any other country, this very tragic story would have ended.

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Ganu, why Felda ? Why now ?

 Sun 7 Dec 2025.

I asked Rahim "what's this about Terengganu and Felda ?"

His one-word reply was "stupid".

After an earlier pre-Merdeka start as a Government land- development project, opening up less than 10 acres per lot in a few states like Pahang (eg Bilut), NS (eg Sg. Lui, Labu), Melaka (eg Macap Umbu, Solok Menggong), the Federal Government passed an Act of Parliament in 1960, firmly establishing the Federal Land Development Authority, to develop large swathes of state land into viable rubber, oil palm, cocoa and even sugar cane plantations throughout all the states except, of course the island of Penang, and because of the customary land areas, Sarawak.

I joined Felda in its 9th year of operation, and stayed for 21 long years. In that time I had visited all the Felda schemes that existed then, including the not-yet-settled schemes in Sabah, Johor, Kelantan and Pahang.

The impact of the development for the whole nation cannot be questioned. The landless poor had been provided with a certain future, with some states gracious enough to allow the migration of settlers from other states because of the natural imbalance between the rural population and the schemes built. The oil palm and rubber crops, especially, brought large foreign exchange income, the very real income, for the country then, as it still happens today.

Every effort was made to secure the financial capital from internal and external sources needed to carry out the expensive development involved. In my stay, Felda was run stringently, diligently, and most economically by technocrats, with zero interference from the politicians. The staff was not paid their worth, by my reckoning, because the management was too stingy to put it at par with the private plantations doing less than what Felda was involved with. As the result, when the last non-political Chairman was replaced by a political appointee, he left Felda with no debts and 3 billions in cash. 

What's happening now, under the political appointees, is another story.

The Felda accounts are there to be scrutinized and laid bare. The management was forward-looking enough to had gone computerized as early as the 70's. All the records are intact. 

Why now the PAS Government in Terengganu wants to undo all the good work ?

The former MB and past President of PAS, Datuk Asri, once was Felda's Minister-in-charge. We even accepted his expansion of PAS activities in the schemes. He certainly knew what Felda was doing in Terengganu.

Is PAS trying to squeeze money from Felda, or FGV ?

Measure if you can, all the good that Felda has brought to Terengganu, against all the accusations of illegalities and land-tampering, raised after 65 long years.

I suggest PAS reads the holy Quran again, and look at the verses on doing good on the land given by Allah, and avoiding greed, jealousy, and  initiating animosity, hatred and quarrels.

May Allah Show His Mercy.

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