Malaysia’s Najib remains in prison as house arrest is put on hold

Malaysia's former prime minister Najib Razak remained in prison on Friday after the attorney general temporarily suspended his planned transfer to house arrest, citing the need for legal clarification.

Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak remained in prison on Friday after the attorney general temporarily suspended his planned transfer to house arrest, citing the need for legal clarification.

The intervention came after Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), paid a 50-million-ringgit ($12.3 million) fine required under the terms of a conditional royal pardon. A court had issued an order allowing him to serve the remainder of his reduced prison sentence at home.

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Najib briefly left Kajang Prison on Friday for a scheduled dental appointment, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said, but the Attorney-General’s Chambers later ordered the house-arrest arrangement to be put on hold. It said Najib would remain at his current place of detention while legal questions were examined.

The attorney general’s office said the suspension was not intended to challenge the royal pardon but to clarify its legal effect and ensure that the related court orders were implemented correctly.

Najib, who was prime minister from 2009 to 2018, has been in prison since August 2022, when Malaysia’s top court upheld his conviction for corruption, criminal breach of trust and money laundering involving 42 million ringgit from SRC International, a former unit of state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

He was originally sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined 210 million ringgit. In January 2024, the Pardons Board halved his prison term to six years and reduced the fine to 50 million ringgit.

King Sultan Ibrahim subsequently granted him a conditional pardon allowing him to serve the remainder of that sentence under house arrest until August 23, 2028, provided he paid the fine. UMNO said it had raised the money through a fundraising campaign and completed the payment to the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Friday.

Najib was also sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 2.8 billion dollars in a separate 1MDB-related case in December 2025. He has appealed that conviction. The house-arrest arrangement applies only to his reduced sentence in the SRC International case.

Najib has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal, in which US investigators say as much as $4.5 billion was siphoned from the state fund.