Najib Razak

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Najib Razak

Najib Razak (born July 23, 1953 in Kuala Lipis , Pahang ) is a Malaysian politician and from April 2009 to May 2018 was the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia since independence in 1957. His full name is Dato 'Seri Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak .

Life

Najib Razak was born on July 23, 1953 in Kuala Lipis, Pahang State. He is the eldest son of Abdul Razak , the country's second prime minister, who served from 1970 to 1976. He is a member of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the politically dominant party in Malaysia.

He went to elementary and middle school at St. John's Institution in Kuala Lumpur . He later went to Malvern College in Worcestershire , England , then moved to the University of Nottingham , where he earned a bachelor's degree in industrial economics in 1974. After graduating, he returned to Malaysia and was employed by Bank Negara Malaysia . He later worked for the petroleum company Petronas .

Political career

Defense Minister

In 1976, Najib was first elected as a member of the Malaysian lower house . At the age of 23, he was the youngest ever elected MP in Malaysia. In the following years he held various positions in the party and government.

In 1991, Najib became Minister of Defense. During his tenure in 1993, Malaysian soldiers were sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina to take part in peace missions there. Malaysia also took part in the UNOSOM II operation in Somalia, where a Malaysian soldier was killed during the Battle of Mogadishu . Najib later criticized the UN mission for putting too much emphasis on military action. Since then, Malaysia has preferred to participate in peace enforcement missions under Chapter 6 of the United Nations Charter rather than in peacekeeping missions under Chapter 7. After four years in office, he took over the Ministry of Education, which he headed until 2000. Then he was again Minister of Defense.

The seaquake in the Indian Ocean fell during his second term in office . He coordinated support for the affected areas. He also helped Indonesia arrest the attackers in the 2002 Bali attack .

Deputy Prime Minister

From 2004 he was Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.

On January 29, 2008 he took over the national chairmanship of the national association Perak of the Barisan Nasional .

prime minister

On April 3, 2009, Najib took over the post of Prime Minister from his predecessor and party friend Abdullah Ahmad Badawi . He also took over the office of finance minister. In the parliamentary elections on May 5, 2013, the Najib-led alliance Barisan Nasional (BN) only received 47.4% of the vote due to growing dissatisfaction with its government, while the opposition alliance Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won 50.9% of the vote . Nevertheless, Najib was able to form the government again, as the BN won the majority of the parliamentary seats thanks to the majority vote. On May 5, 2013, he began his second term as Prime Minister. His cabinet formation on May 16, 2013 resulted in some changes, for example the total number of ministers was reduced. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education were merged into the new Ministry of Education and Higher Learning (Education & Higher Learning Ministry).

Najib promoted the Islamization of his country. At the same time, he was authorized by a law that came into force in August 2016 to proclaim “security zones” in which the police can arrest people without a judicial order. This is supposed to help fight Islamist terrorists. Critics fear that the law will be used to silence opponents of the prime minister.

After the party alliance Barisan Nasional, led by Najib Razak, lost the parliamentary election on May 9, 2018, the election winner Mahathir bin Mohamad was sworn in as the new Prime Minister on May 10, 2018.

Allegations of enrichment and corruption

In 2009, Najib founded the '1 Malaysia Development Berhad' (1MDB) fund, not least with state funds to which he had access as finance minister, and chaired its board of directors. As a result of unsuccessful speculation, the fund lost the equivalent of US $ 11 billion by the end of 2013. Research by the Wall Street Journal and the authors of the online journal Sarawak Report revealed that the US $ 681 million found in the Prime Minister's private account at AmIslamic Bank came from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied this. He claimed the US $ 681 million in his account was "a gift" from the Saudi royal family.

Following the exposure of the Wall Street Journal and the Sarawak Report to the cash flow, Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail was investigating the Prime Minister for corruption. Immediately before he finalized his indictment, Abdul Gani was removed from office. In the meantime, investigations are being carried out in Singapore, Switzerland and the USA because of the events at the 1MDB fund.

The 1MDB scandal severely damaged Malaysia's international reputation. As a result of the 1MDB scandal, his former supporter Mahathir bin Mohamad had been working since 2015 to bring about Najib's resignation.

In May 2018, Najib was surprisingly voted out of office after nine years, and the allegations of corruption were a central part of the election campaign. On May 22, 2018, almost a fortnight after his lost election, Razak was interrogated for the first time by the anti-corruption authority (MACC). At the beginning of July 2018 he was arrested and accused of embezzlement and money laundering. After the election, investigators seized $ 300 million worth of luxury goods and cash in the ex-prime minister's private homes, and about $ 700 million had been discovered in one of his private bank accounts.

On July 27, 2020, Razak was found guilty of all seven counts in the first of several trials. In what was then the largest trial of its kind in the world, he was charged with abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering, among other things. The court was convinced that Najib Razak had diverted almost 500 million euros from the 1MDB state fund to his private accounts. It sentenced the politician to a sentence of up to twelve years in prison and a cash payment of the equivalent of 42 million euros. There are five trials against Razak with a total of 42 charges. Najib Razak announced that he would appeal the first judgment.

Awards

Web links

Commons : Najib Razak  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia: Biography , May 12, 2010. Accessed December 18, 2010
  2. ↑ Thomas Bell: Profile: Najib Razak: To Najib Razak the Malaysian premiership may feel like a birthright. , The Daily Telegraph. April 3, 2009. Retrieved March 15, 2010. 
  3. ^ How Najib and Abdullah rose to nation's top post , Daily Express. April 4, 2009. Archived from the original on June 21, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2010. 
  4. ↑ Razak Ahmad: Q + A-Is Malaysia's incoming PM Najib a spendthrift? , Reuters. March 5, 2009. Retrieved December 18, 2010. 
  5. ↑ American soldiers 'held hostage by warlord' , The Herald. October 6, 1993. Retrieved April 1, 2010. 
  6. ^ Najib takes over as Perak chairman , thestar. September 30, 2009. Accessed December 18, 2010. 
  7. ↑ freemalaysiatoday.com: New cabinet list - who's in and who's out ( Memento of November 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) of May 15, 2013; Accessed May 16, 2013
  8. ↑ a b c Till Fähnders: Saudi millions and a bought Oscar. Malaysia's Prime Minister Razak is at the center of a global financial scandal . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 27, 2016, p. 4.
  9. ↑ Manfred Rist: Political new beginning with great-grandfather Mahathir. In: www.nzz.ch. May 10, 2018. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .
  10. ^ Hannah Ellis-Petersen: Malaysia election: Mahathir sworn in as prime minister after hours of uncertainty. In: www.theguardian.com. May 10, 2018. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Abdul R. Embong: The Noisy Right and the Not-So-Silent Moderates: Democracy and All That in Malaysia . In: Chantana Banpasirichote Wungaeo, Boike Rehbein, Surichai Wun'gaeo (eds.): Globalization and Democracy in Southeast Asia. Challenges, Responses and Alternative Futures . Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-57653-8 , pp. 45-62, here p. 52.
  12. ↑ James Chin: A Decade Later: The Lasting Shadow of Mahathir . In: James Chin, Jörn Dosch (eds.): Malaysia post-Mahathir. A decade of change? Marshall Cavendish Editions, Singapore 2015, ISBN 978-981-4677-16-5 , pp. 16–40, here p. 20.
  13. ↑ Tom Wright, Simon Clark: Investigators Believe Money Flowed to Malaysian Leader Najib's Accounts Amid 1MDB Probe . In: Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2015.
  14. ^ Najib Razak and the Malaysia 1MDB Controversy . In: Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2015.
  15. ↑ Michael Peel: Malaysia's PM denies receiving $ 681m from troubled fund . In: Financial Times, July 3, 2015.
  16. ↑ Agence France-Presse : Malaisie: La famille royale saoudienne fait un "don" de 681 millions de dollars au Premier ministre empêtré dans un scandale , January 26, 2016, accessed on October 3, 2016.
  17. ↑ The Real Reason The Attorney General Was Fired , July 3, 2015, accessed October 3, 2016.
  18. ↑ Peter Verhezen et al. a. (Ed.): Doing Business in ASEAN Markets. Leadership Challenges and Governance Solutions across Asian Borders . Springer International Publishing, Cham 2016, ISBN 978-3-319-41789-9 , p. 10.
  19. ↑ James Chin: A Decade Later: The Lasting Shadow of Mahathir . In: James Chin, Jörn Dosch (eds.): Malaysia post-Mahathir. A decade of change? Marshall Cavendish Editions, Singapore 2015, pp. 16–40, especially the chapter Mahathir - The PM slayer , pp. 17–23.
  20. ↑ Malaysia's ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak is interrogated over a corruption scandal Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 22, 2018
  21. ↑ Malaysia: Ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak arrested. In: Spiegel Online . July 3, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  22. ↑ https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/malaysia-najib-razaks-kartenhaus-bricht-zombination-ld.1391989
  23. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/27/najib-raids-273m-of-goods-seized-from-former-malaysian-pms-properties
  24. ↑ https://www.nzz.ch/international/malaysias-ex-premier-najib-ist-hinter-gittern-ld.1400278
  25. ^ Najib Razak: Former Malaysian PM guilty on all charges in corruption trial , BBC News, July 28, 2020.
  26. ↑ Malaysia's ex-prime minister sentenced to twelve years in prison , ORF, July 28, 2020.
  27. ^ Up to twelve years imprisonment for former Prime Minister of Malaysia , Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 28, 2020.
  28. ^ Honorary Doctorates. In: ussa.edu. United States Sports Academy, archived from the original on May 4, 2014 ; accessed on May 4, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Najib Razak
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Najib tun razak; Dato 'Seri Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Malaysian politician, Prime Minister of Malaysia
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Kuala Lipis , Pahang