Najib Razak pays $12 million fine to serve 2 years under house arrest

Najib Razak, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, began serving the remainder of his corruption sentence under house arrest on Tuesday night. The 73-year-old arrived at his residence in an exclusive Kuala Lumpur neighborhood in an SUV, escorted by a heavily armed police convoy.

The transfer was part of a conditional pardon granted by the King of Malaysia in September. As a specific financial term of that pardon, Najib’s political party paid a $12 million fine. This payment allowed him to serve the final two years of his original sentence at home rather than in a federal prison.

Najib was originally sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2020. He was jailed in 2022, but the term was later halved on appeal. His lawyers argued that he had been misled by advisers, specifically financier Jho Low, who has maintained his innocence and remains at large. Prosecutors estimated that more than $1 billion of the total $4.5 billion siphoned from the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund ended up in accounts linked to Najib.

The move to house arrest faced legal delays. The transfer was initially scheduled for Friday but was postponed when the attorney general sought clarification on the royal decree. The high court ruled on Tuesday that the house arrest was effective immediately. Critics questioned the legal basis of the arrangement, noting that Malaysian law did not previously provide for house arrest.

Najib was convicted in two separate trials. In the first, he was found guilty of abusing power, money laundering, and breach of trust regarding 42 million ringgit, or $10 million, transferred from SRC International into his private accounts. In a second trial in December 2025, he received a 15-year sentence for misappropriating nearly 2.3 billion ringgit, or $569 million, from 1MDB.

He is currently appealing the 15-year sentence. Once his current house arrest period concludes, expected in August 2028, he is due to begin serving that second sentence.