A replacement High Court order on 10 November keeps Najib’s reduced SRC International sentence in force at home until 23 August 2028. He arrived after an earlier transfer was blocked.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak arrived at his Kuala Lumpur home on 10 November after leaving Kajang Prison, where he had been serving a sentence in the SRC International corruption case. His sentence continues under house arrest rather than ending with his release.
Najib had left prison on 6 November but was returned hours later when Malaysia’s attorney general blocked the transfer pending legal clarification. The Attorney General’s Office said it needed to know whether an order issued after payment of his fine meant that the first sentence had ended, because that would determine when his second sentence began.
Earlier on 6 November, Najib’s lawyer Farhan Shafee said he had received the order and was about to deliver it to Kajang Prison, adding that house arrest could begin that day if all went to plan. Later, the attorney general’s chambers said Najib would remain in prison while legal questions about interpreting his conditional royal pardon were clarified, Reuters reported, according to Al Jazeera.
After the attorney general applied for a review, Justice Aslam Zainuddin annulled the discharge order and replaced it with the house-arrest order. The High Court made house arrest effective immediately, and Najib’s home was declared a federal prison before his return.
Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar granted Najib a conditional pardon in September 2026, allowing him to serve the rest of the sentence at home if the fine was paid. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation, paid the 50 million ringgit fine after a fundraising campaign by his supporters. Party secretary-general Asyraf Wajid Dusuki said on 6 November that sufficient funds had been raised.
Al Jazeera reported that the party used crowdfunding to cover the fine because Najib’s bank accounts were frozen. According to DW, Najib remains influential in the party, which is part of the government that came to power in 2022.
The proposal would classify date-rape drugs as dangerous substances alongside weapons. Germany’s Bundestag is scheduled to vote on the bill on 6 November.
After Najib was returned to prison, the palace publicly rebuked the handling of the order. The king said pardons were a royal prerogative and the conditions of Najib’s pardon had been met. The Attorney General’s Office said it was not disputing or defying the pardon.
Najib’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said his client cannot leave home without special permission or a special reason. Shafee said the full terms had not yet been shared with him, including whether family members could live there. He believed visitors would need permission but said the position was uncertain.
Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke resigned in protest against the decision to allow house arrest.
Al Jazeera correspondent Rob McBride said the decision could affect Malaysian politics and reported that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had publicly raised concerns about the pardon.
Najib was convicted of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering involving funds from SRC International, a former subsidiary of the state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, known as 1MDB. He began serving his original 12-year sentence, imposed in 2020, in 2022; Malaysia’s Pardons Board reduced it to 6 years in 2024.
Najib co-founded 1MDB while serving as prime minister from 2009 to 2018. His first conviction concerned 42 million ringgit transferred from SRC International into his private accounts.
The house-arrest order does not cover a separate 15-year prison sentence imposed in December 2025 for corruption and money laundering in a second case tied to 1MDB. That conviction also carried an 11.4 billion ringgit fine. Najib denies wrongdoing and says he was solely blamed for a complicated global fraud scheme.
In the second case, Najib was convicted of misappropriating nearly 2.3 billion ringgit from 1MDB.
Najib is appealing the second conviction. His lawyers sought to suspend that prison term and its fines, citing poor health and inability to pay, but a judge rejected the request in September, saying the gravity of the offense was a more important public-interest consideration. Najib could return to prison after house arrest ends if his appeal fails.
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