KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court has deferred its decision in a suit by SRC International Sdn Bhd against Datuk Seri Najib Razak and former SRC CEO Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil over breach of fiduciary duty.
Justice Ahmad Fairuz Zainol Abidin said he would need time to deliberate on the submissions by the parties in the case.
“The monkey is now on my back. Please bear with me,” he said yesterday.
Earlier, Najib’s lawyer Muhammad Farhan Muhammad Shafee submitted that the third parties, named in the suit, were the “true liable parties” that bore the blame for what happened to SRC.
He said the third parties, who were former members of the board of directors (BOD) in the company, were not legally compelled to follow instructions from the shareholder (Najib).
“They cannot hide behind the veil of ‘instructions by the shareholder’.
“They have to be free of external pressure and exercise independent judgement,” Muhammad Farhan said.
As for the claim that some of the BOD members feared losing their jobs if instructions by Najib were not executed, Muhammad Farhan said this was a weak reason for breaching one’s fiduciary duty.
“If you know your decision is the right thing, there are remedies (to protect your rights) such as going to the Industrial Court.
“You cannot be so beholden to one thing that you breach your fiduciary duty. Such an excuse cannot stand in corporate Malaysia,” he added.
SRC filed the legal action in May 2021, alleging that Najib had committed breach of trust, abuse of power, misappropriated the company’s funds and personally benefited from it.
It named Najib, along with its former directors Datuk Suboh Md Yassin, Mohammed Azhar Osman Khairuddin, Nik Faisal, Datuk Che Abdullah @ Rashidi Che Omar, Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi and Tan Sri Ismee Ismail in May 2021.
However, later, it removed six names from the suit and retained Najib and Nik Faisal as the first and second defendants.
