Najib is not home yet: what has to happen before house arrest can begin

KUALA LUMPUR: The conditional pardon granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on Friday does not mean Datuk Seri Najib Razak can simply go home. Between that decision and his front door sit at least three things that must be settled first, and one of them has barely started.

The RM50 million fine

The first and clearest condition is payment of the RM50 million fine imposed by the court. The Attorney General, Tan Sri Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar, said the sum has to be settled at the High Court Registrar's Office in Kuala Lumpur before the house arrest process can move.

The fine remains unpaid. Umno launched the Najib Razak Solidarity Fund on Friday evening to raise it, and the party's secretary-general, Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, said collections reached RM1 million within 24 hours. That is about two per cent of the target.

The formal letter from the Pardons Board

The second is administrative, but cannot be skipped. The Malaysian Prisons Department has to receive a formal letter from the Pardons Board setting out the decision before it can finalise how the order is to be carried out.

Without that letter, the department has no document to act on.

An SOP that does not yet exist

The third is the hardest. Mohd Dusuki said he understood that a standard operating procedure would be issued for the house arrest, covering visits, supervision and the monitoring of movement.

The difficulty is that Malaysia has no house arrest statute.

"There really is no house arrest act. A special SOP may have to be created for him," a source told Utusan Malaysia.

It is not yet clear whether existing standard operating procedures can be applied or whether a new one has to be drawn up, the same source said. One possibility under discussion is a mechanism resembling parole.

The location of the detention has not been announced either.

The conditions that bind afterwards

The conditional pardon runs until August 23, 2028, the end date of Najib's current sentence. It is tied to compliance with the conditions set.

If any of them is breached, the pardon is cancelled and he must return to prison at once.

What it does not touch

The pardon covers only the sentence in the SRC International case, six years in prison and a RM50 million fine after the Pardons Board reduced it in February 2024 from the original 12 years and RM210 million.

It does not touch the 1MDB conviction. In December 2025 Najib was convicted on 25 charges involving RM2.2 billion and given a further 15 years in prison and a fine of RM11.38 billion. That sentence begins only after the current one ends, and he is appealing.