PUTRAJAYA, May 5 — Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak today called in a handwriting and signature expert to tell the High Court whether he was the one who had signed seven signatures in documents regarding or linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Forensic document examiner Tay Eue Kam, 59, today testified as the 26th defence witness in Najib’s trial involving more than RM2 billion of 1MDB funds, which were alleged to have entered the former finance minister’s personal bank accounts.

Tay confirmed that Najib’s law firm had on April 23 given her a set of seven documents for her to analyse and compare against 31 documents that were known to be signed by Najib and carry his handwriting.

All seven documents and the 31 documents were photocopied versions and not the originals.

Today, Tay explained her findings in her May 3 report on whether the seven signatures were indeed signed by Najib, after making the comparisons.

She said it was “inconclusive” or could not be concluded if five of the signatures were indeed signed by Najib, due to reasons such as poor image quality of the photocopied documents and the need to refer to the original documents to make a definitive conclusion.

She also said it was probable that Najib did sign the sixth signature, and that it was probable that he did not sign the seventh signature.

In explaining her opinion of why there was a probability that Najib signed the sixth of the seven signatures she examined, Tay cited her comparison with samples of Najib’s signatures: “A lot of similarities observed, the image rather clear, all the line strokes rather clear, there’s no dissimilarities observed, so probably written by the writer”.

Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah then asked if signatures can be “lifted and pasted” when it involves reproductions or photocopied documents.

Tay said the probability of that happening cannot be excluded when it involves photocopied documents, and said this could be determined when comparing photocopied documents against the original documents.

Asked how it would be proven if signatures were lifted and pasted, Tay said this would depend on the methods used, as the conventional method of photocopying may leave visible traces, while it would be harder to determine without the aid of original documents if newer technology were used to do the cut and paste.

Tay confirmed it would not be possible to examine if the signatures under Najib’s name in the seven photocopied documents in the 1MDB trial were cut and pasted, saying: “Not with this kind of quality”.

Some of the limitations that Tay faced in analysing Najib’s signatures included having to examine documents that appear to have gone through multiple rounds of photocopying, which meant some documents were of poor quality such as being unclear, having missing lines or added lines.

In the 1MDB trial, Najib previously claimed his signature was forged on certain 1MDB documents, but also confirmed he had never lodged police reports to say that he did not actually sign those documents.

Najib claimed he did not make the police complaints on his claim of signature forgeries as the case was on trial and he wanted to avoid being seen as intimidating prosecution witnesses.

Earlier today, Shafee indicated to the High Court that it was possible that Najib may decide not to call in the inspector-general of police as his defence witness after all, and expected to provide updates to the court on this tomorrow.

“As long as we get the police officer responsible for this protocol, who can testify to what we want, which is a very short testimony, we are not interested in any particular police officer including the IGP,” Shafee said this morning, referring to a police officer which Najib’s lawyers would interview today.

Shafee said Najib’s lawyers may either decide that there was no need to call the IGP if this police officer’s testimony would be sufficient, or may also decide not to call the IGP even if the police officer’s testimony is not “good enough” and would just argue the matter during submissions.

Shafee also told the trial judge that “we may be able to close the case by tomorrow”.

Najib’s 1MDB trial before judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes tomorrow.