Police raid at former Malaysia PM Najib's home yields 52 luxury handbags from Chanel, Gucci, Prada

A police cordon at a road leading to former prime minister Najib Razak’s private residence in the Taman Duta area of Kuala Lumpur, on May 13, 2018.
ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR

KUALA LUMPUR - Police conducting a search at the Taman Duta home of former Malaysian premier Najib Razak since Wednesday (May 16) have seized over 50 luxury handbags from brands like Chanel, Gucci and Prada.

The operation also yielded a haul of ten luxury watches including several Rolexes, a Hublot and a Patek Philippe, as well as RM537,000 (S$181,000) and 2.87 million Sri Lankan rupees (S$24,400) in cash.

The crime investigation team lodged a report of the items taken from the Taman Duta mansion on Friday.

The 52 seized handbags included 16 from Chanel, 10 from Gucci, eight from Versace and five from Oscar de la Renta.

The police said the items were seized as the team had reasonable grounds to suspect they were the subject matter of a crime or crimes under Malaysia's Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001.

This haul was in addition to the 284 boxes containing luxury handbags and 72 bags filled with jewellery, cash of various denominations, watches and other valuables that were seized late on Thursday night after the police raided three apartments owned by Datuk Seri Najib's family in Pavilion Residences, a posh condominium development in Kuala Lumpur's shopping district.

At one of these apartments, the police took what was likely to be their biggest haul, loading five police trucks with hundreds of orange boxes containing Hermes Birkin bags.

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A Birkin costs anywhere between US$12,000 (S$16,105) and US$300,000.

Mr Amar Singh, director of police commercial crime investigations, who spoke to reporters outside Pavilion Residences early Friday morning after the raid, said the apartments belonged to a "Tan Sri", but declined to say more.

"The total sum worth of items cannot be ascertained now," said Mr Singh. "We'll be counting and will know by tomorrow." He said: "The number of jewellery is rather big."

Many of the orange boxes were labelled with pictures of different Birkin bags, with descriptions such as "Brown Ostrich".

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