Malaysia’s recently ousted Prime Minister Najib Razak cannot leave the country while he faces corruption charges. He took his family on holiday to Langkawi and apparently took quite a lot of baggage on the trip.

He’s a Platinum member of the Malaysia Airlines Enrich status. One imagines whether he meets the criteria or not that he’d have this status. And his Platinum appears to come with a very special perk. His reservation shows that he checked 535kg of luggage and had the 17,000 Malaysia Ringgit excess baggage fee waived.

Malaysia Airlines denies any special favors were granted, that their system will show all baggage under one person when multiple travelers are on the same PNR, so they have to waive the auto-generated excess fees.

Many politicians in the U.S. receive special perks when they travel, too.

Reached while in Langkawi, the former Prime Minister said “he shouldn’t be blamed for the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scandal, and declares he knows nothing about money from the state fund appearing in his personal account.”

Najib, in some of his most extensive comments yet on the 1MDB scandal, said he did not know if hundreds of millions of dollars that moved through his personal account was from 1MDB, and if money from the fund was eventually laundered to acquire assets globally, including yachts, paintings, gems and prime real estate.

“I’m not party to the yacht, the paintings…I’ve never seen those paintings whatsoever,” said Najib

Read the whole story for some of the most egregious corruption you’ve ever heard about — along with one of the best renditions ever of The Shaggy Defense.

(HT: Lenard)