Kuala Lumpur: A former bank officer at AmBank never thought that then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's private bank account would be used to launder illegal funds, the High Court heard today.
Testifying for the prosecution, AmBank's former relationship manager Joanna Yu explained that she believed it was Najib's wish to keep his personal bank accounts confidential.
Yu said Low Taek Jho — now a fugitive who had helped make sure cheques issued from Najib's accounts do not bounce due to insufficient funds — had also stressed that Najib's name should not be revealed as the owner of the bank accounts.
Yu is the 41st prosecution witness in Najib's trial over more than RM2.28 billion of funds misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), with this sum of money alleged to have entered Najib's AmBank accounts.
She was asked by Najib's lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah why she had given suggestions to avoid scrutiny by the Wells Fargo Bank on incoming funds worth US$15 million to Najib's account.
Yu said she did it as Low said had told her, “don't disclose PM's name”.
Yu explained that the Wells Fargo Bank had previously made a phone call to AmBank's compliance team to ask about the name of the account holder when US dollars were sent to Najib's AmBank account.
She confirmed this was why she had suggested to Low in BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) messages in May 2014 for US$15 million to be sent in the form of British pound sterling to Najib's AmBank account.
Shafee put it to Yu that by suggesting another currency to prevent queries on Najib's account, she was participating in money-laundering offences.
But Yu believed her actions were to protect Najib's confidentiality.
“It was my belief that this was to protect the confidentiality of the account holder. At that time, he said, you never know somebody will use PM's name and come up with something, so he said, we have to protect PM's name,” she replied.
Shafee then asked whether she had believed “wholesale" what Low said as an experienced banker, and Yu confirmed she did.
Shafee also asked whether in hindsight she realised she had assisted Low in money-laundering offences.
“I believe it was the request of Datuk Seri to be kept confidential so I...” she replied before Shafee jumped in with another question.
Shafee: You mean it never crossed your mind that this could be the money laundering issue?
Yu: This is PM's account, the PM of Malaysia.
Shafee: But the money didn't come from PM, it came from outside.
Yu: For PM's account, it didn't strike me anybody would use the PM's account, I mean, to do money laundering. This is the PM of Malaysia.
When Shafee pressed her by asking whether she did not think Low could be doing money laundering just because the funds went through the prime minister's account, Yu said she did not think so as she believed Najib's accounts were already being monitored.
“No, because this account was informed to Bank Negara and people in compliance, everybody was watching this account, this account was known to the higher levels,” Yu said.
Yu agreed that the need to maintain client's confidentiality does not remove her duty as a banker in relation to money laundering as it is a strict instruction from Bank Negara Malaysia.
Shafee suggested that Yu is now aware in hindsight that if the information regarding Najib's accounts had been released, the whole issue of whether the money that came in was “kosher" or legitimate would have been made known a lot earlier and the prime minister would have been “protected” rather than harmed.
Pressed that she “would have protected your own PM, the account holder”, Yu replied: “I believe he was being kept informed, cheques were being issued, credit cards were being used, I took it that he knew what was happening.”
But Shafee insisted that Najib believed the funds that came into his personal accounts were from Saudi donations.
He suggested that Najib had at times issued cheques when the accounts had insufficient funds which indicated that the prime minister never knew his account had been depleted of funds.
Yu said she could not comment on how Najib's accounts were being managed, but later agreed it was possible Najib never knew the state of his accounts.
Shafee said the whole issue would not have risen if no one topped up cash into Najib's account, as he would have realised there was no more purported “donation money” in his account if the cheques he had issued had bounced.
Previously, the High Court had heard of BBM conversations between Yu and Low, where she had alerted him when Najib's cheques were issued from accounts that had insufficient funds and where Low had made arrangements for additional funds to be pumped into Najib's accounts to ensure the cheques did not bounce.
Today, Yu confirmed that both Low and Najib's authorised account handler Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil have told her to ensure that Najib's cheques do not bounce.
“For prime minister's cheques to be bounced, we were told, I believe, it was something very devastating to have newspapers report PM's cheque bounced,” she said, stressing that she was told to be very careful about safeguarding the reputation of the prime minister of Malaysia.
Shafee then claimed that it was people like Yu who have perpetrated and assisted in the fraud allegedly committed by Low.
But Yu replied: “We believe it was protecting the prime minister.”
Referring to Najib who was sitting as an accused person's in the dock, Shafee shot back with a remark: “If you were protecting the prime minister, I don't know why he's there.”
Najib's 1MDB trial before judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes this afternoon.
