KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — A former AmBank relationship manager told the High Court today she had aided an associate of fugitive financier Low Taek Jho replenish Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s private accounts when these ran out of funds.
Krystle Yap Wy-Sze, 34, said she was ordered on several occasions by her superior, Joanna Yu Ging Ping, to meet and assist one Kee Kok Thiam about cash deposits he intended to make to the former prime minister’s accounts.
“From what I was told, this was because those accounts had become overdrawn,” she testified as the second defence witness in Najib’s RM42 million SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption trial today.
Yap likened her assistance to the associate of Low, or Jho Low, to letting him skip the line and expediting his deposits.
However, she said she did not know why Najib’s accounts needed urgent infusion.
“I merely arranged for a branch personnel to attend to him straight away. Essentially, I just arranged for him to ‘cut the queue’, so to speak,” she said when reading from her witness statement.
Yap earlier explained that she was hired as a relationship manager in AmBank in 2014 and had worked there until January 2016, with Yu as her team leader.
She said her team was responsible for the accounts of SRC International, its corporate social responsibilities partner company Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd, and those belonging to Najib.
Yu has already testified in this trial as a prosecution witness.
Today’s proceedings took place before High Court Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, with the defence confirming that former Treasury secretary-general Tan Seri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah will be testifying as a witness tomorrow.
Najib is on trial over seven charges related to SRC International.
Three are for criminal breach of trust over a total RM42 million of SRC International funds while entrusted with its control as the prime minister and finance minister then, three more are for laundering the RM42 million, and the last is for abusing the same positions for self-gratification of the same sum.
