KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 — Former banker Joanna Yu today confirmed that Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal account at AmBank was given the codename “AmPrivate Banking-MR”, to maintain confidentiality due to expected scrutiny of money being sent into his account as he was the prime minister.
Yu, the former relationship banker at AmBank, however, confirmed that she had not directly asked Najib if he was agreeable to his personal account being given the codename.
Yu was testifying as the 41st prosecution witness in Najib’s trial, where the former finance minister is facing 25 charges over the misappropriation of RM2.28 billion of 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) funds which were said to have entered his private AmBank accounts.
Asked about how then prime minister Najib had ended up opening his private account at AmBank, Yu said Low Taek Jho — a fugitive better known as Jho Low — had told her that Najib wanted to open an account with the bank.
“And I was a bit shocked because Datuk Seri being the prime minister wants to open an account with the bank,” she said, pointing out that politicians would tend to go to CIMB or Maybank.
When Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah suggested that it was not “unnatural” for a prime minister to have a bank account, Yu agreed but again said Maybank would come to mind when it comes to Malaysian banks. Yu added: “So I didn’t expect the prime minister would want to open an account with AmBank.”
While Shafee asked what Low’s role in relation to Najib’s bank account was, Yu noted he was the one who had informed about Najib’s intentions to open the account at AmBank, adding: “He also mentioned that, Datuk Seri not going to come to the bank to put his thumbprint or sign anything, so you have to have the bank go to Datuk Seri, but he also did mention to me, that I’m not protocol-wise the person.”
Yu said Low had instead cited AmBank’s then managing director Cheah Tek Kuang as the person qualified to meet Najib over the opening of the bank account.
Previously, Cheah confirmed in this trial that Najib’s aide had arranged for him to be picked up and brought to Najib’s private residence in early 2011, where he brought banking documents for Najib to sign off on to open an AmIslamic bank account with the account number 211-202-200969-4.
As the 39th prosecution witness in this trial, Cheah had testified that Najib had said he was expecting a purported donation of US$100 million from Saudi Arabia to come into the new bank account.
Codename “AmPrivateBanking-MR”
Yu confirmed that the codename “AmPrivate Banking-MR” was not given to Najib’s AmIslamic bank account on the day it was opened, and that it was only added on after Low had requested for Najib’s name to not be revealed.
Shafee said Najib told him that he did not arrange for such a codename for his bank account and that he had nothing to do with it.
Yu then explained that Low had said Najib’s bank account is to be kept “private and confidential” and asked if it was possible to have a private account number, with Yu saying she had then checked with the bank’s branch if this was possible.
Yu agreed that Low had made this request apparently for Najib’s interest, adding that she was told by the bank branch that Najib’s bank account had to remain under his name, but that an additional name can be given for a joint account situation.
At that time, there was no mandate holder or person Najib had authorised to deal with his personal AmBank accounts, with Yu saying she was uncertain if such a request had been discussed with Najib during Cheah’s meeting with him to open the bank account.
But Yu confirmed that she herself had not called Najib to find out if he was happy with the additional name of “AmPrivate Banking-MR” to be used to refer to his bank account.
Shafee: Did Datuk Seri Najib ever tell the bank as an instruction, I don’t want funds to come in under my name, put it under a pseudo name?
Yu: No.
Yu agreed that she had taken Low to have been telling the truth that Najib allegedly wanted to have the other name for his bank account without checking if that was actually true, noting: “Yes, I didn’t check.”
As for why the codename was required for confidentiality, Yu said: “What I was told, the second name is for funds to come in so that they could be sending not direct to Datuk Seri Najib, but to that account.”
Shafee: The way you are describing it now is as though the bank thinks the money is not kosher, why do you have a name like that?
Yu: We were told there’s a lot of scrutiny, international things like that, for PM to receive funds, so can it be sent to an account number for the PM.
When Shafee later suggested that Najib had never asked for the codename and that he had no idea how it came about, Yu agreed this was “possible”.
Scolded for sending Najib’s bank statement to PMO
Yu today recalled that AmBank had once sent a bank statement to the Prime Minister’s Office when Najib was still a prime minister, and that Low had said all such bank statements were to be sent to former 1MDB chief investment officer Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil — who was the person Najib had authorised to handle his personal accounts.
“I believe we did that once because we didn’t know otherwise and we were reprimanded and said, ‘no, no, you have to keep it and send it to Nik’,” she said when replying to Shafee on why AmBank did not send Najib’s bank statements to his home or to his office.
She was unsure whether it was the bank branch or external service provider which had sent the bank statement to the Prime Minister’s Office, and was also unsure why that credit card statement had been sent there when the mailing address in Najib’s bank account opening form had listed his private residence at Jalan Langgak Duta.
Asked if it was possible that Najib never had a chance to look at his bank statements as they were not sent to him personally, Yu said this was possible.
Shafee suggested it was not uncommon for people to not have seen their bank statements depending on how busy their schedule is and as they may have appointed others to do it, with Yu confirming she did not know whether Nik Faisal never discussed the bank statements with Najib.
Shafee suggested that Najib “like any typical busy people” would not be privy to every detail in his bank account if he had a chance to look at it.
Prior to the incident of Najib’s credit card statement going to the Prime Minister’s Office, Yu said she could not confirm whether Najib’s bank statements had been sent to his private residence at Jalan Langgak Duta — the address given to AmBank as his mailing address.
Yu confirmed that she or her colleagues who were relationship managers subsequently put the statement of account for Najib’s accounts into an envelope, and they would then pass it to Nik Faisal at his office or wherever he asked to meet.
Yu confirmed these statements were not necessarily handed over every month but would sometimes be accumulated as a stack, as she would sometimes be told to hold on to them before handing them over to Nik Faisal.
On the first day of trial, the prosecution said it would prove that RM2,282,937,678.41 or over RM2.28 billion of 1MDB funds had entered Najib’s personal bank accounts under the 1MDB scheme, including via companies allegedly linked to Low and his associate Eric Tan.
Najib’s lawyers have been seeking to push forward the defence that the funds which entered his personal accounts were allegedly donations from Saudi’s royal family.
Apart from the current account 9694 which was given the name “AmPrivate Banking-MR” and which was closed down on August 30, 2013 after millions of ringgit had gone in and out of the account, Najib also had three other AmIslamic personal accounts which had codenames to disguise or hide the client’s identity in banking transactions.
Those three accounts which were all opened on July 31, 2013 and closed on March 9, 2015 are 211-202-201188-0 (better known by its code name AmPrivate Banking-1MY), 211-202-201189-8 (AmPrivate Banking-Y1MY) and 211-202-201190-6 (AmPrivate Banking-MY). These three accounts had also surfaced during Najib’s separate trial over the misappropriation of RM42 million of Finance Ministry-owned SRC International Sdn Bhd’s funds.
Najib’s 1MDB trial before High Court judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah is scheduled to resume tomorrow.
