Zeti contradicts AmBank MD’s Saudi US$100m claim, says not told Najib’s account opening for incoming donation

KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 — Former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz today said AmBank did inform her that Datuk Seri Najib Razak would be opening an account with the bank, but said the bank’s managing director did not tell her that there were expected incoming donations.

Zeti said this while testifying as the 46th prosecution witness in Najib’s trial, where the accused faces 25 charges over RM2.28 billion of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) funds that were said to have entered Najib’s private bank accounts.

Zeti said AmBank Group’s then managing director Cheah Tek Kuang had on January 28, 2011, paid a courtesy visit to her at BNM, to inform her that then prime minister Najib was opening an account with AmIslamic Bank Berhad and that the account would be given a “code” name for the Ringgit Operations Monitoring System (ROMS).

Zeti said she asked Cheah to direct all future communications regarding such matters to the BNM deputy governor, who was in charge of overseeing financial surveillance and supervision of Malaysia’s financial system.

“Nothing further was discussed and the meeting was short. At no time during this meeting did Cheah Tek Kuang ever mention any intended donations that was to be remitted into this account,” she told the High Court today during the trial.

Zeti’s testimony contradicts Cheah’s previous testimony as the 39th prosecution witness in the same 1MDB trial, where the latter said he had told Zeti about the purported incoming “donation”.

Cheah had previously on October 4, 2022, told the High Court that he had followed AmBank’s chairman’s instruction and went to Najib’s house in early 2011 to help the latter with the bank account opening documents, where Najib claimed that there will be US$100 million donation coming in from Saudi Arabia government for him for Islamic activities.

Asked by deputy public prosecutor Kamal Baharin Omar, Zeti confirmed that there is actually no obligation ---- including policy or legal obligation --- to inform BNM that Najib is opening an account with AmBank, saying that everyone can open a bank account and the respective bank is supposed to do due diligence to check that everything is in order at the time of account opening.

Cheah had at that time told the court that he had then personally met with Zeti in order to notify her regarding Najib’s opening of the account and the latter’s expectation to receive US$100 million from Saudi Arabia.

Former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz’s testimony contradicts AmBank Group’s then managing director Cheah Tek Kuang’s previous testimony as the 39th prosecution witness in the same 1MDB trial, where the latter said he had told Zeti about the purported incoming ‘donation’. — Picture by Firdaus Latif

Najib’s lawyers have been trying to use four letters by a purported Saudi prince to claim that the RM2.28 billion that entered his personal bank accounts were all donations.

The four letters addressed to Najib are dated February 1, 2011, with a purported promise of a gift of US$100 million, followed by a November 1, 2011 letter promising a gift of US$375 million, a March 1, 2013 letter promising a gift of US$800 million and a June 1, 2014 letter promising £50 million.

The four letters from the purported Saudi royalty had contents that were almost identical except for certain details including the amount and mention of specific bank accounts in the second and third letter, with the first letter signed off by “Saud Abdulaziz AL-Saud”, the second letter and fourth letter signed off by “HRH Prince Saud Abdulaziz Al-Saud”, while the third letter was signed off by “Saud Abdulaziz Al Saud”.

All four letters were careful to say that the donation of hundreds of millions of US dollars and millions of pounds should not be seen as an act of corruption.

But Zeti said she was never shown the four letters purportedly promising huge sums of donation to Najib at the time the money went into his accounts.

Asked by deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib if Cheah had brought along "any Arab letters" to show her during the January 28, 2011 visit, Zeti said: "No, he did not."

Six weeks after Cheah informed her of the opening of Najib’s account, Zeti said Cheah had in a March 22, 2011 letter to then BNM deputy governor Tan Sri Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus, adding that Cheah had attached the purported first donation letter to Shamsiah.

Zeti today said this letter was not brought to her attention then.

As for the second, third and fourth purported donation letters, Zeti said she had never seen these letters until after these documents were discovered during a joint raid on AmBank by BNM and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on July 6, 2015.

Zeti stressed that these three remaining donation letters seized in the 2015 raid “had never been disclosed to BNM”, saying: “Neither AmBank nor Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak had forwarded these letters to BNM.”

But looking at all four purported donation letters, Zeti said these are just “letters of intention and letters of promise”, as they did not provide any details such as how much would be transferred through which particular account.

“These were letters of intent and letters of promise, it did not provide any details on an actual transaction of transmitting any funds and therefore we would rely on the commercial bank concerned to make the assessment because they would be receiving the funds and are required to do the due diligence on the payee, the purpose and so on. And if there were something irregular, it should be reported to the central bank,” she said.

Zeti told Kamal that AmBank did not have an obligation to inform BNM about those four purported donation letters, saying: "No, there's no obligation because the first line of defence or investigation has to be done by the financial institution. If they assess that something's not right, they have to make their assessment and then report to Bank Negara."

But Zeti said AmBank did not make any suspicious transaction report about the money in Najib's account.

The prosecution had in December 2022 insisted that Najib will not be able to use these four letters to defend himself over the RM2.28 billion as other courts had found them to be a fabrication.

Today, Zeti said that after Cheah's March 2011 letter which attached the first purported donation letter to Shamsiah, AmBank did not provide further information on that account of Najib's and did not report any irregular or suspicious funds in that account.

Zeti said that Najib in a June 20, 2013 letter wrote to BNM to ask for approval to convert RM2.26 billion in his AmBank account --- with the account code name being "AmPrivate Banking-MR" --- to US dollars to return the funds as purported "unutilised sum of donations and personal gifts that he had received".

Citing this June 2013 letter which was addressed to her as BNM governor, Zeti told deputy public prosecutor Kamal : "That was the first time we knew there was RM2.26 billion in his account."

Zeti said that no approval under the Foreign Exchange Administration (FEA) rules was actually required for transactions involving the RM2.26 billion as Najib had declared it to be the balance of donations and gifts to him, saying: "That means it is his money and he was returning it back and therefore it was his money and not for investment purposes and therefore no approval is required."

Zeti said Najib transferred RM2 billion out from this AmBank account with the code name ending "MR" and later closed it in August 2013 without BNM being informed that it would be closed, adding that the remaining sum of around RM162 million was transferred to one of three new accounts opened in the same bank and that Najib later received in 2014 a total of £9.5 million equivalent to about RM50 million into that account.

Zeti said BNM only became aware of these three new Najib accounts opened on July 31, 2013 after AmBank disclosed this in a December 12, 2014 letter to then BNM deputy governor Shamsiah.

Zeti said AmBank failed to report to BNM on over 500 suspicious or irregular transactions related to Najib’s account, adding that AmBank later paid the historic-high penalty of RM59 million after acknowledging these failures to disclose as well as their giving of false information on the money that went into his account and their failure to comply with regulations.

Zeti gave an example of false reporting, where a US$619 million sum to be transferred into Najib's account was broken down into eight tranches by AmBank, with AmBank however not reporting any of these amounts except the last amount of US$100 million. But Zeti said instead of reporting Najib to be the ultimate beneficiary of the US$100 million, AmBank had reported its own bank account as being the recipient.

BNM on August 14, 2015 revoked its previous three permissions to 1MDB to send money out of Malaysia and also issued directions to 1MDB to bring back to Malaysia all the funds that were “illegally and falsely remitted abroad”, with Zeti adding that 1MDB paid RM15 million as a compound on May 25, 2016 as it was unable to bring back those money and failed to provide evidence on the funds’ status.

Prior to investigations, Zeti said BNM did not know that the money in Najib's account was from 1MDB, while saying that she herself did not know that RM2.6 billion of 1MDB funds had been deposited into his account.

Zeti said Najib on July 3, 2015 asked her at the Prime Minister’s Office to issue a statement saying he had done nothing wrong in his account, but said she had turned down Najib’s request as she did not have knowledge of the transactions in his account and that he had accepted her decision.

Najib’s 1MDB trial before Judge Datuk Collin Lawrence Sequerah resumes on August 14.