By Aathi Shankar
Many media publications, be it print, electronic or online, have not given much prominence to truths unfolding in the ongoing Najib Razak-SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption trial at Kuala Lumpur High Court.
The trial has been conducted for 44 days so far with 53 witnesses having finished giving their testimonies.
The current prosecution 54th witness, former Ambank relationship manager Joanna Yu Ging Ping has not completed her’s.
But until now the prosecution led by Datuk V. Sithambaram is yet to produce any strong evidence to even insinuate, let alone prove, that Datuk Seri Najib was guilty as charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
Most media organisations have conveniently hidden this fact.
The media seems more focused to play the Pakatan Harapan perception game by spinning headlines and story leads to portray Najib in a negative light.
Pakatan supporters have been propagating these spins as gospel truths to sustain their lies that Najib had “robbed the people’s money.”
Najib currently faces seven corruption charges pertaining to SRC International funds.
The charges were 3 each for CBT under Section 409 of the Penal Code and money laundering under Section 4 of the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities (AMLA) Act 2001, and 1 for abuse of power under Section 23 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Act (MACC) 2009.
The Pekan MP was charged with committing the offences at AmIslamic Bank Bhd in Jalan Raja Chulan and the Prime Minister’s Office in Putrajaya between Aug 17, 2011, and Feb 10, 2015.
Joanna Yu’s Testimony
Anyway, Pakatan’s propaganda of lies and spins is slowly but surely disintegrating especially by Joanna Yu, who has been revealing many truths behind the case.
Previously several witnesses testified that Datuk Seri Najib’s private accounts may have been manipulated by others.
Joanna Yu’s testimony for the past few days has cemented this information.
She has revealed that businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, could be the man behind the whole financial manipulative scam to misuse Najib’s accounts.
Her testimony before Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali also sealed the fact that the former premier had indeed received a huge Arab donation prior to the 13th General Election (GE13).
According to her, USD100 million was deposited in Najib’s account in 2011, another US$375 million in 2012 and RM2.6 billion (US$681 million) in 2013.
She confirmed that all the funds were donations and gifts from a member of the Saudi royal family, Faisal bin Turki, the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Finance and Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners.
From the funds, Najib had returned US$620 million via Tanore Finance Corp in August 2013
Joanna Yu insisted that there was “nothing to hide” in regards to the massive inflow of funds into Najib’s account between 2011 and 2013.
“A lot of people knew about this amount. The relevant department handling the current account, the bosses and Bank Negara Malaysia were in the know,” she told the court on Monday, July 29, 2019.
Jho Low’s Instructions
She said Jho Low could be the person issuing all instructions pertaining to Najib’s bank accounts.
She revealed that former SRC International CEO Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, the accounts’ mandate holder, may have been used as a shield to formalise Jho Low’s instructions.
Jho Low has used the nomenclatures pie and satay to refer to US dollar and ringgit transactions in his Blackberry messenger chats with Joanna Yu, who was the person dealing with Najib’s accounts on behalf Ambank.
She also revealed that Jho Low had even told her to destroy bank statements and cheques linked to Najib’s account with the number ending with 694.
This account was used by Najib to receive Arab donations and gifts.
Joanna Yu, however, did not follow Jho Low’s instruction because it was against the banking standard operating procedure (SOP).
She also did not know why Jho Low instructed her to torch all those bank documents.
Puppetmaster
Joanna Yu testified that she had acted beyond her authority to prepare all fund transfer instruction letters upon receiving directives from Nik Faisal.
Nik Faisal would then just pen his signatures on these letters to authorise the fund transfers.
She was not Ambank’s authorised person to prepare such letters as her job function was only to forge close working ties between the bank and clients.
Previously former AmBank managing director (MD) Cheah Tek Kuang testified that former BNM Governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz knew from the beginning about Najib’s Arab cash donations and gifts.
Zeti, known loyalist to Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad, had indeed given the green light for the transactions.
Joanna Yu has also confirmed Cheah had received costly mobile telephone sets from Jho Low, which were given to “someone in BNM”.
Certain media reports have previously exposed that Jho Low’s father Larry Low Hock Peng had close links with Mahathir.
One wonders why Joanna Yu and Nik Faisal were following Jho Low’s directives to manipulate Najib’s accounts.
And why Jho Low manipulated Najib’s accounts?
Was he acting on his own or was there a puppetmaster behind him pulling the strings?
Obviously, the prosecution cannot conclude the Najib-SRC trial without Nik Faisal and Jho Low taking their places in the witness box.
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