Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on February 5, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Former AmBank relationship manager Krystle Yap Wy-Sze said she was instructed to expedite several cash deposits into former prime minsiter Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s bank accounts.

Yap, 33, said on several occasions, her superior Joanna Yu Ging Ping instructed the former to meet Low Taek Jho’s associate Kee Kok Thiam to facilitate cash deposits into Najib’s accounts with numbers ending 880, 906 and 898.

During lawyer Farhan Read’s examination-in-chief, she said she was instructed to do so as the accounts were overdrawn.

“Why was Kee Kok Thiam making these deposits into Datuk Seri Najib’s accounts?” asked the lawyer.

“I don’t personally know the reasons for which he was making these deposits. I was merely acting on Joanna Yu’s instructions to expedite Kee Kok Thiam’s dealings with the branch. 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,” said Yap.

However, she could not recall how many times this had happened and the amounts banked in.

She also dealt with 1Malaysia Development Bhd executive director of finance Terence Geh and SRC International Sdn Bhd chief financial officer See Yoke Peng concerning SRC and its subsidiary Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd — both her corporate clients — and she acted on their instructions.

Lawyer Harvinderjit Singh then asked the witness why she had dealt with the two individuals, and whether she was shown any letter authorising her to act on Geh or See’s instructions, but she said she could not remember.

Her time in the witness stand was rather brief, as the prosecution and the defence’s examinations were concluded under two hours, with Yap mostly confirming banking documents.

Yap, the second defence witness, was a relationship manager in the wholesale banking coverage department at AmBank between May 2014 and January 2016, in the same team as former relationship managers Yu and Daniel Lee.

Besides SRC, she was responsible for managing corporate clients’ accounts, notably MMC Corp Bhd, Gadang Holdings Bhd and several other public-listed companies.

Yap said she took and executed her superiors’ instructions, usually for accounts belonging to high net worth individuals, to ensure smooth dealings with the bank, although she did not meet this clientele.

Following Yap’s release as a witness, the defence said it will be bringing in its third witness today — former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah.

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