KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court here was told yesterday that Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd (IPSB) transferred RM42 million into two personal accounts of Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak without knowing that the accounts belonged to the former prime minister.
The company’s managing director, Dr Shamsul Anwar Sulaiman said Najib had never contacted him regarding the payment of RM27 million and RM5 million on Dec 26, 2014 and RM10 million on Feb 9, 2015.
“If I had known AmPrivate Banking-MY (account number 211202201880) belonged to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, I would not have made the payment of RM27 million,” he said when reading out his witness statement on the 18th day of Najib ’s trial for alleged misappropriation of SRC International Sdn Bhd funds totaling RM42 million.
The 37th prosecution witness said he would not have deposited RM5 million in Najib’s account numbering 2112022011906 and RM10 million into 211202201880 for the same reason.
He said IPSB had never made payment for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes to Najib’s accounts and was uncertain whether the payment was for CSR purposes.
“The remittance form states that the purpose of payment is for CSR programmes but I cannot be sure of that.
“I kept making the payments to the accounts although I was not sure of the exact purpose of the payments. I just followed the instructions of Ung Su Ling (chief executive officer of Yayasan Rakyat 1Malaysia (YR1M),” he said.
Dr Shamsul Anwar said it was his assumption that the RM42 million payment was for CSR programmes and that he made that assumption because usually if the instruction was from Ung, it would be about CSR.
“I did not know who was the owner of the AmPrivate Banking-MY accounts.However, I asked Puan Aishah Ghazali (who is IPSB ’s former accounts executive) to run a check on who the owner was but she was told that the bank could not release that information to third parties.
“I also asked Datuk Abdul Aziz Ismail (IPSB director who also held the position of finance director of the company) to check on the owner of the account, but he did not inform the results of his findings,” he said.
He confirmed that all the remittance forms were filled by Aishah Ghazali and he and Abdul Aziz would sign the completed remittance forms.
The witness reiterated that the RM42 million transfer was made because he was directed by Ung Su Ling and Dennis See (Project director of YR1M).
“I had to follow Ung Su Ling and See’s instructions as they were the fund donors to Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd,” he said.
He said Ung and See instructed him to transfer the funds to the two accounts although he did not know who the owner was.
Dr Shamsul Anwar said he was only informed by Ung that money had come into the IPSB account and he had asked Ung many times on the phone and also face-to-face about the source of the funds, but Ung did not tell him.
“I had also asked See the same thing but he informed me that there was no need for me to know the account owner’s information,” he said.
Dr Shamsul Anwar explained that he only knew that the RM42 million was owned by SRC through Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of SRC, when he read articles posted on the Wall Street Journal website, while he was in Belgium between July 1 and 2, 2015.
He said that when he returned to Malaysia, he contacted Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil (SRC director) to ask about the RM42 million and that he confirmed that SRC had transferred the money to the IPSB account through Gandingan Mentari.
However, he said that he did not remember the date he had contacted Nik Faisal.
Najib, 66, is facing three counts of criminal breach of trust, one count of abusing his powers and three counts of money laundering involving SRC International funds totalling RM42 million. — Bernama