Friday 29 Mar 2024
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SINGAPORE (Dec 16): Yvonne Seah, a former private banker with BSI bank, was sentenced to two weeks jail for forging letters vouching for the good standing of her former client Low Taek Jho, the mastermind of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.

She was also fined S$10,000 for one count of not reporting suspicious financial transactions ordered by Low.

In addition, Seah faces four other charges, which were taken into consideration, the court was told on Friday.

District judge Salina Ishak noted that the actions of the BSI duo — Seah and her ex-boss at BSI, Yak Yew Chee — had hurt Singapore’s standing as an international financial centre, which has to be “zealously protected”.

The legal justice here needs to “take an uncompromising stand” against such wrong-doings. “There is a need to send a strong signal,” she added.

In his defence submission, Seah’s lawyer, Peter Cuthbert Low of Peter Low LLC, notes that his client found it difficult to disobey orders from her ex-boss Yak, who was practically the exclusive relationship manager servicing Jho Low.

The letters, which essentially vouched that Jho Low has a net worth of US$1.63 billion (S$2.35 billion), were co-signed by Yak in his capacity then as BSI’s managing director, and Seah as a director at the bank.

The amount of business Jho Low gave BSI via Yak made him the bank’s most important client. As a result of this relationship, Yak was accorded special privileges by the bank.

In the mitigation plea, defence lawyer Low said that it was “practically impossible” for Seah to have probed into the veracity of the contents of the reference letters, or to act contrarily to instructions from Jho Low or her bosses.

Yak, 57, was also described as a “dominating superior”.

Seah, 45, was “constantly working under implicit threat of dismissal and accusations that she was unable to keep up with the pressures of Yak’s work,” stated the written defence plea.

“Yak frequently criticised the accused’s work performance and made chauvinistic, unnecessary and offensive remarks,” the plea added.

In a statement read out by Low after the sentencing, Seah expressed remorse and regretted her error of judgement in this affair.

Low said Seah was “glad that Yak had admitted that he deeply regretted causing her to be charged in court, as he was the one who ask her to co-sign the two reference letters".

“Well-heeled bankers”

Earlier in the day, deputy public prosecutor Nathaniel Khng called for a deterrent sentence "for the well-heeled bankers", citing the big amounts of money involved.

Khng asked for a sentence of two weeks’ jail for the two charges of forgery, and a fine of S$12,000 for the count of not reporting suspicious transactions.

Khng said Seah chose to cooperate with Yak so that they could maintain a good relationship with Low as she could gain personally.

Between 2010 and 2015, Seah was said to have earned S$4.1 million working as a director at BSI.

He pointed out that Seah had worked for Yak since 1998, first at Commerzbank AG, then RBS Coutts, and finally BSI.

"She moved voluntarily with him from bank to bank. She did so only as she could work with him and she enjoyed working with him," said Khng.

In addition, Khng said the acts had harmed Singapore's reputation as a financial centre as the forged letters were sent to foreign financial institutions to vouch for Low, who was shuffling money allegedly siphoned out from 1MDB-related entities.

Seah’s guilty plea comes as no surprise.

Both Seah and her former boss at BSI, Yak, were charged on Oct 10. Yak had already pleaded guilty on Nov 11, and is now serving his 18-week sentence on top of a S$24,000 fine. In addition, Yak is disgorging S$7.5 million in bonuses earned to the state.

Seah, however, is not doing the same with her bonuses earned.

Jho Low, who has been named by Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department as a “person of interest”, was called “Boss”, or even “Big Boss”, by the teams of BSI employees serving him.

Among the various fund flows handled by BSI, one group carried out in November 2012 stood out for its circular nature.

On Nov 2, 2012, US$153 million was transferred from a Coutts account of Good Star to the BSI Singapore account of Abu Dhabi-Kuwait-Malaysia Investment Corp.

Documents presented earlier in court during Yak’s trial had shown that the Good Star account is opened in Low’s name.

Three days later, this US$153 million was moved to the BSI account under Larry Low Hock Peng — Jho Low’s father.

On Nov 7, a sum of US$150 million was moved from senior Low’s account to another BSI account held by Jho Low. Next, US$110 million was moved to an account in Switzerland under Selune, an entity owned by Jho Low.

According to the prosecutor’s submission, this flow of the funds prompted an unnamed BSI compliance officer to remark on Nov 6, 2012, that such a move was “nebulous to say the least and not acceptable in Compliance’s view.”

When Yak went back to Low to ask for more details, Low went on a tirade.

Low responded with a long, indignant email, saying that he gave his father money that he had generated “as a matter of cultural respect and good fortune that arises from respect”.

Low added that his father had decided to accept a token sum, and return the rest back to him.

The funds were eventually processed by an unnamed BSI officer, who reportedly said: “intra family transfers are not always going to be logical”.

On May 24, 2016, BSI Singapore was ordered shut by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

On Dec 21, the court will deliver the verdict on another former BSI staff, Yeo Jiawei, who had worked closely with Low.

Prosecutors charge that Yeo, 34, had amassed a net worth of some S$23.9 million through “secret profits” within just 15 months, after leaving BSI.

The former wealth planner at BSI was on trial for four counts of tampering with witnesses, and thereby obstructing investigations by the Commercial Affairs Department into the case.

Yeo has been described by prosecutors as a central figure in the complex cross-border web of illegal shuffling of funds involving 1MDB.

On top of those four charges, Yeo will face another seven counts of money laundering in April 2017.

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