SINGAPORE (Dec 16): Yvonne Seah, a former private banker with BSI bank, on Friday morning pleaded guilty to two charges of forging letters to vouch for the good standing of her client Low Taek Jho, mastermind of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.
Seah also pleaded guilty to one count of not reporting suspicious financial transactions.
Seah's four other charges will be taken into consideration, the court was told today.
The hearing will continue later in the afternoon.
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 at BSI, Yak Yew Chee. The letters were co-signed by Yak and Seah.
Between 2010 and 2015, Seah was said to have earned S$4.1 million working as a senior director at BSI.
Deputy public prosecutor Nathaniel Khng called for a deterrent sentence "for the wealthy bankers", citing the big amounts of money involved.
Khng said Seah chose to cooperate with Yak so that they could maintain a good relationship with Low as she could gain personally.
In addition, 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, the acts had harmed Singapore's reputation as a financial centre.
Khng also pointed out that Seah had worked for Yak since 1998, first at Commerzbank AG, then 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.
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.
Low is said to be the single largest client for BSI. Earlier court hearings had revealed that Low was called “Boss”, or even “Big Boss”, by the teams of BSI employees serving him.
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.