SINGAPORE (Nov 11): Ex-BSI banker Yeo Jiawei on Friday refuted claims that he worked for 1MDB mastermind Low Taek Jho, calling it a “misunderstanding” and “assumption” on the part of Kevin Swampillai, his former boss at BSI.

Earlier, Swampillai told the court that Yeo was paid S$500,000 a year working for Low. Taking the stand for the second day in his witness-tampering trial, Yeo said he was actually in negotiations to join rival bank UBS as a relationship manager.

To support his claim, the court was presented with an offer letter from UBS. The document stated that Yeo would get a base salary of S$230,000 a year plus incentive payment of S$260,000, which adds up to nearly $500,000. The court was also presented with Yeo’s 2015 notice of assessment, which stated his last drawn salary at BSI as S$441,000.

“If I am joining Jho Low, who is a billionaire, will I just ask for S$50,000 more? I can’t tell him (Swampillai) because I was going to join a rival bank. It was a misunderstanding,” Yeo said.

“I was never employed by Jho Low, I was never paid a single cent by Jho Low; he was just a client I knew at BSI. I’ve never worked for him nor have I worked with him,” he added.

Yeo, 33, is facing four charges of tampering with witnesses. He has been held in remand since April this year in connection with money laundering activities surrounding Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Yeo spent the whole of Friday on the stand, taking questions from his counsel Philip Fong. He refuted earlier testimonies from the prosecution’s witnesses, and offered his own version of events which led to his charges.

In court on Friday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Tan Kiat Pheng portrayed Yeo as a key element in the web of money laundering activities now under investigation

“You are portraying me as something that I am not,” Yeo responded.

Instead, Yeo used terms such as “business introducer”, “independent consultant”, and “intermediary” to describe himself.

Besides evidence given by Swampillai, Yeo also refuted statements by another prosecution witness, Samuel Goh Sze-Wei. Goh is said to have played an intermediary role in helping re-route “secret profits” to Swampillai and Yeo.

It was revealed in court on Monday that Goh had received some US$4 million in fees for playing this role. Goh had earlier told the court that he was merely acting on Yeo’s instructions.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Yeo said. "If I really want someone to be a robot, I can easily find a nominee director, which [would] cost me S$1,000 or S$2,000 a year. I was in a partnership with Samuel Goh, and he earned millions of dollars,” Yeo added.

In addition, Yeo said he neither asked Goh to destroy documents nor to buy a pre-paid SIM card so that the two could maintain contact more discreetly.

He further suggested that Goh had “pushed everything” to him when news surrounding 1MDB became widely known.

“To a certain extent, it’s the same for all the other key witnesses, which I find very unfair,” Yeo said.

The court had also heard from Amicorp relationship manager Jose Renato Carvalho Pinto, who described Yeo as a stingy and arrogant client to work for.

“[Pinto] invited me to his house for a barbeque,” said Yeo. “How can he say that?”

Pinto had also earlier told the court how Yeo urged him to keep cool on 22 July 2015, just a week before Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was sacked by Prime Minister Najib Razak.

This was to show Yeo’s direct connection with Low, who is assumed to have intimate ties with individuals at the highest level. In his defence, Yeo said that he merely knew what he knew from various news reports then.

The crux of Yeo’s charges was that after the trio were already being investigated by CAD, he defied instructions not to make contact with Swampillai and Goh.

Yeo is said to have asked Swampillai and Goh to come together, “hold hands” and“play poker” with CAD. He is also alleged to have cooked up a story to explain the fund flows.

The court was told that Yeo had said to Swampillai and Goh: “If we die, we die together,”. Yeo denied saying all that.

The trial, which was slated to conclude on Friday, Nov 11, will continue on Wednesday, Nov 16.