Day 3, Nov 2
FORMER BSI wealth planner Yeo Jiawei was paid some S$500,000 a year by Low Taek Jho, otherwise known as Jho Low, the Malaysian financier who is accused of siphoning billions from Malaysia’s state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), Yeo’s former boss Kevin Swampillai told the court.
Yeo, described by his former boss as very competent in creating trusts and providing trust services, left the Swiss private bank in June 2014 to work for Low. Swampillai remembered asking Yeo how much he (Yeo) would be paid. “If he was paid S$500,000 a year, yes, that would be more than what he would have earned at BSI Bank,” Swampillai recounted.
Yeo, who called Low “boss”, wasn’t the only person who used this pseudonym. According to Swampillai, several individuals in BSI associated with Low used the same term or “big boss”.
Yeo has been slapped with 11 charges, including money laundering, which will be heard in April next year. He is now on trial for four charges of tampering with witnesses — including Swampillai, who is the fifth witness called by the prosecution.
In addition, Yeo allegedly gained US$18 million from his series of deals and transactions done involving 1MBD money. Swampillai admitted to jointly working with Yeo to earn “secret profits” from the bank and their clients using several different shell entities to facilitate the fund transfers.
Swampillai also received help from an intermediary called Samuel Goh, who will take the stand today as the sixth witness in the trial.
In court yesterday, Yeo’s lawyer Philip Fong of Harry Elias Partnership tried to portray 52-year-old Swampillai as an experienced banker with more experience in the industry than his 33-year-old client.
One of the BSI clients managed by them was Brazen Sky, a subsidiary of 1MDB that had US$2.3 billion in assets under management. When Swampillai raised the idea to Yeo, he said the former subordinate recognised the potential of such a venture “instantly”.
Swampillai described Yeo as an “active participant” in the discussion, disagreeing with Fong that “Mr Yeo was innocently sitting across the table gazing at me in wonder and lapping up everything that I told him. Mr Yeo was an active participant in that discussion. He leapt at it.”
Fong suggested to Swampillai that his conversation with Yeo took place in the context of the older man being “the boss, mentor, and the person who hired Yeo into BSI”. Swampillai again disagreed. “My style of management is not to have a boss-subordinate relationship; certainly not by the time we got to the Brazen Sky deal. We were seeing and talking to each other as equals,” he said.
Under cross examination, Swampillai also denied he was the one giving “instructions” to Yeo to set up the entities used to earn the referral fees. He alluded to Yeo’s skills in structuring trusts. Swampillai claimed he let Yeo implement the whole arrangement together with Goh after a certain amount of time.
“I did not have to instruct Mr Yeo about when to do things or how to do this because Mr Yeo knew what he had to do, he knew what to do at the end of the day, and he went about doing it proactively and independently,” said Swampillai.
“We had already agreed much earlier what the structure of the whole exercise would be, the companies involved, the intermediary companies, you know, the flow of funds, and Mr Yeo went ahead and implemented that. I disagree with the whole notion that Mr Yeo is a robot standing by taking my instructions at every step of the way,” added Swampillai.
Swampillai, former head of wealth management services at BSI, also revealed to the court that there was a lack of “central control” and “accountability” in his former employer.
While BSI had in place a management committee, Swampillai claimed this was in name only as decisions were all made by clients and when necessary, discussed only among the bank’s principal individuals involved in the accounts. “It is weak in that aspect,” he told the court.
The Singapore branch of BSI was ordered shut in May this year by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for control lapses.
BSI only made belated attempts to strengthen the controls after the MAS started its investigations, added Swampillai. All critical decisions were made by the people involved in the respective accounts and not by the management, he added.
For example, there were some accounts that had “pretty large” operational losses from year to year, but he was never held accountable. “Just because someone incurred losses doesn’t come on my head,” said Swampillai.
Fong also suggested to Swampillai that he was the one initiating some of the meetings with Yeo after the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) had brought them in for questioning. Swampillai was first questioned last October and detained in February at the airport.
Fong also revealed how Swampillai, who stayed in Bukit Timah, drove to Sembawang Park late one night to meet with Yeo. “You wanted to find out more about Samuel and the CAD as soon as possible because it was important to you, correct?” said Fong.
Swampillai did not agree. He said Yeo called to meet up with him to give him details of what the CAD had asked Goh. “I think we all had a vested interest to understand what was happening, but to answer your question directly, Mr Yeo had called for that meeting.”
Swampillai added that venues for the meetings were mostly determined by Yeo. He said Yeo was also “extremely concerned” with the use of telephones. “And I followed those suggestions as to where to meet, what time to meet, because Mr Yeo was usually the person who would be providing me with information, so I used to accede to his schedule and his preferences as to where to meet,” he said.
Fong also put it to Swampillai that it was his idea to use pre-paid SIM cards not registered in his name when the men knew they were under investigation.
Swampillai said it was Yeo who offered to get him one such “secondary phone”. “And what I’m alluding to is not the SIM card but Mr Yeo used a term Bangla phone, meaning these are SIM cards and phones that belong to construction workers that have since left Singapore and are therefore untraceable,” he added.
On Fong’s questioning, Swampillai admitted that he changed the statement he gave to CAD officers when he realised the story which Yeo tried to weave together could not stand.
Fong also remarked that Swampillai wasn’t being charged as of yesterday, to which deputy public prosecutor Tan Kiat Pheng pointed out that the defence was casting “aspersions on the witness”.
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