KUALA LUMPUR (July 16): Former Yayasan Rakyat 1Malaysia (YR1M) chief executive officer Ung Su Ling told the High Court here today that the instructions to transfer RM27 million and RM5 million on Dec 26, 2014 and RM10 million on Feb 10, 2015 into Datuk Seri Najib Razak's AmBank accounts came from his former principal private secretary, the late Datuk Azlin Alias.
The 49th prosecution witness of the Najib-SRC trial said the funds that make up the RM42 million sourced from SRC International Sdn Bhd do not belong to YR1M, and she had been directed by Azlin to facilitate the transfer of the funds from Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd to the two AmBank accounts via WhatsApp message.
"Azlin told me that funds had been transferred to Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd [IPSB] and had asked me to inform IPSB's managing director Datuk Seri Dr Shamsul Anwar Sulaiman to transfer the funds to two AmPrivate Banking accounts," she said, adding that Azlin had told her the funds were for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.
The RM27 million, Ung said, was transferred into the account ending 880 while the RM5 million was transferred into the account ending 906.
The witness added that on Feb 9, 2015, she received instructions from Azlin to transfer another RM10 million to the 880 account.
She clarified that Ihsan Perdana was a 'partner' for the YR1M foundation which provided funds for CSR programmes executed by the company.
"One funder [for YR1M] was 1MDB. The second was companies within the Genting Group. We also received a small amount of money from Petronas — that was for very specific projects," she added.
Azlin is among four trustees for YR1M, alongside Najib, then 1MDB chairman Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin, and Datuk Wan Ahmad Shihab Wan Ismail — then a special officer in the Prime Minister's Office.
"The board has never met formally, and everything was sorted via circular of resolutions [in YR1M]," added Ung.
Azlin passed away in a helicopter crash in April 2015, which also killed PR1MA Corp chairman Tan Sri Jamaluddin Jarjis and four others.
As Ung was the one who instructed Ihsan Perdana's then chief executive officer and managing director Datuk Dr Shamsul Anwar Sulaiman to facilitate the transfer of the RM42 million into the two AmBank accounts, she said she also communicated with AmBank relationship manager Joanna Yu to confirm the transfers.
Yu was the Ambank relationship manager for YR1M's AmBank account and Najib's AmBank accounts as well.
Ung said she was in touch with Yu via both BlackBerry Messenger and mobile phone since YR1M's AmBank account was opened in 2013.
"I knew Yu was the relationship manager for [the two receiving AmBank accounts], but I did not know these were the personal accounts of Najib," she said.
It had been previously established that the 880 and 906 AmBank Private Banking accounts belonged to Najib.
Interestingly, Ung also worked at the Wynton Group, an asset management firm set up by Low Taek Jho, the fugitive financier more popularly known as Jho Low, in the early 2000s.
Penangite Low is widely considered as the mastermind behind the multi-billion ringgit 1MDB fiasco.
Najib is facing three charges of criminal breach of trust, one for abuse of power and three more for money laundering of RM42 million SRC funds.
The funds as stipulated in the charge were RM27 million and RM5 million that were transferred into his accounts on Dec 26, 2014 and RM10 million on Feb 10, 2015.