PUTRAJAYA (April 7): The defence for Datuk Seri Najib Razak today raised questions regarding the credibility of former Yayasan Rakyat 1Malaysia (YR1M) chief executive officer (CEO), Ung Su Ling, who had earlier claimed that the directions to transfer the disputed sum of RM42 million of SRC International Sdn Bhd funds came from the former premier's principal private secretary, the late Datuk Azlin Alias.
However, BlackBerry messages retrieved from former AmBank relationship manager, Joanna Yu Ging Ping, showed Ung had obtained the directive for the transfer from fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low.
Najib's lawyer Harvinderjit Singh further raised to the Court of Appeal bench that Ung's background of having worked together with Jho Low showed that there was something ulterior towards the motive in transferring the money.
To make her conduct questionable, the lawyer said Ung, who was the 49th prosecution witness, admitted that she deleted all her messages with Azlin a week after his death in a helicopter crash on April 4, 2015.
Harvinderjit said Ung, being a trained lawyer before entering the corporate world, would have kept the messages to back her claim.
"But what she said was that she deleted the messages and then threw her phone away," the lawyer said.
"The witness admitted when being cross-examined that being a lawyer she should have kept the purported messages with Azlin on the directive given. Her reply was that she had felt saddened over Azlin's passing and deleted his phone number and chat so as not to remind her."
Harvinderjit said it was as if Ung was shifting the blame to Azlin, a person who had already passed away over the transfer, when in fact it was not true.
He added when Yu's BBM message was retrieved, it showed that Ung had in fact received direction to transfer the money from Jho Low.
"We say that Ung is not a credible witness and that her testimony should not have been relied on by the High Court in calling Najib to enter into his defence."
Yesterday, Najib's defence also raised issues regarding former SRC director Datuk Suboh Md Yasin's testimony when he admitted that his signatures could have been forged in some of the 17 SRC documents shown to him by the defence as the witness admitted they could have been "cut and paste".
The defence further argued that based on Suboh's testimony alone in terms of contradiction, the former premier's defence should not have been called.
Judge questions why Jho Low transferred money
As Harvinderjit tried to show the transfer of money to the various accounts before ending with Najib's two accounts, the chairman of the bench, Datuk Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil, questioned why Jho Low would transfer SRC's RM27 million and RM5 million into Najib's accounts.
To this, the lawyer replied only Jho Low knows.
Another member of the bench, Justice Datuk Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera, further asked how come Jho Low was allowed to control SRC's funds when he does not hold any post, and to this the lawyer could not answer.
Justice Vazeer then asked further from the evidence there is inference that Jho Low had caused the SRC money to go out.
Vazeer: Are you saying that the money from SRC is used to top up Najib's accounts following the various overdrawn?
Harvinderjit: Yes. There are soft copy instruction letters and the inference is made that Jho Low gave the instruction to Terence Geh, another operative of Jho Low.
The prosecution's case, Harvinderjit said, is that Jho Low is an operative for Najib but the defence is saying that he (Jho Low) benefited also from the transfer of money.
"Their (prosecution) case that they try to show because Najib had contacted Jho Low with regard to the use of his credit card, then the court and judge can make an inference that the former premier controlled him," he added.
Jho Low used his associates to benefit him
However, Harvinderjit said that Jho Low in fact was using all the people around him including Geh and Ung to do all these questionable transactions which he himself benefited from.
Besides Geh, the defence also had yesterday contended that not calling See Yoke Peng, the former chief financial officer of SRC, was detrimental to the prosecution's case in explaining the monetary transactions.
Geh, like Jho Low, has left the country and is wanted by the authorities.
Harvinderjit also suggested today that See and Geh had played a role in the transfer of money from SR utilising the 17 instruction letters which also benefited the fugitive businessman.
The lawyer highlighted that a total of RM293 million of SRC funds had gone out in 2014 alone, and out of that amount, RM42 million ended up in the former premier's accounts.
The bulk of it, the lawyer suggested, was for the benefit of Jho Low and to make matters worse, he had told the bankers when transferring the money to Najib that this was still part of the RM2.6 billion Arab donation.
“The court and the judge had not focused on the movement of the other monies said to have benefited Jho Low and only looked at the RM42 million, whereelse it was Jho Low who stole the money and orchestrated its movement,” Harvinderjit said.
The said funds from SRC had flowed through several companies, namely Putrajaya Perdana Construction Sdn Bhd and Permai Binaraya Sdn Bhd, among others, as well as through SRC subsidiaries Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd and Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd before ending up in Najib's two AmBank accounts.
The former premier has been found guilty of abuse of power, three counts of criminal breach of trust and another three charges of money laundering in relation to SRC funds and he was sentenced to 12 years' jail and fined RM210 million.
The defence submission to set aside Najib's conviction and sentence continues tomorrow.