This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on March 31, 2016.

KUALA LUMPUR: AMMB Holdings Bhd’s (AmBank Group) former group managing director (MD) Ashok Ramamurthy has resigned from Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), just over a year after exiting the Malaysian banking group.

An ANZ spokesman told The Edge Financial Daily that Ashok, an Australian national, left last month to pursue a career as a board director in a non-executive capacity outside of the group.

“Mr Ramamurthy left ANZ at the end of February to pursue a career as a non-executive director,” he said via email. Prior to leaving, Ashok had been ANZ’s group general manager of special projects, working within the area of strategy.

ANZ is the single largest shareholder of AmBank Group, with a 23.78% stake.

Ashok joined the Malaysian banking group from ANZ in 2007, first as chief financial officer before taking on the top position in 2012. He resigned as its group MD in late January last year to return to Australia to take on a senior executive role at ANZ.

But his resignation at the time sparked rumours that it was over controversial loans that AmBank Group had extended to state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

PKR secretary-general Rafizi Ramli, at a press conference shortly after Ashok’s resignation, claimed the resignation was allegedly due to a RM2 billion loan given to 1MDB’s Bandar Malaysia development project. Citing information from a “whistle-blower”, he said the resignation came after Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) conducted a compliance audit of the banking group and discovered a few “irregularities” related to the loan, The Malaysian Insider reported.

AmBank Group, however, insisted Ashok’s resignation was not related to 1MDB. The resignation was part of a planned transition that would see Ashok rejoin his family in Melbourne, it said.

Several months later, in July, AmBank Group again came under the spotlight, after The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly US$700 million moved through 1MDB and related entities and ended up in Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal accounts in the banking group.

Malaysia’s attorney-general later said the sum deposited into Najib’s accounts was a legal donation from a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, and that there was nothing improper about it.

The Australian press has been highlighting the issue in recent weeks.

On Monday, ABC’s Four Corners programme reported that bank documents seen by it showed that between Jan 13, 2011 and April 10, 2013, more than US$1 billion had been deposited in instalments into Najib’s personal AmBank accounts from the Saudi Arabian government, a Saudi prince and two Virgin Islands companies.

ANZ, despite being a major shareholder of AmBank Group, insists that it had no authority to act over the alleged transfers, The Australian reported earlier this week.

While it is concerned over the recent issues involving its Malaysian bank, ANZ said it was not involved, and not permitted to be involved in the day-to-day operations of AmBank Group, the report said. ANZ said its nominated executives do not report to ANZ but to the Malaysian group.

The Australian report also said that ANZ, which has been a major shareholder of AmBank Group for almost 10 years now, is trying to divest its shares in the Malaysian group.

ANZ’s new chief executive officer (CEO) Shayne Elliott sat on AmBank Group’s board until October last year, when he stepped down, citing “additional workload commitments”. He became ANZ’s CEO in January this year.

Last November, BNM slapped a hefty RM53.7 million penalty on AmBank Group for what the banking group says was due to “non-compliance with certain regulations”. AmBank Group did not provide details on the non-compliance, but sources told The Edge weekly at the time compliance breaches were related to transactions linked to 1MDB and related entities.

It is understood that a couple of mid-level executives who handled businesses that were related to 1MDB and businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low — who is linked to 1MDB — were asked to leave AmBank Group.

AmBank Group financed Jho Low’s reverse takeover of UBG Bhd in 2011 via a Cayman registered company.