KUALA LUMPUR (March 25): The production of an invoice for the US$23 million pink diamond necklace for Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor in the fraud trial of former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng does not implicate the former prime minister’s wife in the purchase, said her lawyers.
The jury in the trial of Roger Ng in New York were shown the invoice for the necklace, which was created by New York jeweller Lorraine Schwartz for Rosmah.
In a statement, her lawyers Datuk Geethan Ram Vincent, Rajivan Nambiar and Reza Rahim said that Rosmah “has no knowledge” of the invoice which came up in the trial.
“In any event, our client takes the position that the production of the invoice per se does not amount to any form of conclusive evidence implicating our client in the purchase of the pink diamond necklace,” the statement said.
Rosmah and husband Datuk Seri Najib Razak maintained that they both did not at any time demand, request or intend to purchase the pink diamond necklace, the statement added.
“At all material times, our client and her husband only knew that a UAE prince namely Sheikh Mansour Zayed had wanted to give as a gift a pink diamond necklace to our client.
“Similarly, the value of the said necklace was never made known to our client and/or her husband,” the lawyers said.
“It is pertinent to note that our client had never received the pink diamond necklace and this is evident as despite being subjected to several raids by the authorities the pink diamond necklace was never found to be in possession of our client.
“Our client states that the sensationalising of this issue is another scurrilous attempt to defame our client and her husband politically and to quote Margaret Thatcher when she said ‘If they attack you personally, it means they have not a single political argument left’,” the statement added.
Bloomberg reported that the Roger Ng trial revealed Schwartz's records of fugitive Jho Low, who is at the center of the 1MDB corruption scandal, approaching the jeweller in 2013 to create a pink diamond necklace with a heart-shaped gem at its centre for Rosmah, and later sealing the US$23 million deal.
Roger Ng is the only Malaysian undergoing a trial in the US in relation to the 1MDB corruption scandal. He is charged with conspiring to launder money and bribe government officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi through bond offerings totalling US$6.5 billion that Goldman handled.