Court: Zeti maintains family was not on the take

Monday 09 Sep 2024

This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 31, 2023 - August 6, 2023

AMID a long, ongoing probe linking former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz’s husband Datuk Dr Tawfiq Ayman to 1Malaysia Development Bhd monies, Zeti has steadfastly denied that her family had received “a single cent” from the troubled state-owned strategic development company.

On the stand in the 1MDB-Tanore trial last week, Zeti was composed and brief in her reply to deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akrab Gharib's query on the issue.

Akram: Throughout all these episodes, the transactions involving 1MDB, did you or any of your family members receive any benefits out of it?

Zeti: No one in my family has ever received or taken 1MDB's monies, not a single cent.

The exchange was brief as Akram's question came towards the end of the day's proceedings as one of a series of additional questions following the 75-year-old's prepared witness statement that she had read out in court.

Lawyers representing former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will undoubtedly have questions for Zeti when the trial resumes on Aug 14.

In November 2021, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) had confirmed that some US$15.4 million worth of 1MDB monies was recovered from Cutting Edge Industries Ltd, a company in Singapore controlled by Tawfiq and his partner, Samuel Goh.

In March last year, MACC chief Tan Sri Azam Baki confirmed that at the end of 2018, the Attorney-General’s Chambers had coordinated investigations between the anti-graft body and the police into Tawfiq's case.

Azam has also said that the criminal side of the investigation was being handled by the police. Based on media reports, as at September last year, Bukit Aman had sent a mutual legal assistance request to Singapore authorities in connection with the case.

Tawfiq's name surfaced again when former Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner dropped a bombshell while testifying in ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng's trial in New York early last year. Leissner alleged that Zeti's husband was bribed in return for Bank Negara’s approval for an overnight transfer of US$1 billion from 1MDB for a PetroSaudi-1MDB joint-venture project where US$700 million was diverted to Good Star Ltd, a company controlled by businessman Low Taek Jho, who is now a fugitive.

Tawfiq has categorically denied Leissner's testimony, saying he has never received any bribes from anyone and that he neither knew Leissner nor Ng nor had he communicated with them.

It is worth noting that the subject of the authorities’ investigation had also come up in previous court proceedings when lead defence counsel Tan Sri Shafee Abdullah tried to produce fresh evidence regarding this in Najib’s SRC International appeal.

The bid was dismissed by the apex court earlier in March this year, with Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat saying that the allegations were not related to the SRC case.

Long-awaited insights into 1MDB debacle

By Timothy Achariam

The testimony of Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz in one of the biggest financial scandals in the world has been a long time coming. She finally took the stand last week as the 46th witness for the prosecution, almost four years after the 1MDB-Tanore trial began on Aug 28, 2019.

Having helmed Bank Negara Malaysia from 2000 to 2016 — which includes the period during 1Malaysia Development Bhd’s formation and its controversial transactions — Zeti’s testimony was keenly anticipated, given that she was expected to provide insights on what had transpired between the state-owned firm, its stakeholders — including former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who then also held the position of finance minister and chair of the board of advisers — and the central bank during those critical years.

During her stint as central bank governor, she spearheaded a special task force with the then attorney-general Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail in 2015 to investigate and draw up charges against the perpetrators of 1MDB.

However, the task force came to a premature end as Najib thwarted investigations by firing Abdul Gani and replacing him with Tan Sri Apandi Ali, who effectively disbanded the task force and absolved the alleged perpetrators with his declaration of “No Further Action”, even though the central bank and other regulatory authorities presented him with “damning evidence” of wrongdoing.

With her lawyers present in court, Zeti read from her 17-page written testimony, which defended the central bank’s role in the saga and made it clear that a great deal of the blame for the illicit transfers by 1MDB was due to AmBank’s non-adherence to financial regulations, such as its failure to conduct due diligence of client accounts and transactions and its failure to alert Bank Negara of these illegal actions, for which the bank subsequently paid a hefty penalty.

Her testimony also revealed Najib’s knowledge of the mounting tens of billions of debt that 1MDB was very quickly incurring, which Bank Negara had cautioned him a number of times would put Malaysia’s sovereign ratings at risk. But he had persistently ignored the warnings.

In 2018, Najib revealed in an interview that Zeti had known of the RM2.6 billion in his personal bank accounts which were inflows from 1MDB money — a contention that Zeti categorically denied, and last week repeated that Bank Negara has no knowledge of individual accounts under banking rules.

It was last year when the late Datuk Sri Gopal Sri Ram, acting as the lead prosecutor in the case, had told the court that the prosecution would be calling upon Zeti to testify.

Sri Ram announced this after Najib’s lead defence lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah implied to a witness that Zeti and fugitive financier Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) were close acquaintances.

Zeti will continue with her testimony when the trial resumes on Aug 14.

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