KUALA LUMPUR (July 1): The High Court on Tuesday fixed July 31 for the hearing of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and 10 other companies’ bid for leave to admit Singaporean Shabnam Naraindas Daswani’s affidavit in support of its Mareva injunction application against Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.
On that date also, judge Wan Muhammad Amin Wan Yahya is also scheduled to hear 1MDB’s Mareva injunction (asset-freezing order) application against Rosmah.
This was decided following case management on Tuesday, July 1, before Muhammad Amin.
The judge ordered Rosmah to file an affidavit in reply by July 10, while the plaintiffs are to file their affidavits in reply to Rosmah’s by July 21.
Both 1MDB and the other plaintiffs, as well as Rosmah, are to file their written submissions on July 28.
1MDB and the other plaintiffs were represented by Datuk Lim Chee Wee and Chiang Jia Yin, while Hilwa Bustam of Messrs Shahrizat Rashid & Lee represented Rosmah.
Shabnam’s affidavit
On June 20, The Edge reported that Shabnam, originally the second defendant in the US$346 million suit, had filed an affidavit in support of the plaintiffs’ Mareva injunction application. She was dropped as the second defendant in April.
The Singaporean businesswoman claimed that she became friends with Rosmah in 2003 and followed the wife of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on some of her overseas trips.
“I first joined Datin (Rosmah) on one of her overseas trips in 2004 or 2005. Datin was going to Hong Kong and asked me to join her as I said I was familiar with the place. I went to Hong Kong with Datin and accompanied her on her shopping trips to night markets and shopping malls. I remember that pre-2009, many prominent people often accompanied her entourage and her during Datin’s trips to Hong Kong,” Shabnam said in her affidavit.
The Singaporean said her job was to look for Rosmah’s clothing, shoes, and fabric and jewellery.
“I became involved in this because of my passion for designing and embroidery work, and to further my clothing business. I had the impression that I was listening to a voice of authority since she was the wife of a minister (and later the then-prime minister of Malaysia) and had also met the prime minister of my country, Singapore. This was the nature of our relationship,” Shabnam explained of her special ties with Rosmah.
Shabnam said that with regard to the valuable jewellery and handbags for Rosmah, the payments were made by fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) and his associate Eric Tan Kim Loong, as she initially thought they were “family bankers of Datin and her husband”.
Shabnam claims she did not know the source of Rosmah’s funds used for the payments and she was not involved and had not benefited in the banking transactions.