AmBank’s former relationship manager Joanna Yu said it was fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho (also known as Jho Low) who conveyed the request to her sometime in 2011.
“I was shocked that the prime minister (Najib) wanted to open accounts with AmBank. I didn’t expect it,” she said under cross-examination by Najib’s lawyer, Shafee Abdullah.
“Do you not think a prime minister needs to have a bank account?” asked Shafee.
“They (usually) go to CIMB Bank or Maybank. AmBank is not known to be the preferred bank for political figures,” Yu replied.
The court was previously told that Najib opened two accounts – a savings account ending with 481, and a current account ending with 694 – on Jan 13, 2011. Both accounts were closed on Aug 26, 2013.
Three other accounts – ending with 880, 906 and 898 – were later opened on July 31, 2013, and closed on March 9, 2015.
Yu also told the court she did not know Najib only held one other bank account – with RHB Bank – where he received his monthly salary and allowances.
“For obvious reasons, he doesn’t have a CIMB Bank account,” said Shafee, pointing out that Najib’s brother Nazir Razak was the CIMB Bank chairman at the time.
The witness also said Jho Low had told her in 2011 that “Najib would not come to the bank to sign the forms to open his accounts”, and that Yu could not be the one to attend to him.
“Jho Low said Cheah should be the one (to do so),” Yu said, referring to former AmBank managing director Cheah Tek Kuang.
Cheah had testified that he met Najib at the latter’s Langgak Duta home in early 2011 and handed Najib the application forms to sign.
Yu also told the court that Najib’s accounts were assigned codenames because they came under “a lot of international scrutiny”.
Asked by Shafee to confirm whether the codenames were assigned by the bank internally during a meeting between Cheah and other senior management staff, Yu replied that she did not attend any such meeting.
Shafee also quizzed Yu on why she communicated with Jho Low on Najib’s accounts, even though Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil was Najib’s mandate holder.
“Jho Low has no business in dealing with (Najib’s) accounts, but you were taking instructions from him,” the lawyer suggested.
Yu replied that Jho Low’s instructions were for Najib’s accounts to be kept private and confidential.
She said Jho Low had also berated her sometime in 2013 over the bank’s action in sending Najib’s monthly bank statement to the Prime Minister’s Office in Putrajaya.
Najib is standing trial on 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering of alleged 1MDB funds amounting to RM2.28 billion in his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.
The hearing continues tomorrow before justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah.