Najib Tun Razak
30 September 2020
The High Court has struck out a suit by Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak against AmBank and its former relationship manager, Joanna Yu Ging Ping for allegedly mishandling his bank accounts by disclosing transactions to fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho or Jho Low. The court ordered Najib to pay costs of RM30,000 to both AmBank entities and RM25,000 costs to Yu.
The judge ruled that the suit filed by Najib was scandalous, vexatious, frivolous and abuse of court process. The judge noted that the suit by Najib was for a collateral purpose to bolster his defence in the SRC case against him and therefore is an abuse of court process. The judge further said that Najib had initiated the legal suit after Yu had testified in the SRC trial when the prosecution raised that he never complained or sued the defendants (Yu and AmBank) over the alleged manipulation of his bank accounts by a third party. The judge also said Najib’s contention that he had only discovered about the fact of the manipulation of his accounts by Yu, during the trial, was unsustainable.
Najib’s lawyer said he will file an appeal against the verdict.
Najib claimed that the bank had facilitated unauthorised third party to make money transfers between accounts numbers ending with 880, 898 and 906 and that the bank failed to notify him of the unauthorised transactions.
He alleged that Low with the help of other unauthorised third parties, had made 20 transactions in the accounts totaling RM12 million through several local and foreign remittances of funds and that the accounts had been ‘red-flagged’ by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).
On July 28, Kuala Lumpur High Court convicted and sentenced Najib to 12 years’ imprisonment and fined him RM210 million over the SRC International criminal case.
thestar.com.my and dailyexpress.com.my reported.
