Najib settled Italy card expenditure with SRC money, court told

KUALA LUMPUR — Ex-PM Najib Razak settled a RM3.9 million card bill with money from the SRC International Sdn Bhd in 2014 and 2015.

The High Court in Najib’s corruption and criminal breach of trust trial heard on Monday from Yeoh Eng Leong, an AmBank vice-president in charge of credit card authorisation and fraud management.

But during cross examination by Najib’s lawyer Harvinderjit Singh, the witness agreed that based on the credit card statement dated April 2015, the last payment was made by a person named Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil (former CEO of SRC).

During re-examination by Budiman Lutfi, Yeoh said all the payments came from Najib’s Ambank current account, ending with the number 880 and that Najib did not take any action regarding the credit card statements.

The prosecution’s case is that the money received from SRC International went to Najib’s account before it was used to settle the credit card bills.

Najib’s defence rests on his lawyer’s belief he was the victim of a massive machination led by people who stole money from 1MDB and diverted them to the SRC International.

Yeoh says Najib had spent RM449,586.95 using his Visa Platinum credit card, adding that Najib had also used RM2,833,147.21 on his Master Platinum card in expenditures made on Aug 8, 2014 in De Grisogono, Italy.

He says Najib spent another RM593,347.57 in Honolulu and Bangkok in 2015 and the Visa credit card was used to settle payment of RM466,330.11 worth of expenses at Chanel, an exclusive fashion store in Honolulu while other expenses went for hotel payment in the Thai capital.

The ex-Premier denies all wrong doing and is facing six charges of money laundering and criminal breach of trust in the transfer of RM42 million to his account from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB, abuse of power as prime minister by giving government guarantees on SRC International’s RM4 billion loan from Retirement Fund Inc.