Could Nik Faisal have forged your signature? Maybe, admits Suboh

NAJIB TRIAL | Could then SRC International Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil have forged former director Suboh Md Yassin's signature? Maybe, testified Suboh in the Kuala Lumpur High Court today.

The key witness in the RM42 million SRC International trial against former premier Najib Abdul Razak gave this stunning oral evidence during cross-examination this afternoon.

Suboh's (above) testimony came about after he was confronted by lead defence counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah with lengthy side-by-side comparisons of his signatures on at least 11 documents dated between 2014 and 2015.  

The 11 documents included hard copies of banking instructions to AmIslamic Bank to transfer monies between SRC International, Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd and Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd, and scanned copies of banking instructions that had been sent to the bank prior to the hard copies.

Suboh then agreed that the scanned documents had the exact same signatures, which suggested that they were scanned copies of a signature he had once put down.

The witness was then asked to compare his real signature to the hard copies of the documents, which he agreed to have stark differences.

Suboh then agreed to another suggestion by Shafee that it could be that Nik Faisal (above) had forged his (Suboh) signatures, instead of him having signed them himself.

The 42nd prosecution witness' oral evidence was also in contradiction to his earlier testimony in court.

Suboh had initially testified, during examination-in-chief by DPP Ishak Mohd Yusoff, that he had signed the banking instructions himself.

The 68-year-old retiree said he had put down his signature on the papers in various occasions between 2014 and 2015 when SRC International then CEO, Nik Faisal, passed him the documents for his part of the approval.

Shafee (above): I put it to you that Nik Faisal forged your signature, and gave it to the bank?

Suboh: Maybe.

Shafee: The person you trusted most, Nik Faisal, saw you were very trusting, and (took advantage)?

Suboh: Maybe.

Shafee: You could not have consented to the transfer of funds when you were not involved?

Suboh: Yes.

Shafee: If you were confronted by the MACC then (over the alleged discrepancy of uniformly identical-looking signatures on bank documents), you would have given the same answer just like in court today?

Suboh: Yes.

The outcome of this afternoon’s cross-examination differed greatly from the morning session’s examination-in-chief, where Suboh told Ishak that he penned his signature on every document brought to him by Nik Faisal, before Nik Faisal took it away to purportedly hand it to Ambank for it to process the transfer requests. - Mkini