FORMER SRC International director Suboh Md Yassin admitted that it was possible former CEO Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil told him to flee the country because the latter was involved in fraud.
During cross-examination today, Suboh agreed with lead defence counsel Mohd Shafee Abdullah’s suggestion that Nik Faisal did not want to get implicated in the investigations after news of the 1MDB scandal broke in mid-2015.
Shafee: I am putting it to you that Nik Faisal told you to run away because you were capable of telling MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) that these were not your signatures.
Nik Faisal wanted to disappear. He wanted you to disappear, too, so that the documents remain (with the MACC) without you saying they were not your signatures.
Suboh: That’s possible.
Shafee was referring to about a dozen real-time electronic transfer of funds and securities (Rentas) letters of instruction in 2014 to 2015 to AmIslamic Bank, which he agreed could have been forged.
Earlier, when asked whether he fled the country because he harboured the feeling that he may have done something wrong, Suboh replied, “No comment”.
Suboh told the court he received a phone call from Nik Faisal urging him to flee to Bangkok some time in 2015.
Shafee: You didn’t find out from Nik Faisal, why you needed to go away?
Suboh: No.
Shafee: But did you yourself, harbour any suspicion why you should go?
Suboh: I don’t know.
Shafee: What do you mean you don’t know? You must have a reason why you needed to go away. Why do you need to follow anybody’s direction?
Suboh: Because he didn’t tell me what is the reason… I am confused now.
Shafee: Let me un-confuse you. You were told to go away, yet you didn’t find out why you needed to go away. Why didn’t you determine for yourself why you needed to go away? Satisfy yourself? You didn’t do anything wrong. Why did you find it necessary to go away? Did he suggest to you that all of you were under investigation, so he said to you, “You need go to away because I need to go away”.
Suboh: No.
Shafee: I am putting it to you that because Nik Faisal was misleading you all the time, he misled you into thinking that you have done something wrong and to bring down the temperature you better go somewhere and he will go somewhere, too.
Suboh replied that Nik Faisal “did not suggest that” and that he was never told the reason why he needed to leave the country.
In his witness statement read out in court last month, Suboh said he fled because he feared for his life, pointing to the reach former prime minister Najib Razak had.
“I was fearful about what was happening and of Najib, who was in power as prime minister then. I did not know what would happen to me and my family,” he testified last month.
Suboh said he also received a phone call from an unidentified person at the MACC, who told him to leave the country.
He repeated the testimony last month that he stayed in Bangkok for about a month with his wife and that he received return tickets to Abu Dhabi from a Thai man. It was in Abu Dhabi that he was interviewed by MACC officers.
Najib stands accused of criminal breach of trust, money-laundering and power abuse in relation to RM4 billion in loans issued to SRC International in 2011 and 2012, from which he is said to have received RM42 million in his personal accounts in 2014 and 2015.
Najib, 66, faces three counts of criminal breach of trust, three counts of money-laundering and one count of abuse of power.
– https://www.themalaysianinsight.com
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