KUALA LUMPUR: A lawyer told the High Court in Najib Razak’s 1MDB trial that he had never met fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, during the period he represented the sovereign fund.
Lim Chin Hian, a partner in Wong & Partners said this when cross-examined by Najib’s lawyer Shafee Abdullah about a meeting.
“I’m 100% sure that I have not met Jho Low,” said Lim.
Shafee said that there were witnesses who saw Lim, who is also known as Mark, his partner Brian Chia and Jho Low in the meeting.
However, Shafee did not mention when or where this meeting took place.
Lim denied attending any such meeting.
Asked whether Lim was aware that Chia had written a legal opinion to justify the transfer of US$700 million from 1MDB’s funds to Good Star Limited, which was a firm with no business ties with 1MDB, Lim said that it was later revealed that Good Star was owned by Jho Low.
1MDB had in 2009 entered into a joint venture with PSI. Under the contract terms, 1MDB needed to fork out US$1 billion for the venture.
The entire US$1 billion was supposed to be deposited into a 1MDB-PSI joint venture bank account but only US$300 million was moved into the account.
Lim also told the court that he was reading Chia’s legal opinion for the first time in court and that he only heard about the movement of the balance US$700 million through the news.
Shafee: Do you agree that the legal opinion (by Chia) was formulated to benefit Jho Low and his cahoots from the management team?
Lim: I can’t comment.
The hearing continues before Justice Collin Lawrence Sequerah.
Najib is standing trial on 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering of alleged 1MDB funds of RM2.28 billion deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014. - FMT
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