Jasmine Loo met Jho Low in China in 2019 - 1MDB investigator

 

1MDB Trial | 1MDB money laundering investigating officer (IO) Foo Wei Min testified that recently arrested former lawyer Jasmine Loo had met fugitive businessperson Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) in 2019.

The 48th prosecution witness told the Kuala Lumpur High Court that Loo (above) had always been in contact with Low while the businessperson was on the run for the past five years.

During cross-examination by former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s lead defence counsel, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, Foo said this was what he got when he interrogated Loo following her arrest in July this year when she returned to Malaysia.

Shafee: Are you aware that Jasmine Loo met Jho Low not long ago in China before her arrest?

Foo: Yes.

Foo explained that she told him that she met Low as well as several former 1MDB officials in 2019, whose names he did not know.

Shafee: She is a critical witness as she can put the four nails in Najib’s coffin and bury him further or her testimony can be favourable to Najib on his knowledge, or lack of it, on the (1MDB) money?

Foo: Yes.

Najib is on trial over four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering linked to RM2.27 billion of funds from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund  1MDB.

It was previously reported that the 1MDB prosecution team may be calling Loo as a witness against Najib in the current criminal court trial.

‘Low brought Loo everywhere’

During open-court proceedings before trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah this afternoon, Foo explained that Loo was a personal assistant (PA) for Low.

“Jasmine Loo was a PA for Low in a sort of wherever he went, he would bring Loo together for meetings and so on. She will arrange meetings for Low,” the police officer said.

Food said Loo also denied during interrogation that she had conducted illegal transactions as she had limited access to legal documentation, which she shared with the authorities.

The investigator said that Loo’s name was on bank documents linked to Tanore Finance Corporation, which allegedly played a major role in the complex monetary trail that saw 1MDB funds embezzled and ending up in Najib’s bank account.

Foo was referring to Tanore’s bank account with Falcon Bank in Singapore, which purportedly was part of the monetary trail that saw over RM2 billion in funds (around US$681 million in foreign exchange then) flow from Tanore to Najib’s AmIslamic Bank account in Malaysia.

He also revealed that Loo has a separate account at Falcon Bank, where US$5 million was traced, and that she also has another bank account (which he was unsure whether it was at Falcon Bank or a different bank) where apparently US$500,000 was traced.

When Shafee asked whether the amount was provided by Low to Loo as part of her participation in the whole affair, Foo agreed.

Despite objections from deputy public prosecutor Ahmad Akram Gharib over Shafee’s line of cross-examination, Sequerah allowed Najib’s lawyer to continue due to the various information that Foo volunteered while being cross-examined.

The police officer, though, conceded that he did not interrogate Loo on her alleged role in Tanore as his scope of investigation was only related to the recovery of 1MDB assets.

He said that perhaps a separate investigation team who is probing Loo may know more about her purported role in Tanore.

Shafee: She stole money from 1MDB and purchased her assets?

Foo: No, I do not mean she stole, but somehow money from 1MDB was used to buy property for her.

Shafee: Interesting. So she does not seem guilty of anything, does it?

Foo: By her, as a proxy for someone.

However, the witness did not explain what he meant by Loo’s proxy.

The trial will resume on Dec 5 at 2.30pm, where the prosecution team is expected to re-examine Foo.

For the four abuse of power charges, the former Pekan MP is alleged to have committed the offences at AmIslamic Bank Bhd’s Jalan Raja Chulan branch in Bukit Ceylon, Kuala Lumpur, between Feb 24, 2011, and Dec 19, 2014.

On the 21 money laundering counts, the accused is purported to have committed the offences at the same bank between March 22, 2013, and Aug 30, 2013. - Mkini