Welcoming Ex Ag Thomas Revelation On Charging Zeti

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I welcome former attorney-general Tommy Thomas’ revelation that he did not rule out charging former Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz and/or her family members, as well as certain unnamed 1MDB directors.
He said the reasons for doing so included complicity in the 1MDB affair and receiving funds from Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) related to 1MDB.
Thomas said he didn’t get the chance as the Pakatan Harapan 1.0 government had fallen.
This was not the first time he commented about Zeti.
In a November 2021 podcast, Thomas said, “It is public knowledge and has been for a long time, the role of Zeti and her husband in facilitating Jho Low in the 1MDB (affairs).”
However, until today, Zeti and/or her family have yet to be charged for any crime.
Former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz (left) and her husband Tawfiq AymanAll the misappropriated 1MDB funds were lost after they were sent to offshore bank accounts of shell companies.
This raises the question: would the misappropriation of 1MDB funds have happened if BNM did not approve these suspicious transfers? How did BNM fail to detect that these were accounts belonging to fake companies located in questionable offshore jurisdictions?
In fact, BNM approved an “overnight” foreign exchange transfer of US$1 billion from 1MDB to PetroSaudi International (PSI). This was after Zeti’s husband was allegedly bribed to “make it happen”, according to testimony by former banker Tim Leissner in a US court.
Leissner, the star witness in the trial of Roger Ng, former Goldman Sachs head of investment banking in Malaysia, described the overnight transfer of US$1 billion from 1MDB to PetroSaudi as “unprecedented”.
Ex-Goldman Sachs banker Roger NgThat is why many troubling questions over her role remain unanswered given her role as BNM chief when funds were misappropriated from 1MDB.
Many of these allegations were made by an article from The Edge dated March 8, 2021 with the title “How much did Zeti know about husband’s bank account in Singapore?” which has never been disputed or rebuked by Zeti and family.
Money transfers
In fact, The Edge alleges that over RM700 million of 1MDB-linked funds made their way to former bank accounts linked to Zeti’s family.
Among these allegations and questions are:
1. Zeti’s husband Tawfiq Ayman and Low were believed to be partners in a company that Low set up in July 2007, called Abu Dhabi Kuwait Malaysia Investment Corp (ADKMIC). That date precedes the setting up of 1MDB and its predecessor the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA).
Between June 2011 to September 2013, a total of US$153 million (RM677 million) would be transferred to ADKMIC’s bank account in RBS Coutts Singapore from Good Star Ltd’s bank account (set up with the stolen 1MDB funds that were supposed to be paid to PetroSaudi) in RBS Coutts, Switzerland.
2. The first transfer of money from Low to Zeti’s husband was in June 18, 2008 which was US$7.42 million from Butamba Investments Ltd’s bank account at RBS Coutts Singapore. Low is the beneficial owner of Butamba Investments, which was involved in a May 2008 RM3 billion land deal with Khazanah Nasional Iskandar Malaysia.
Again, this date is before the incorporation of TIA and 1MDB.
3. Subsequent transfers of US$0.732 million (May 21, 2009), US$0.567 million (June 1, 2009), US$6.25 million (Dec 17, 2009) and US$1.25 million (Dec 18, 2009) were made by Low to Zeti’s husband.
Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) said the amounts came from profits that Low and his associates made from selling RM5 billion 1MDB/Terengganu Investment Authority bonds arranged by Ambank in 2009.
The May 21, 2009 and June 1, 2009 dates are particularly interesting as the former date is just one week before the first 1MDB sukuk of RM5 billion was issued and the latter date is just one day after Low had received the profits from flipping the sukuk.
4. When MACC issued their statement in November 2021 that Malaysia had received back US$16.22 million from Singapore, it said the money was recovered from the bank account of Singapore company Cutting Edge Industries Ltd owned by Tawfiq and Samuel Goh Sze-Wei.
This is the very same Goh who admitted in a Singapore Court that he was paid US$4 million to set up off-shore companies used to siphon 1MDB funds.
Thus we have the strange situation of Tawfiq’s business partner setting up fake off-shore companies to receive funds from 1MDB transfers approved by BNM when Tawfiq’s wife was the central bank’s governor.
Any transaction of funds overseas requires the approval of the central bank. Who was the central bank chief back then? Why did Low make Tawfiq his partner? And why did Tawfiq choose Goh as his partner?
5. The Singapore CAD informed BNM of the questionable 1MDB-linked money in Zeti’s husband’s bank accounts in 2015 and 2016 but apparently no action was taken then. At that time, Zeti was still the BNM governor and only retired in April 2016. Apparently, BNM did not forward the information from the Singapore CAD to other investigation agencies such as the MACC and Royal Malaysia Police at that time.
Denial and positions in new govt
The icing on the cake is that despite the November 2021 MACC statement stating that 1MDB-linked money was recovered from Zeti’s husband’s bank accounts in Singapore and also Thomas’ revelation in his podcast that Zeti’s husband admitted the money in his account was from Low, on July 27, 2023, Zeti still claimed in the 1MDB-Tanore case proceedings in the High Court that neither she nor her family had received any 1MDB-linked money.

As the former governor of our central bank and with her key role in the 1MDB scandal, Zeti cannot be considered Tier 2 or Tier 3 as suggested by Thomas. She is definitely Tier 1 and should have been charged when Tommy was still the attorney-general.
Instead, Zeti was made a member of the then prime minister’s Council of Eminent Persons and then rewarded with the lucrative position of chairperson of Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) that manages more than RM320 billion of the people’s savings as well as chairperson of the PNB-owned and public-listed Sime Darby Property.
Therefore questions should be asked why Zeti and/or her family have never been charged and Zeti was made a prosecution witness instead and why she was rewarded with such plum positions at the time when Thomas already knew she and her husband were facilitating Low the 1MDB affairs.

If BNM, when she was governor, had done their job to stop suspicious money transfers overseas to suspicious off-shore bank accounts owned by shell companies, no 1MDB money would have gone missing.
If she had done her job as instructed by then prime-minister Najib Abdul Razak to monitor his bank accounts for suspicious transactions, no 1MDB or SRC-linked funds would have entered his bank accounts. - Mkini
ERIC SEE-TO is the former BN strategic deputy director during the Najib administration. He started writing using his real identity after deciding to shed his alter ego Lim Sian See following a debate with Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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