The High Court was told that Jho Low had referred to Najib Razak as “Optimus Prime” – the ultimate leader for Autobots, the main protagonists of the animated alien robot series Transformers.
This was revealed during the re-examination of AmBank relationship liaison manager Joanna Yu, the 54th prosecution witness in Najib’s SRC International trial today.
During Yu’s cross-examination, prosecution lawyer Harvinderjit Singh referred to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) chats between Yu and Low where the latter had used the term ‘OP’ to refer to an individual.
“Who is OP?” asked Harvinderjit.
Yu replied: “To my understanding OP was a term – Optimus Prime, I don’t know – to refer to the Prime Minister.”
Apart from the animation character, Low and Yu have referred to Najib using other terms, including PM (likely Prime Minister), Boss, and MNR (referring to initials of Muhammad Najib Razak).
Yu also told the High Court today that over RM606 million was deposited and spent by Najib from his three AmBank accounts.
Yu said this when questioned by lead prosecutor V Sithambaran about the RM606,510,434.66 reportedly used by Najib between 2013 and 2015.
The court previously heard that Najib’s three AmBank accounts were closed on March 9, 2015.
Today, Yu was also asked whether the account holder would have been aware of the large sums of money transacted into the three accounts.
“If you are the account holder and you got the bank statement, you would know,” she said.
When asked if she had known of allegations that any of the cheques were not issued by Najib, Yu said no.
She added that Najib had never enquired with the bank as to the source of the funds, including from Vista Equity and “Arab money” deposited into his accounts.
“If you (the account holder) wrote the cheques, you would know that there are sufficient funds,” she said.