Former private banker Yeo Jiawei, who is currently facing a court trial in Singapore for money laundering, allegedly had a close working relationship with controversial Malaysian businessman Jho Low.
According to Channel News Asia, the 33-year-old reportedly left his job at BSI Bank in 2014 to work for Low, Yeo’s former supervisor Kevin Swampillai told a Singaporean court on Tuesday.
The relationship was so close, said Swampillai, that Yeo would accompany Low on his private jet for work trips, including a trip to Las Vegas last year to catch a boxing match.
In fact, Yeo even sent Swampillai a picture showing Low working in his private jet, which was displayed in court:
Swampillai, BSI’s former head of wealth management services, told the court that he encouraged Yeo to take up Low’s offer to work for him, saying that working with the businessman is a better opportunity as Low was “constantly in the news, had quasi-celebrity status and big investment deals around the world”.
This close working relationship, the prosecutors cited, is one of the reasons why Yeo attempted to pervert the course of justice by allegedly urging witnesses to lie to the police and destroy evidence pertaining to the case.
According to Swampillai, who testified for the prosecution on Tuesday, Yeo reportedly amassed a fortune of almost S$26mil (RM78.4mil) from various sources, including alleged illicit schemes to defraud BSI while he was an employee.
Yeo, who was a BSI wealth planner between December 2009 and July 2014, is accused of facilitating illicit transactions involving troubled Malaysian wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and is currently on trial over four charges for perverting the course of justice.
The news portal reported that seven other counts concerning cheating, forgery and money laundering are set for trial next year.
Accused of siphoning billions of dollars from 1MDB, Jho Low is one of the central figures in the ongoing worldwide fraud and money laundering investigations involving the scandal-hit wealth fund.
Back in July, he was named in a civil suit filed by the US Department of Justice, which is seeking to recover more than US$1 billion (RM4billion) in assets that were allegedly stolen from 1MDB.
