No dealings with Nazlan

KUALA LUMPUR: Former CEO of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) Arul Kanda Kandasamy has told the High Court that he has no personal knowledge of Justice Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali’s involvement in the RM4.1bil loan from Maybank to 1MDB.

Arul Kanda, who is a co-accused in the 1MDB audit tampering trial, was testifying as a prosecution witness when he was asked about the judge in a re-examination by lead prosecutor Datuk Seri Gopal Sri Ram here yesterday.

Sri Ram: It was suggested to you that Justice Mohd Nazlan would have had a hand in this (loan approval). Did you have any personal knowledge of this?

Arul Kanda: No.

Justice Mohd Nazlan, who is now a Court of Appeal judge, was the High Court judge who convicted and sentenced former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in the RM42mil SRC International Sdn Bhd case.

He was the general counsel and company secretary of Maybank Investment Bank Bhd between 2006 and 2015 before he was made a judge.

Both Najib and Arul Kanda are co-accused in the audit tampering trial.

The issue of Justice Mohd Nazlan arose from the questions by Najib’s counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah during cross-examination.

Earlier, to a question by Muhammad Shafee, Arul Kanda said he only knew that the bank’s general counsel at that time was Justice Mohd Nazlan.

However, Arul Kanda said he was never in contact or had met Justice Mohd Nazlan in person.

Arul Kanda said during his tenure in 1MDB, he only dealt with another Maybank lawyer, Dalvin Kaur, who is known as “Molly”, and one Michael Oh-Lau from the commercial loan department.

The court also heard from Arul Kanda how certain quarters in 1MDB had suppressed the company’s documents from the National Audit Department (NAD) during an audit in 2015.

Muhammad Shafee was questioning Arul Kanda about former auditor-general Tan Sri Ambrin Buang’s frustration with the lack of cooperation by 1MDB throughout the audit process.

Arul Kanda said there were requests from the NAD for documents and information for the audit but because 1MDB had been raided by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), some of the documents were taken.

“Unfortunately, not all those documents were available. Partly because 1MDB was raided in July 2015 by a task force comprising the MACC and police, so they had taken a lot of those files, documents, hard drives and computer servers,” Arul Kanda said.

He said this was the reason 1MDB did not have ready access to the requested information.

“Subsequently, I now know some people in 1MDB were actively suppressing information or sharing information as what has come out now,” he added.

Muhammad Shafee then asked who was responsible for the suppression of information from the auditors, and Arul Kanda said the former chief financial officer Azmi Tahir was the person in charge of dealing with the NAD.

Najib, 69, is accused of abusing his position to order amendments to the 1MDB final audit report to avoid any action being taken against him while Arul Kanda is accused of abetting Najib in making the amendments.

The hearing continues before Justice Mohamed Zaini Mazlan on Sept 2.