Former prime minister Najib Razak has filed a lawsuit against Ambank and one of its former employees over alleged negligence in disclosing his bank account details to an unauthorised individual.
In his suit filed on Monday, Najib claimed that the bank and Joanna Yu, who was the relationship manager for his bank accounts, had breached their duties under banking laws such as the Financial Services Act and the Banking and Financial Institution Act to protect his privacy.
Besides Yu, he named AmIslamic Bank and AmBank Group in his lawsuit.
Najib alleged that Yu had communicated the details of four of his five bank accounts to fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, who he said was not the authorised person to manage his accounts.
He claimed that Yu was acting on Low’s advice such as using alternative names for all his accounts ending with the numbers 694, 880, 898 and 906, seeking advice on approving cheques under these four accounts, as well as taking active steps to hide the bank accounts’ statements from him.
Najib also said that during the course of his SRC International trial, it was revealed that Yu and Low had communicated on BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, chats on the affairs of his accounts.
Yu had testified in the trial as a prosecution witness.
“Due to the bank’s and Yu’s negligence in protecting the accounts’ privacy, the unauthorised individual had manipulated the plaintiff’s accounts without his knowledge.
“This had caused political attacks against the account holder and subsequently the account holder was charged under the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act, the Penal Code and the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act, or Amla, in the SRC case,” Najib said, referring to his ongoing trial.
Najib is seeking aggravated and special damages from Yu and the bank.
The case will be mentioned on Dec 17 before the High Court registrar.