Yak Won't Take The Rap
6 Feb 2016
The world learnt about the sort of salary that your friendly
Singapore bank manager can hope to earn, when Mr Yak Yew Chee deposited
his court papers yesterday.
No less than SNG$27 million in salary and, more importantly, bonuses in just four short years roared the news
headlines.
Wow!
$1 million salary and $10.4 million bonus in 2014 – for what?
Another revelation that came out from the highly informative dossier,
dumped by Mr Yak before the courts was that, despite him being on what
was repeatedly described as “unpaid leave” since April 2015, the bank
had nevertheless being sending him monthly salary cheques of $83,000.
The cheques, instead of normal bank transfers, were a handy
concession by the bank, because he could cash them abroad, where his
accounts were not frozen like they are in Singapore.
Yak provided the court with copies of the cheques to show just how
generous his BSI employers were (above). The documents also showed that
to begin with Yak had signed an agreement to take this so-called
“unpaid leave” in May and to cooperate with the bank.
Agreement that was to turn sour
However, friction had already broken out between his legal advisors
and the bank, with Yak making plain in April that his understanding that
the measures being taken were to prepare the bank in case of an
allegation being made against it and to protect him were not being
upheld.
Yak’s legal team claimed he was being let down by his superiors who were anticipating action against BSI
Yak was apparently being kept on the payroll in order to ensure his
continued cooperation with the bank. However, the email trail makes
clear he was suspicious of his employers
motives in case they pinned the
blame on him.
Was this the real reason he took his case public?
Jho Low links to 1MDB confirmed by his bank manager
Yak’s now public court papers have certainly thrown a great deal more
light onto how the various Singapore private banks were handling Jho
Low and his related accounts and in the process have scotched for ever
the on-going lie that the businessman had nothing to do with 1MDB after
2009, as has been doggedly maintained by CEO Arul Kanda and Low himself.
Indeed, the proposed statutory declaration, which was being
negotiated between Yak and his BSI employers in order to present the
bank’s position to the investigating authorities, included the following
damning points:
“I have not at any time entered into any arrangement to
give of cause to be given any Gratification …relating to the accounts
held with the BSI group by Brazen Sky Ltd, Low Tak Jho, 1Malaysia
Development Berhad, Aabar Investments PJSC and/or their respective
affiliates….
We would clarify that the additional parties named are closely linked in the matrix of business relationships involving 1MDB/Brazen and Low, and
we trust your client would agree that Gratification could conceivably
have involved them and would be willing to negate any such suspicion.”
In other words BSI Bank were confirming that the affairs of 1MDB,
Brazen Sky and Jho Low were inextricably intertwined… along with the
bogus Aabar subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS Limited, which Yak also
mentions in his statement (below).
What the bank negotiated with Yak to say in his statement
Yet, over the bridge in Malaysia, the Prime Minister and his
diminishing coterie of die hard supporters continues to ban this website
and bully other online commentators using ‘anti-terrorism’ laws, on the
grounds that we are promoting “falsehoods”.
To the contrary, according to 1MDB’s own bank, what we have said on
this matter (as on several others) is now confirmed to be true. This
may be why the PM’s tame AG has turned today to
threatening life imprisonment for leaking ‘state secrets’ instead.
Yak’s “fantastic business success”
Yak made his tell-all application to the court, purportedly to
unfreeze his accounts, in order to pay bills in Singapore. However, the
Singapore Commercial Affairs Department countered with an aggressive
rebuttal.
Responding to his application, the CAD pointed out that Yak had
“squirrelled” over $5 million out into foreign banks before they had
managed to freeze his accounts and that they had only some $7.91 million
of his admitted $27 million in earnings under lock and key.
That left a “staggering S$9 million unaccounted for” raged the
authority, which therefore argued that Yak could quite easily pay his
bills by repatriating some of the millions he had parked abroad.
CAD confirms that BSI’s claim about unpaid leave was untrue
In the event, the authority reached an accommodation with Yak at the
last minute on Friday, agreeing that the banker could bring money back
from abroad to pay his bills, without measures being taken to freeze it.
It left the judge wondering why all this court time had been wasted…
and the world’s media at liberty to examine all Yak’s dossier of insider
documents laid before the court in the process.
It seems that Yak’s real reason, therefore, may have been to counter
what he plainly suspected were manoeuvres by the bank to make him the
scapegoat for what he insists were decisions that went right up to the
top of BSI. Certainly, the dossier proves that by January this
suspended relationship manager for Jho Low and 1MDB was at loggerheads
with his bosses.
At issue were repeated demands by his line manager Hanspeter Brunner,
CEO Asia, that Yak agree to attend the bank for questioning about a
charge that he withheld information from his superiors about a ‘notice
of security relating to one of the bank’s clients’.
HansPeter Brunner and his legal team parried for months with Yak, trying to get him to cooperate in informal talks at the bank
Other papers make it perfectly plain that this ‘notice of security’
referred to none other than the massive loan made by Deutsche Bank of
nearly US$1 billion to 1MDB, to finance its debt repayments in late
2014.
That loan was secured on the apparent US$1.03 billion alleged to be
in 1MDB’s subsidiary account named Brazen Sky at BSI in Singapore, which
Yak also managed.
After Sarawak Report revealed in May that the Singapore authorities
had found that Brazen Sky actually had no cash in that account, Deutsche
Bank pulled the loan.
In his correspondence with BSI, Yak himself claimed that he had done
nothing without the approval of his bosses and that he had not
referenced the said notice, because the client had told him not to
proceed.
I
would have sought management approval if the client (1MDB) had
confirmed they wished the arrangement to proceed …..Yak explains why he
did not tell his bosses about the ‘security check’ which Deutsche Bank
requested on the Brazen Sky account for its billion dollar loan to 1MDB
In all the correspondence, in fact, Yak repeatedly claimed that his
superiors at the bank were fully aware of all his transactions with
these mega clients of the bank.
Hanspeter Brunner CEO Asia, BSI
Much of the increasingly hostile dialogue surrounded Yak’s plain
reluctance to be called in for oral questioning about these matters by
the bank and to sign their ‘notes’ on the proceedings without proper
legal protection, full recordings and written questions in advance of
any interrogation.
Saying he “had experience” of the bank’s record in such matters, Yak
made clear he was fearful that his bosses would use anything he said in
the informal and unrecorded meetings to pin all the blame on him.
In response, his superiors, whom we now know were still paying him
and further offering a potential bonus payment if he cooperated with
their wishes, expressed a growing anger and frustration over Yak’s
refusal to cooperate, except on his own terms of written questions in
advance and a full recording of the discussion being made.
Tough words from BSI’s Hanspeter Brunner accusing Yak of “insubordination” while on his ‘unpaid leave’
But, Yak was adamant that he did not trust his employers to make a
fair record of the interview. If BSI had continued to pay him and
discuss his bonus during this “unpaid leave” it wasn’t producing the
desired cooperation.
Thank you for your immense contribution
Yak’s court deposition carefully contains ample evidence to back his
point that far from being a rogue banker, he had been BSI’s star
employee right till the moment when the regulators began investigating
Jho Low’s accounts at the bank.
Indeed, the documents show, he was praised from the very top for his
“fantastic success” in bringing in business by none other than Dr
Alfredo Gysi, the Swiss boss of the BSI group, who sent him a personal
letter of congratulation at the end of 2011.
Incidentally, it was shortly after Yak joined in September 2009 that
Jho Low had opened his ADKMIC account and several other personal and
business accounts at BSI and started transferring half a billion dollars
from his RBS Coutts Zurich Good Star account to BSI.
Was this the reason for the plaudits?
CAD records recording the Jho Low company accounts brought to BSI in 2011, along with an $11 million personal account
“Hanspeter told me about the fantastic business success
you achieved in the last few weeks…. He also told me this was done in
close teamwork.. thank you for your immense contribution not only to the
growth of our new Asia business but to BSI Group as well” gushed CEO, Dr Gysi.
Personal accolade from the ultimate boss of BSI in Switzerland Christmas 2011
Yak’s bonus incentives
It should be remembered that Yak transferred to BSI from Coutts
Singapore, from where he had earlier managed Jho Low’s accounts and it
can be surmised that one of the reasons he was engaged on a handsome
starter salary of $500,000 a year was for the very reason that he was
bringing a very wealthy set of clients.
You shall be a Senior Relationship Manager – starter salary $500,000
One can also only conclude that the extraordinarily rapid salary
increases that Yak subsequently achieved at BSI and his enormous bonus
payments were likewise owing to the immense amount of business his
clients, by now not only Low, but Low’s related 1MDB, Aabar and SRC
accounts were bringing in too.
His declaration, devised in collaboration with his bosses at the
bank, that he did not receive any ‘Gratification’ from these clients as
an incentive for handling these accounts would therefore seem to be
entirely plausible. After all, Yak was receiving plenty of
gratification from his own employers for managing these transactions, so
what further incentive did he need?
Don’t make me a scapegoat
Sarawak Report therefore suspects that the reason why Yak Yew Chee
has chosen to place all this material in the courts and before the
public eye is to attempt to protect himself from being singled out by
BSI Bank and the prosecutors as a lone ‘rogue banker’ in this affair.
His misdeeds, if there were misdeeds, in handling suspect
transactions by politically connected individuals linked to public funds
were known about and ultimately approved by the hierarchies of both BSI
and earlier Coutts bank, according to Yak
Don’t make me the scapegoat – senior management knew everything says Yak!
Certainly, records show that neither Coutts nor BSI initiated
proceedings to investigate the multi-million dollar suspicious
transactions managed by Yak until the regulators moved.
They rewarded
Yak handsomely instead.
