KUALA LUMPUR, March 2 ― Former Singapore banker Kevin Michael Swampillai candidly told the High Court today that he received secret commissions totalling “almost US$6 million” from his previous employer BSI Bank's carrying out of transactions for 1Malaysia Development Berhad and 1MDB's related companies.
Swampillai was testifying as the 44th prosecution witness in former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's trial over the entry of 1MDB's RM2.28 billion into his private bank accounts. “That was swiftly declined and we thought that was unfair and we rather stupidly decided to seek these benefits ourselves and we approached the fund managers of fiduciary funds to whom billions of dollars were being channelled to, and we negotiated commissions to be paid to us. That's how we received our benefits from the fund entities that were involved in implementing these transactions,” he said.