Malaysian top cop has $320k seized by Australian Police
Wan Ahmad Najmuddin bin Mohd, now the head of Malaysia’s criminal investigations department, opened a Commonwealth Bank “Goal Saver” account in 2011, listing his address at Bankstown and then Glebe in Sydney.
One week after the decorated public official concluded an Australian trip in 2016, the account received a flurry of suspicious cash deposits.
Unknown depositors visited branches and ATMs around the country, from Biloela in country Queensland to Devonport in northern Tasmania to Lakemba in Sydney’s west and Melbourne’s CBD.
The account balance grew by nearly $290,000 in a month, mostly in structured deposits below $10,000, the threshold above which law enforcement agencies receive mandatory notifications.
Mr Najmuddin has not tried to wrest the money back from authorities, saying court action was too expensive, but has denied any wrongdoing.
The freezing and forfeiture applications to the NSW Supreme Court, based solely on the structured deposits, did not explore whether he was involved in the indictable offences.
“I’ve given my explanation,” he told Fairfax Media. “My department wrote a letter to the AFP.”
Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin, 59, has said he arranged for a close friend in Malaysia to transfer the money to pay for his daughter’s master’s degree.
But responding to questions about proceeds of crime forfeitures, the spokeswoman said the AFP considered whether account holders “should have had a reasonable suspicion that some criminality existed”.
While a full account of Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin’s case has not been detailed, more and more criminal groups are exploiting international transactions outside the traditional banking system.
By hijacking legitimate transfers, syndicates replace clean money with dirty to both pay for crimes and wash profits.
The AFP is grappling with legal uncertainty in about 10 such cases, with tens of millions of dollars at stake as appeals courts decide on access to criminal proceeds.
In one case, lawyers for the agency warned the NSW Supreme Court it would be allowing a “loophole” for a “known money laundering methodology” if it refused the forfeiture request.
Criminals 'walk free'
But a former AFP lawyer has criticised the force for going after the unwitting recipients of criminal proceeds, while the criminals themselves "walk free".
As director of the criminal investigation department, Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin holds the rank of commissioner, bears the highest state title, Dato’ Sri, and tackles everything from illegal gambling and murder to insults against the Prime Minister, Najib Razak.
At the time of the suspicious deposits into his account, he was head of police in Johor state, and a frequent traveller to Australia.
Since 2001, he has visited nine times, always on a tourist visa, often for less than a week and, sometimes, with lots of cash. Across three trips in 2011 and 2012 he declared $112,000 to Australian customs.
It was on one of the 2011 trips that he opened an account in his own name at the Commonwealth Bank’s Haymarket branch in Sydney's CBD.
And in December the next year, one day after he arrived in Australia, $30,000 landed in the account (from deposits at Merrylands, Ryde, Strathfield and Burwood) while $8000 was withdrawn at Haymarket.
The cash he brought into Australia and the bank account were for Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin’s son’s aviation studies, according to the assistant director of the Royal Malaysian Police integrity department, Allaudeen Abdul Majid.
A flurry of activity
For several years, the account lay dormant.
Then, six days after Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin’s final trip in September 2016, cash deposits from five different states began pouring in.
Analysing the constellation of transactions - 54 of which fell below the reporting threshold - the Commonwealth Bank and the financial crime tracker AUSTRAC became alarmed.
“There does not appear to be any apparent lawful reason for the form and manner of the deposits,” an AFP officer from the Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce wrote in an affidavit.
When the bank first told Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin it planned to close the account, a reply came from a hotmail email address asking for the balance to be sent as a cheque.
Mr Allaudeen Abdul Majid of the integrity unit said Malaysian police had fully investigated the matter, finding the funds were lawfully obtained from the sale of a house.
Investigators found the police chief had wanted to send money to his daughter, entrusting the transfer to his close friend, Seenisirajudeen Mohamad Basith, an Indian national who has since returned to India.
'The whole episode was an oversight'
“Unknown to Dato’ Sri Wan Ahmad Najmuddin Bin Mohd, the money was transferred without compliance to Australian laws,” the integrity officer wrote.
“The whole episode was an oversight. No malice was intended to break any laws including Australia’s.”
The AFP would not comment on the Malaysian investigation report sent last March, the week before it won a forfeiture order.
The matter does not appear to have strained relations between the two police forces, which work together to fight international crime.
Six months after the funds were seized, AFP liaison officers in Kuala Lumpur posed for photographs with Mr Wan Ahmad Najmuddin on his appointment to the role of criminal investigations director.
It is not known how his close Indian friend was said to have arranged for the hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach Australia.-SMH
