According to media reports, Seah pleaded guilty to three charges in a Singapore court on Friday for aiding the forging of documents and failing to report suspicious transactions.
She is the second person to be convicted in the wide-ranging 1MDB probe by global investigators who believe that as much as $1bn has been channelled from the state investment fund into the personal bank accounts of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.
Seah’s former colleague and supervisor, Yak Yew Chee, who was a senior vice president at BSI Singapore responsible for the bank’s relationship with 1MDB, was jailed for 18 weeks and fined S$24,000 in November.
Jho Low accounts
The charges against Seah and Yak relate to transactions by and for Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho. A client of Yak’s, Jho Low, as he is also known, was identified as a person of interest by 1MDB investigators.
According to Singapore newspaper the Straits Times, $153m was transferred from a Coutts Zurich account of Good Star, a firm controlled by Low, to the BSI Singapore account of Abu Dhabi-Kuwait-Malaysia Investment Corp, which Jho Low could access.
Three days later, the money was moved to a BSI account held by Jho Low’s father, Low Hock Peng.
From Low Hock Peng’s account, $110m was transferred to a Swiss account of Selune, a firm beneficially owned by Jho Low.
When the transactions were questioned by BSI Compliance, Jho Low responded via email that he had decided to give his father the money as a matter of cultural respect but his father had decided to accept only a token sum and return the rest of the money to his son.
Yak was convicted of forging letters of reference that vetted Jho Low as a client, with Seah charged for her role in facilitating the forgery and failing to report the transactions.
Seah and Yak, along with six former colleagues, were referred by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Mas) for investigation in May when the regulator ordered BSI Bank in Singapore be shut down.
