US Jury Shown Invoice Of Rosmah's RM97M Pink Diamond Which Najib Claims She Never Received
Prestigious New York jeweller Lorraine Schwartz's records show that she personally delivered the necklace to Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor on a yacht off the coast of Monaco.
By Yap Wan Xiang — 25 Mar 2022, 11:24 AM
A US court was recently shown the invoice of a USD23 million pink diamond (about RM97 million today) that Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor allegedly bought using money stolen from 1MDB
According to Bloomberg, prestigious New York jeweller Lorraine Schwartz revealed details of the mysterious 22-carat pink diamond during the trial against former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York on Wednesday, 23 March.
Schwartz — who has designed for celebrities like Beyonce, Adele, and Blake Lively — showed hard proof of the gemstone bought using money siphoned from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund.
The jury was shown an invoice of the purchase, but they did not get to see the multi-million dollar jewellery itself — nor a photo of it — that is said to be big enough to be used as a paperweight.
The court heard that fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, or better known as Jho Low, contacted Schwartz in June 2013, asking the esteemed jeweller to create a pink diamond necklace with a heart-shaped gem at its centre for Rosmah, the wife of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
The jeweller's records show that Rosmah asked for an 18-carat diamond, but Schwartz said she only had a 22-carat pink diamond.
A USD23 million (about RM97 million) deal was subsequently struck for the larger stone.
Schwartz later personally delivered the pink diamond to Rosmah while she was staying aboard a yacht off the coast of Monaco, a sovereign city-state in West Europe
Malaysiakini reported that Low was present on the yacht when the diamond was presented to Rosmah.
Schwartz's records also show that Rosmah bought an additional USD1.3 million (RM5.49 million) worth of jewellery in 2014.
Prosecutors in the case showed jurors how billions of dollars diverted from three USD6.5 billion (about RM27.4 billion) 1MDB bond transactions by Low were used to buy luxury items.
The jury was shown a photo of the plastic case for the DVD of The Wolf of Wall Street and a screenshot from the credits thanking Low for his support.
Prosecutors also claimed that Low, through an entity with money stolen from 1MDB, bought five artworks from Christie's — a British auction house — for USD58.3 million (about RM246 million), including USD51.8 million (about RM219 million) spent on a Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting titled Dustheads.
Bloomberg reported that more invoices were shown to the jurors during the proceeding.
In 2018, Najib claimed that the pink diamond was a gift from Sheikh Mansour Zayed, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Rosmah also, had in the past, repeatedly denied being the buyer of the 22-carat diamond.
The former 'first lady' alleged that she was being slandered by critics and the rumours were fabricated as a means of voting her husband out of office.
"If people come to apologise to me, I will forgive them. But what is more important is to apologise to the people," Rosmah told reporters at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex in April 2019.
Additionally, Najib had also denied receiving the pink diamond.
"I do not know exactly the source of funding for these things. All I know is when I asked my wife, she said that there was one instance it was supposed to be a gift for her. But she never received it," he told Reuters in June 2018.
"And until today we do not know... she says the item is not in her possession."
