Former BSI Bank wealth planner Yeo Jiawei was receiving information about Malaysia's top officials directly from businessman Jho Low, said Amicorp relationship manager Jose Renato Carvalho Pinto yesterday.

Speaking at Yeo's trial in a Singapore court, Pinto said Yeo was privy to such information because he was with the team that structured the 1MDB and SRC International investments, which were by then under heavy scrutiny.

Yeo had told him to keep calm a few days before former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin was sacked from the cabinet, said Pinto, as reported by The Edge Markets.

"Remain cool now. My understanding is it's war time within Malaysia, and other countries are waiting to see how it turns out before they move," Yeo purportedly wrote to Pinto on July 22 last year.

"Meanwhile, we shouldn't conclude anything until the final judgement," Yeo also said, according to evidence presented in court yesterday.

When probed further by deputy public prosecutor Jiang Ke Yue, Pinto, who is the key prosecution witness in the case, said that Yeo received such information directly from Low.

He is certain of this, Pinto said, because at the same time, Yeo was asking him for documents on behalf of Low.

Yeo's lawyer Philip Fong asked Pinto if his views of the situation in Malaysia then were from what he read from the news and social media, as this could be what caused Pinto to be worried and anxious.

Pinto disagreed, saying that he recalled he was communicating with Yeo, who was at that time with Low in Taiwan searching for real estate investment opportunities.

Yeo is on trial for four charges of tampering with witnesses, while he will be facing another seven charges of money laundering in April.

After he left BSI Bank, Yeo went to work for Low, who played a crucial role in troubled state fund 1MDB.

Another two witnesses were also heard in court yesterday, the first being another Amicorp relationship manager, Aloysius Mun Enci, who used to report to Pinto.

However, unlike Pinto, Mun had limited contact with Yeo, with instructions for making wire transfers and loans relayed to him through Pinto.

"The instructions were not complex but it is the structures that are complex," Mun told the court.

Covering tracks

Yeo also purportedly went to great lengths to cover his tracks when working for Low, such as when he gave strict instructions to Pinto and Mun to blind carbon copy him when they communicated with the clients, such as Low, his family and Eric Tan Kim Loong.

Mun said he forgot to do so on one occasion and his boss Pinto "got an earful" from Yeo.

Mun also recalled an occasion when Yeo countermanded an instruction to pay money out of an account belonging to Low Taek Szen, who is the younger brother of Jho Low.

He initially did not know that Low had a brother, and that Yeo told him: "There are two Lows, there is the important Low, there is the not so important Low".

Another occasion, Mun said, was a business trip to Hong Kong this year with Pinto.

Pinto informed Mun that Yeo had told him to "throw (Pinto's) laptop into the sea" while aboard a ferry.

Pinto's laptop would have been a source of information and documents marking transactions made on Yeo's instructions to Amicorp.

Probe on Yeo since last October

The other witness heard yesterday was Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) personnel Oh Yong Yang, who said investigations on Yeo started October last year.

This was part of a complex investigation involving hundreds of thousands of transactions, at least ten individuals and sums of money in the "billions of dollars", said Oh.

Oh had interviewed Yeo numerous times between then and April this year, where Yeo had remained calm throughout.

However, his composure changed in April this year when he was interviewed by Oh again.

By then, Yeo's former boss at BSI, Kevin Swampillai and Yeo's friend, Samuel Goh, whom he had brought in to help act as an intermediary for the fund transfers, had already told the CAD about their meeting at the Swiss Club on March 27.

Oh confronted Yeo with this information and the ex-BSI banker's demeanour changed, he said.

"His voice softened, and he looked away," Oh said, adding that Yeo then replied, "We agreed not to say about that meeting".

This evidence gave authorities a reason to hold Yeo in remand since April.

Earlier the court had heard that Yeo told Swampillai and Goh when the trio met up that they needed to "hold hands".

Yeo had allegedly concocted a story that the fund flows from Bridge Global Managers was investment money belonging to Goh, that was supposed to go into real estate in Indonesia, as well as various other stocks and shares.

That money ultimately ended up in entities owned by Yeo and Swampillai.

In separate testimonies, both Swampillai and Goh felt that this "investment story" was not credible, deciding to tell the truth to the CAD instead: that the funds were "secret profits" made by Yeo and Swampillai.

This, the court heard, was in direct contravention against conditions of Yeo's bail.

Yeo was arrested on March 16 and released on March 18.

Among the terms of his bail was that he was not allowed to communicate with other individuals related to the investigation.

The meeting with Swampillai and Goh at the Swiss Club was held on March 27.