Archive for April 12th, 2016

Mystery deepens over $3.5 billion Malaysia’s 1MDB sent to BVI entity

ABU DHABI/KUALA LUMPUR | BY STANLEY CARVALHO AND PRAVEEN MENON
Reuters
April 11, 2016

The mystery over who controlled a British Virgin Islands-registered company that received $3.5 billion from Malaysia’s scandal-tainted state fund 1MDB deepened on Monday when a company in the Middle East with an almost identical name said the BVI firm did not belong to it.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC), and its subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS said in a joint statement the BVI firm with an almost identical name, Aabar Investments PJS Ltd, “was not an entity within either corporate group.”

They had neither received any payments from the BVI company, which was wound up last June, nor assumed any liabilities on its behalf, the statement said.

A Malaysian parliamentary committee investigating 1MDB said in a report released on Thursday that the Malaysian sovereign fund sent a total of $3.5 billion to “Aabar BVI”.

What happened to the money after it went to the British Virgin Islands could not be determined, the report said. Read the rest of this entry »

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Abu Dhabi Fund Says It Never Received Payments From Malaysia’s 1MDB

By TOM WRIGHT and BRADLEY HOPE
Wall Street Journal
April 11, 2016

An Abu Dhabi state fund said publicly for the first time on Monday that it hadn’t received billions of dollars in payments that a controversial Malaysian fund set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak claims it sent.

The International Petroleum Investment Co., or IPIC, an Abu Dhabi government fund, said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange that it was aware of media reports that 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, had sent money to a company called “Aabar Investments PJS Ltd.”

IPIC said in the statement that it has a subsidiary called Aabar Investments PJS, but that the similarly named company “was not an entity within either corporate group.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Why the media scam of the century – creating the myth that the PAC Report on 1MDB marks the closure of Malaysia’s first global scandal in nation’s history – collapsed after five short days

It was to be the media scam of the century – to create among Malaysians the myth that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Report on the 1MDB marks the closure of Malaysia’s first global scandal in the nation’s history.

But it collapsed within five short days – the coup de grace delivered in London when the Abu Dhabi-state owned International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) sent a statement to the London Stock Exchange that neither itself nor its unit Aabar Investments PJS have any links to a British Virgin Islands-incorporated firm named in a report in the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal – Aabar Investments PJS Limited (Aabar BVI). Read the rest of this entry »

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1MDB Hearing Spells More Trouble for Najib

by Shamim Adam
Bloomberg
April 12, 2016

Transcripts from a Malaysian parliamentary hearing into a troubled state fund highlight Prime Minister Najib Razak’s involvement in decisions on questionable transactions that bypassed the board of directors and finance ministry.

The documents from the committee’s probe of 1Malaysia Development Bhd. are a blow to Najib’s efforts to halt months of political attacks and to draw a line under allegations of irregularities surrounding the fund.

Released by the Public Accounts Committee, the transcripts showed 1MDB and government officials when quizzed made multiple references to Article 117 of 1MDB’s constitution which states all matters need authorization from the premier. That’s even as the probe blamed financial and reporting lapses on a former chief executive.
The scandal has heightened political tensions and sparked worldwide graft probes, although Najib has retained the support of the bulk of senior officials in the ruling coalition.

The bipartisan committee in its separate 106-page report identified at least $4.2 billion of unauthorized or unverified transactions and recommended former CEO Shahrol Halmi and other managers be investigated. Shahrol, who said last week he hadn’t done anything wrong, told lawmakers in November that Najib had signed documents related to a joint venture with PetroSaudi International Ltd. that has been under a cloud, according to the transcripts. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Trap of Our Mindset

M. Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com

Related to the concept of a free mind is that of mindset, defined as one’s attitude to or philosophy of life. With all the established neural networks and stored memories in the brain, it forms a working hypothesis of what reality is. How the brain perceives new information is influenced by its existing working hypothesis, its pre-set narrative of reality.

If the brain were to receive new information that would not conform to or diametrically contradict the brain’s preexisting narrative, then it (the brain) would use various ingenuous interpretations to make the new data conform to that pre-set pattern.

A dramatic demonstration of this is the rare clinical condition called Cabgras delusion. Here the sufferer, through injury or stroke, has lost the capacity to recognize hitherto familiar faces including those of close family members. The patient would readily admit that the person facing him looks, speaks and even smells like his mother for example, but would adamantly refuse to admit that is who she is. Instead he is convinced that she is nothing more than a look-alike imposter, intent on swindling him for some nefarious ends, as with claiming insurance benefits. Imagine the mother’s heartbreak! Read the rest of this entry »

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