Did the Cabinet this morning discuss the breaking news at about noon Malaysian time of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report that the US authorities are set to seize assets linked to 1MDB “in the largest asset seizure in US history” in the war against global corruption?
This seizure, under the US Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, is expected to exceed the previous record of US$850 million in assets which the US authorities sought to seize from three telecom firms in an unrelated case.
Citing sources, WSJ said the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative is expected to file civil lawsuits seeking to seize the assets as soon as Wednesday morning in the US.
It claimed the seizure will involve properties and other assets bought with “money allegedly misappropriated from the Malaysian fund.”
If the WSJ report is true and correct, this will be a “day of infamy” for Malaysia, a culmination of the host of global infamies which the country had suffered in the past year, from being named by the international website, foreignpolicy.com, as the host country for the world’s third “worst corruption scandal of 2015” at the end of last year, to being cited by Time Magazine in March this year as the second worst example of current global corruption and in May, rising to number two in the Economist index of crony capitalism, just behind Russia – all because of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin mega scandals.
What is the Cabinet position on this latest twist and turn of the protracted global development of the 1MDB scandal, which has long ceased to be financial scandal confined to the four walls of Malaysia, but probably the biggest global case of embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption?