Archive for December, 2016
End the Corporate Shell Games
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak on Saturday, 3 December 2016
Leslie Caldwell
Bloomberg
NOV 30, 2016
Leaders from around the globe will converge Thursday in Panama City to discuss the next steps in the international fight against corruption.
That meeting will highlight for the world — and for our newly elected president and Congress — that the U.S. is in danger of falling behind our global partners in preventing the flow of illicit money through our financial markets. We have failed to enact legislation that would require the disclosure of the people behind legal entities — legislation that would assist law enforcement in stopping those who corrupt the U.S. and international financial systems.
It is no secret that the U.S. financial system is an attractive playground: We have the deepest, most liquid and most stable markets, and criminals seek to use the tools of our financial and banking systems to serve their illicit purposes. For an illegal enterprise to succeed, criminals must be able to hide, move and get access to their proceeds without detection. And when they are successful, their actions serve as a dual threat: Their criminal conduct itself can threaten the safety and security of all citizens, and their use of the financial and banking systems to hide their gains — or to fund additional criminal conduct — undermines the integrity of those systems.
One prominent example is a case the Justice Department filed seeking to forfeit and recover more than $1.2 billion in assets that were involved in, or traceable to, an international conspiracy to launder funds stolen from the people of Malaysia. The government of Malaysia wholly owns 1Malaysia Development Bhd., a strategic investment and development fund. As alleged in the complaint, over a six-year period, 1MDB associates took more than $3.5 billion from the development fund to purchase luxury condominiums, a $35 million jet, expensive works of art and a motion picture company that used the money to finance, among other things, the production of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Read the rest of this entry »
UMNO General Assembly: Worst Display of Political Extremism and Bodek-ism
Posted by Kit in Najib Razak, UMNO on Saturday, 3 December 2016
Koon Yew Yin
December 3, 2016
Every year when the UMNO General Assembly takes place, we can be sure that there will be speakers looking for cheap publicity who will use the occasion to make stupid and ridiculous charges against the so-called enemies of the race – meaning enemies of UMNO.
We have seen again and again this same spectacle of the leading political party in the country show to Malaysians and the rest of the world how deep the cancer of racial and religious hatred is within the party.
This year’s GA was no exception or as a Malay friend said to me in describing the proceedings:
“SOS” – “Same Old S__t”.
But in fact there were two important differences from earlier years.
The first is that the prize for extremism and making baseless political allegations and instigating racial and religious fear must go to UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak himself. It did not from any ordinary ambitious wannabe jaguh kampung.
There is a saying both in China and medieval Europe that “the fish rots from the head down”. How true this is from this year’s UMNO GA.
Personally I never thought I would live to see the day when a top political leader in Barisan would stoop so low to warn his members that “If UMNO falls, we have all sinned”, as one newspaper headlined his speech to the assembly. Read the rest of this entry »
Abu Dhabi SWF gets entangled in 1MDB scandal
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak on Saturday, 3 December 2016
By Bradley Hope and Nicolas Parasie
The Wall Street Journal
02 December 2016
When Barclays needed to raise capital in 2008, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, known as IPIC, invested more than $5 billion in the UK bank. Through a subsidiary, IPIC acquired holdings in German auto maker Daimler and Swiss commodities powerhouse Glencore. It helped finance the ultraluxury New York skyscraper One57, nicknamed the Billionaire Building.
Driving IPIC was Khadem Al Qubaisi, a nightclub aficionado with slicked-back hair, a taste for the good life and close ties to princes who rule the emirate.
In June, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince abruptly ordered an end to the 32-year-old sovereign wealth fund’s existence as a standalone firm, saying it would be merged with another state entity.
Al Qubaisi? He now sits in an Abu Dhabi jail, fired and under investigation for money laundering, corruption and other possible offenses, according to people familiar with his situation.
Among the deals Al Qubaisi engineered at IPIC was one with 1Malaysia Development Bhd, or 1MDB, the embattled Malaysian state fund from which billions of dollars are missing, at least $800 million of which some investigators have said flowed into personal accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Read the rest of this entry »
Singapore slaps penalties on StanChart, Coutts in 1MDB-related probe
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak on Saturday, 3 December 2016
by Anshuman Daga and Marius Zaharia | SINGAPORE
Reuters
Dec 2, 2016
Singapore’s central bank imposed penalties on the local units of U.K.-based Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and private bank Coutts for money laundering breaches related to Malaysia’s scandal-tainted 1MDB fund and said it was nearing the end of its probes.
The penalties – of S$5.2 million ($3.65 million) and S$2.4 million, respectively – were the latest punitive measures taken by the central bank in its crackdown on money laundering, having ordered the closure earlier this year of the local units of Swiss banks BSI and Falcon.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is also in the process of issuing a prohibition order against Tim Leissner, Goldman Sachs’ former Southeast Asia chairman.
“These actions send a strong signal that we will not tolerate the abuse of Singapore’s financial system for illicit purposes,” said Ravi Menon, the managing director of MAS.
“The supervisory investigations into the intricate web of international fund flows have been a learning experience for financial institutions as well as for MAS,” he said.
The inspection at Standard Chartered “revealed significant lapses in the bank’s customer due diligence measures and controls for ongoing monitoring,” MAS said. bit.ly/2h0ZMJQ
While the 28 breaches were “serious”, the central bank did not find “wilful misconduct.” Read the rest of this entry »
Singapore to Ban Former Goldman Banker in Connection With 1MDB Scandal
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak on Saturday, 3 December 2016
By TOM WRIGHT and JAKE MAXWELL WATTS
Wall Street Journal
Dec. 2, 2016
Executive allegedly wrote unauthorized reference letter for Malaysian U.S. authorities say is at the center of fraud at state investment fund
Singapore’s probe into a multibillion-dollar financial scandal touched Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for the first time on Friday as its central bank said it was planning to ban the Wall Street firm’s former top executive in Southeast Asia from operating in the city-state’s financial system for 10 years.
The executive, Tim Leissner, was Goldman’s point man on deals involving Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the central bank, announced the proposed ban on Mr. Leissner after it found he had written a recommendation letter for a Malaysian financier, Jho Low, in June 2015. In it, Mr. Leissner claimed that Goldman had performed due diligence on Mr. Low.
“These statements were untrue and were made by Mr. Leissner without Goldman Sachs’ knowledge or consent,” the MAS statement said.
Goldman Sachs said in a statement Friday that it had discovered the matter in January 2016 and reported it to Singapore authorities. Mr. Leissner left Goldman in February after Goldman put him on leave. Read the rest of this entry »
Challenge to Najib to list out DAP’s Three Big Lies after I have exposed Najib’s three “Big Lies” in his UMNO presidential speech yesterday
Posted by Kit in Corruption, DAP, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak, UMNO on Friday, 2 December 2016
At the joint opening of the annual assemblies of UMNO’s Wanita, Youth and Puteri wings on Tuesday night, the Acting UMNO Deputy President, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi sought to draw parallels between the Opposition’s propaganda efforts with the leaders of Nazi Germany.
He recounted how Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had a grip on German citizens through carefully crafted propaganda strategies.
Zahid said: “It was based on lies… Hitler once wrote: ‘If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one and if you tell it often enough, people will begin to believe it’.
“Through creative radio and film propaganda, they succeeded in controlling the minds of more than 80 million people.”
Anyone doing a Wikipedia search will find the following explanation:
“A big lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’ Hitler asserted the technique was used by Jews to unfairly blame Germany’s loss in World War I on German Army officer Erich Ludendorff.”
Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels perfected Hitler’s “Big Lie” theory: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” to the extent that he created the Fuhrer myth and the image of Hitler as the Messiah-redeemer.
Are we seeing a repetition of the “Big Lie” theory in modern-day Malaysia, with the UMNO leadership warning about the “Big Lie” theory but with the UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak becoming the biggest exponent of the “Big Lie” propaganda? Read the rest of this entry »
Will IGP Khalid say that he does not rule out arrest of Najib for receiving foreign funding, like Maria Chin?
Posted by Kit in Bersih, Corruption, Financial Scandals, Najib Razak on Thursday, 1 December 2016
The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar has said that he has not ruled out the possibility of Bersih chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah being re-arrested.
The thought that immediately struck me was whether Khalid would ever say that he does not rule out the possibility of arresting Datuk Seri Najib Razak for receiving foreign funding, as being alleged against Maria Chin.
The answer is of course a clear-cut and categorical “No”
Can Khalid answer why he would never make such a statement about Najib when he had no problem making it against Maria Chin?
Especially when Najib had himself claimed that the RM2.6 billion deposited into his personal banking accounts were from foreign sources?
Read the rest of this entry »