Archive for July 12th, 2017

Malaysia’s 1MDB Fund Spawns Worldwide Probes: QuickTake Q&A

By Shamim Adam and Laurence Arnold
Bloomberg
16 June 2017

Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund, 1MDB, was supposed to attract foreign investment. Instead, it has spurred criminal and regulatory investigations around the world that have cast an unflattering spotlight on financial deal-making, election spending and political patronage under Prime Minister Najib Razak. A Malaysian parliamentary committee identified at least $4.2 billion in irregular transactions.

1. What is 1MDB?

It’s a government investment company — full name, 1Malaysia Development Berhad — that took shape in 2009 under Najib, who went on to lead its advisory board. Its early initiatives included buying privately owned power plants and planning a new financial district in Kuala Lumpur. The fund proved better at borrowing — it accumulated $12 billion in debt — than at luring large-scale investment. Read the rest of this entry »

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Malaysia’s 1MDB a `Victim’ of Jho Low, Singapore Prosecutors Say

By Andrea Tan and Chanyaporn Chanjaroen
Bloomberg
12 July 2017

Prosecutors in Singapore said Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho is the central figure in probes linked to 1Malaysia Development Bhd., and that he used money traceable to the state fund for his own benefit.

Low received “huge” sums of money, the prosecutors said in court filings made public on Wednesday. About $1 billion that 1MDB was purported to invest in a joint venture with PetroSaudi International Ltd. was diverted to a bank account beneficially owned by Low, according to the filings.

“The main victim in this case is 1MDB,” prosecutor Nathaniel Khng said in a Singapore state court. “Jho Low has gone missing from the public eye.”

Singapore’s investigations into 1MDB-related activities has so far seen five people convicted, four of whom have been sentenced to jail. The city-state is the only country so far to have criminally charged bankers. Read the rest of this entry »

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1MDB probe: Former BSI banker Yeo Jiawei gets 54 months’ jail for money laundering, cheating

Grace Leong
Straits Times Singapore
12th July 2017

SINGAPORE – Former BSI Singapore wealth planner Yeo Jiawei was sentenced to 54 months in jail in a Singapore court on Wednesday (July 12) for money laundering and cheating in relation to a massive global probe involving billions of dollars allegedly misappropriated from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund.

Yeo, 34, plead guilty and was convicted on one charge each of money laundering and cheating, with eight other charges taken into consideration.

The sentence, which Yeo began serving immediately, will run concurrently with the remainder of an earlier 30-month jail sentence he was slapped with in December last year for witness tampering.

He is the third former BSI banker to be found guilty in the city’s 1MDB investigations. Read the rest of this entry »

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Singapore Banker Admits Money Laundering in 1MDB-Linked Case

By Andrea Tan and Chanyaporn Chanjaroen
Bloomberg
12 July 2017

Yeo Jiawei, a former banker serving the longest jail term in Singapore’s probes linked to 1Malaysia Development Bhd., admitted to charges including money laundering.

Yeo, who also pleaded guilty Wednesday to cheating his former employer, agreed to help with Singapore’s money-laundering investigation, which prosecutors described as the largest in the country’s history. He was sentenced to 54 months in jail by a Singapore state court. The former BSI SA wealth planner was handed a 30-month term in December on charges of trying to tamper with witnesses in the probe.

Principal District Judge Ong Hian Sun said on Wednesday that the courts must take an “uncompromising stance” to safeguard the integrity of Singapore’s financial system. Read the rest of this entry »

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The RM117 million 22-carat rare pink diamond necklace stolen from 1MDB funds by Jho Low and given to “wife of MO1” would be able to immediately sponsor over 11,000 haj pilgrims from Malaysia

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak said yesterday that 1MDB had contributed to the people in many ways which they are unaware of, like the Prime Minister’s special haj programme which had spent RM57 million since 2011 to finance 5,700 people to perform the haj in Mecca.

I did an immediate calculation and found that the RM117 million (US$27.3 million) 22-carat rare pink diamond necklace stolen from 1MDB funds by Jho Low and given to the “wife of MO1” would be able to immediately sponsor over 11,000 haj pilgrims from Malaysia.

May be this is what the “wife of MO1” should do with regard to the 22-carat rare pink diamond necklace to immediately finance over 11,000 haj pilgrims from Malaysia. Will the “wife of MO1” agree to this suggestion?

We are only talking about the 22-carat rare pink diamond necklace gifted to the “wife of MO1” from the stolen 1MDB funds, which is not the only item of jewellery involved in the 1MDB international money-laundering scandal which landed up with “wife of MO1”. Read the rest of this entry »

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If there is a secret ballot among the hundred-odd judges in the three tiers of judiciary, the overwhelming majority will uphold the constitution and support the position that it is unconstitutional to extend the tenures of Chief Justice and Court of Appeal President

Thanks to the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said for admitting clearly that the appointment of Chief Justice Tan Sri Md Raus Sharif and the Court of Appeal President Tan Sri Zulkefli Ahmad Makinudin as additional judges so that they can continue as the two top judges in the country were made on the advice on Tun Arifin Zakaria on March 30, his last day as Chief Justice before his retirement.

Article 122(1A) in the Federal Constitution has not been complied with in the appointment of Raus and Zulkefli as as “additional judges”, unless the Chief Justice in office at the time of the appointment had also advised the Yang di Pertuan Agong on the matter.

Raus is the Chief Justice at present. Did he advise the Yang di Pertuan Agong on the appointment of himself and Zulkefli as “additional judges” under Article 122(1A) of the Federal Constitution, which reads: Read the rest of this entry »

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