Yesterday, I emailed the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to ask him to fix an appointment this week for him to show me and DAP National Publicity Secretary and MP for PJ Utara, Tony Pua, where in the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Report on 1MDB he is absolved of any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal which had transformed Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy.
Najib’s claim that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the PAC report over 1MBD is false and baseless and is the most recent and worst example of the “fake news” concocted and peddled by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet Ministers in the country.
I hereby extend my challenge to all Cabinet Ministers and Barisan Nasional leaders to show where in the PAC Report on 1MDB is Najib absolved of any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal, specifically described by the United States Attorney-General Jeff Sessions as “kleptocracy at its worst”?
Jeff Sessions had told a global conference on asset recovery as recent as December last year that 1MDB-linked assets accounted for nearly half of some US$3.5 billion in total proceeds seized or restrained by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), tied to money-laundering offences.
Sessions said “allegedly corrupt officials” in 1MDB had reportedly spent US$200 million on real estate in Southern California and New York, US$130 million on artwork, invested US$100 million in an American music label and US$265 million on a yacht.
“In total, 1MDB officials allegedly laundered more than US$4.5 billion in funds through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries ranging from Switzerland and Singapore to Luxembourg and the United States,” Sessions said.
But the Malaysian authorities, including the Inspector-General of Police and the Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, claim complete ignorance and show apathy about the US$1.7 billion in assets stolen from 1MDB, and which are subjects of several forfeiture lawsuits by the US DoJ, with the US Attorney-General giving the commitment to provide “justice to the victims”.
It is a sad and shameful day for Malaysia that we have to depend on foreign countries to provide “justice” to the 30 million Malaysians, who are the real victims of the 1MDB scandal – when the Malaysian government should be in the forefront to provide justice for the victims of the 1MDB scandal.
The Prime Minister and the various law enforcement agencies are keeping up the world pretence that the 1MDB scandal does not exist, although it is the subject of money-laundering investigations in some ten countries, including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States, with former bankers jailed and finance companies heavily fined or closed down because of international money-laundering activities.
When will such a charade of a national government hiding its head in the sand end?
If Najib is convinced that the PAC Report on 1MDB had absolved him of any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal, I challenge him to ask Parliament to adopt the PAC Report on 1MDB which was tabled in the Dewan Rakyat in April 2016.
I have moved a motion in the current meeting of Parliament to reject the PAC Report on 1MDB as unsatisfactory and not comprehensive enough in view of the mountain of new evidence about the 1MDB corruption and kleptocracy which have surfaced in the last two years.
Will Najib agree to suspend Standing Orders so as to give priority to my motion on the PAC report on the 1MDB so MPs could redeem themselves and debate the 1MDB scandal this week, and where the Prime Minister can fully prove and justify his statement that the PAC report had cleared him of any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal?
(Media Conference Statement at the Dewan Sri Penang in Penang at 11.30am on Monday, 26th March 2018)
