What cheek and unrepentant immorality and insolence that former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak could insist that I admit that he had received RM2.6 billion donation from a Saudi Prince, when the best answer to his pathetic effort at documentary exoneration on Monday was made by Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) award-winning journalists, Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, whose exposes on the 1MDB scandal in their book “Billion Dollar Whale” will hit the Malaysian bookstores next week.
Tom Wright and Bradley Hope took Najib to task for his blog on Monday regarding how he received donations from the Saudi royal family.
Wright and Hope said Najib was not offering anything new with his disclosure of documents pertaining to donations from the Saudi royal family received in 2011.
Wright, via his Twitter account, said investigators around the world have said the bulk of the US$1 billion Najib received came from 1MDB.
Wright said:
“Najib Razak on Facebook says he received millions from Saudi Arabia in 2011. We have always reported that.
“It has nothing to do with US$681 million in 2013 that came from 1MDB, not to mention tens of millions more from the fund. Our book will detail all this.”
Wright disputed Najib’s claim that he needed time to gather the documents and said:
“We’ve had them for years, and there’s nothing new in them. And they don’t explain why he received US$681 million in 1MDB cash.”
His tweet went on to refer Najib to graphics published on September 1, 2016 in the WSJ, which described in detail how Najib allegedly received more than US$1 billion in his personal bank account .
Hope meanwhile tweeted to say that the documents that Najib included were partly misleading and said:
“The documents you’ve included are partly misleading (i.e. the wire transfers, which shield the true origin of the funds) and based partly on alleged fraud (the letter purporting to be from the Saudi prince, which was created to mislead regulators and banks.”
Najib seems to have difficulty in understanding simple English, taking my statement as vindication that I have now accepted that he had issued “some proof of the money donated from Saudi Arabia to my personal account”.
Najib cannot be more wrong, as Najib has not produced any proof that the RM2.6 billion in his personal bnak account came from Saudi Arabia.
In fact, I had said that Najib had achieved what the previous five Malaysian Prime Ministers as well as Prime Ministers in other countries had never done – loss of his credibility to near zero level!
It is shocking that Najib could read into such a statement my acceptance of his claim that he had issued “some proof of the money donated from Saudi Arabia to my personal account”.
Let me advise Najib to wake up from such delusion or hallucination.
Najib should respond to the questions I had posed – why he failed to sue the Wall Street Journal which published the report in July 2015 that the RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account belonged to 1MDB.
Furthermore that it was not too late for Najib to sue Wall Street Journal as civil defamation suits have a six year statutory limitation. Will Najib now sue Wall Street Journal?
It is fortunate that the change of government in the 14th General Election on 9th May 2018 has finally given Malaysians the chance to be freed from the albatross of a global kleptodcracy.
Can we imagine what would have happened to the 1MDB corruption and money-laundering scandal if Barisan Nasional had won the 14th General Election on May 9, 2018 witn Datuk Seri Najib Razak continuing as Prime Minister – with or without the two-thirds parliamentary majority which Najib was confident of regaining up to the very last minute of the last general election campaign?
The Najib-controlled Parliament would continue to have Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mualia as Speaker, MPs will continue to forbidden from asking questions or debate the 1MDB scandal, while I will not be the only MP to be treated as a “parliamentary ghost” in the 13th Parliament, where the Speaker and Deputy Speakers have eyes that see not, ears that hear not and mouth that rain prohibition on all things 1MDB.
The Parliamentary Account Commuittee will not only continue to close its eyes and ears to the mounting evidence of 1MDB kleptocracy, whether the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) litigation to forfeit US$1.7 billion 1MDB-linked assets or the books on 1MDB whether by Sarawak Report founder Clare Rewcastle Brown’s “The Sarawak Report – the Insde Story of the 1MDB Expose” or Wall Street Journal’s award-winnning journalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope’s “Billion Dollar Whale”.
The 1MDB-linked assets, whether the billion-ringgit luxury superyacht Equanimity, the RM120 million Bombardier jet or the glittering stones like the RM120 million pink diamond necklace, would be exhibited publicly, blatantly and brazenly, while 1MDB mastermind Jho Low would not have to live the life of a international fugitive from justice!
But May 9, 2018 changed the world of 1MDB – and the 1MDB “chickens are coming home to roost” – all the way back to Bamboo River Resort!
Instead of continuing to build superstructures to fortify himself behind the walls of delusion and hallucination, it will do Najib good to have some shots of reality – like veteran journalist R. Nadeswaran’s latest commentary on the 1MDB scandal, “Lies, damned lies and fairy tales”.
(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018)