Australian newspaper, The Australian, today published a report headlined “Law threat to harpoon Billion Dollar Whale” on efforts by Jho Low through his lawyers to stop the sale of the 1MDB book, “Billion Dollar Whale” by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope.
It reported that Low’s local lawyers, Mark O’Brien Legal have written to Australian booksellers threatening to sue for defamation unless they agree not to sell the book and to take a synopsis of the book down from their websites.
The Australian quoted bookseller Jon Page, co-owner of Pages and Pages bookshop in Mosman on Sydney’s north shore that he had received two letters from Low’s lawyers but he said he would continue to sell the book after assurances from the book’s publishers.
Earlier, it has been reported that Loh’s lawyers had sent threatening letters to bookshops around the world in an attempt to block distribution of a new book on the 1MDB scandal.
The Guardian reported no UK publisher agreed to publish Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World due to British libel laws.
It was also reported that the book’s US publisher Hachette is troubled by the alleged threats against booksellers.
The decision to threaten a book’s distributors and booksellers rather than the publisher or authors is an attempt to “short-circuit the legal process” around libel law, and risks setting a precedent that would intimidate booksellers.
In Malaysia, there had been no action by Low’s lawyers to threaten legal action to stop the sale of “Billion Dollar Whale” or the other 1MDB scandal book, “The Sarawak Report – the Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose” by Clare Rewcastle Brown whether by Datuk Seri Najib Razak or Jho Low.
Clare called Najib as a “mega-thief” in her book.
Malaysians are entitled to ask both of them: Why are Jho Low’s lawyers threatening booksellers in Australia, UK and US with legal action if they sell “Billion Dollar Whale” when both Najib and Jho Low are not doing anything to stop the sale of the book and Clare’s “The Sarawak Report” in Malaysia?
(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Canberra on Wednesday 18th Sept. 2018)