Let me put it straight to former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak that he should stop strutting around fulminating about “justice”, as he is the last person qualified to talk about “justice” unless he is prepared to volunteer to be the first witness of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) re-investigation of the 1MDB scandal to help cleanse Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy.
How can Najib babble about “justice” when he perpetrated the 1MDB “kleptocracy at its worst”, shamed Malaysia as a global kleptocracy, and aided and abetted the fugive financier Jho Low in the crime and corruption of the 1MDB scandal?
Is this why Najib studiously avoided answering several questions which I put to him in my media statement yesterday, including:
1. Whether he would “tell all” about the 1MDB scandal when summoned before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in re-opening of investigations into the 1MDB scandal, or will he clamp up, pleading that with the 49 1MDB-related charges concerning corruption, money-laundering and abuse of power against him and his wife, Datin Rosmah Mansor, he can no longer speak freely about the 1MDB scandal?
2. Does Najib want Jho Low to return to Malaysia to testify about the 1MDB scandal?
3. Would Najib disclose the number of meetings he had with Jho Low, whether in China, Thailand, Turkey or in any other country as Jho Loh had become an international fugitive with many legal jurisdictions looking for him in their 1MDB-related investigations.
4. Why Najib had not sued Clare Rewcastle Brown for her book “The Sarawak Report – the Inside Story of the 1MBD Expose” for libel as in page 457 of her book, Clare called Najib “a thief and a liar”.
5. Why Najib had not sued Tom Wright and Bradley Hope for their book “Billion Dollar Whale – the Man who fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World”, as in page 224, they accused Najib of winning the 2013 general election “armed with dirty 1MDB cash”?
Had Najib realised the supreme irony when he declared that it was high time “justice is served” to him and he welcomed the re-opening of mysterious deaths like Mongolian model Altantunya Shaariibuu, former Deputy Public Prosecutor Kevin Morais and Ambank founder Hussein Najadi, when these were all cases which happened when he was Prime Minister?
Yes, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar were found guilty of the Altantunya’s murder by the Federal Court on 13th January 2015 and were sentenced to death, but even school children would know that there was something very wrong in the trial, as the motive for Altantunya’s motive had not been established – in fact, no attempt was ever made to establish the motive of the murder in the trial.
I have no doubt that if a referendum is held, for the sake of the truth and the country’s international reputation, Malaysians would overwhelmingly demand a re-opening of investigations into Altantunya’s mysterious murder.
The same applies to other mysterious deaths, whether Kevin Morais, Hussein Najadi or even Teoh Beng Hock.
It is also the height of impertinence for Najib to challenge me to urge the Prime Minister to re-open investigations into the high-profile mysterious deaths.
Didn’t Najib repeatedly tell the whole country before the 14th General Election that if Pakatan Harapan wins the 14th General Election, DAP will dominat the Pakatan Harapan Federal Government and I will become the Prime Minister instead of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad?
Is Najib prepared to apologise for such vicious and toxic lies and falsehoods which he and the UMNO/BN propagandists and cybertroopers perpetrated in the 14th General Election campaign?
Let me tell Najib that if I am the Prime Minister, I will re-open investigations into the high-profile deaths of Altantunya Shaariibuu, Kevin Morais, Hussain Najadi, Teoh Beng Hock and customs officer Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed.
However, I am not the Prime Minister. My stand is clear but it is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s call as the Prime Minister of Malaysia to make the relevant decisions.
Coming back to Najib, Malaysians will really like to know why he is not taking legal action against the authors of the two books on the 1MDB scandal.
For instance, Clare Rewcastle Brown, Sarawak Report editor, in Chapter 37 of her book entitled “The China connection” wrote about receiving information in July 2016 that the Najib government was planning to award an over-valued project to laundry money to fill the 1MDB “black hole” of debts.
This referred to the plan to award the East Coast Rail Project (ECRL) to a Chinese company, China Communications Construction Company Ltd. (CCCC). The initial budget for the project was RM30 billion, and the overvalue of the project was for another RM30 billion, making the ECRL project to cost RM60 billion, with the extra RM30 billion to be used to launder money for 1MDB.
At the time Calre received the information, the ERCL project had not been announced yet.
Chapter 40 of Clare’s book, on “The Truth Will Out”, carried a most interesting account of how one of her informants escaped from an assassination attempt in central Paris on a Sunday morning.
In page 503, Clare wrote about her meeting with this source in mid-2017 and “got a fuller account of how he had been cornered in his car on a busy road, much in the same way that Kevin had been in KL, but he had seen the danger and managed to escape”.
She was told that the price paid for the hit against her source was a million American dollars!
Tom Wright and Bradley Hope in their “Billion Dollar Whale” was not sparing in their condemnation of the Najib regime either.
As they said in page 230:
“In an earlier era, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan had reached developed-world status. Now, rampant corruption was condemning Malaysia, as well as Brazil, Russia and a number of other nations, to mediocrity. But the elite – and those serving them – continued to thrive.”
In the past five months since the historic 14th General Election vote on May 9, 2018, Malaysians have been discovering how big had been the “black hole” which Najib had been hiding from the people – all the while putting up an interntional charade that the 1MDB scandal was “fake news” and an international conspiracy against Malaysia.
Is Najib prepared to make amends, volunteer as the first witness in the PAC re-investigation of the 1MDB scandal to help cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy?
If he has still any compunction left or has not completely lost all moral compass, he must do what is within his means to restore Malaysia’s good reputation in the international community.
Let him to write to the PAC immediately as PAC will meet tomorrow in re-opening investigations into the 1MDB scandal.
(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah on Monday, 8th October 2018)