The setting up of an integrity unit in all government-linked companies and ministry-owned business entities to curb graft announced by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak at the 13th Invest Malaysia Kuala Lumpur conference yesterday will only end up as meaningless “PR” exercises unless the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet have the political will to be examples of zero tolerance of corruption.

This political will to ensure “zero tolerance for corruption” should start from the very top from the Prime Minister downwards, and should begin with comprehensive investigations and satisfactory accounting of the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal, which had transformed Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy. Let a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 1MDB scandal be established.

The Prime Minister should know better than anyone that Malaysian leaders have lost the moral high ground, whether at home or in the international arena, to talk about ethics, morality, integrity and good governance so long as Malaysia is tarred and tainted with the odious appellation of a global kleptocracy and the Malaysian government is unable to do anything to clear or cleanse Malaysia of such infamy and ignominy.
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Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the murder of an idealistic young Malaysian, Teoh Beng Hock in Shah Alam, who died because of a baseless allegation of corruption involving RM2,400 for 1,500 Malaysian flags used in the Merdeka celebrations in 2008, where the institutions of state were misused by the powers-that-be to persecute political opponents.

If a RM2,400 case could cost a life to be lost, how many lives should be lost over the 1MDB financial scandal?

The 1MDB scandal, which catapulted Malaysia into stratospheric infamy as a global kleptocracy, is one of astronomical proportion and could involve RM50 to RM55 billion – which means that some 100 million people (more than three times the population of Malaysia) would have to die if a person’s life could be lost over a RM2,400 allegation.

This highlights the monstrosity of the 1MDB scandal!

Recently, there were glowing reports about the benevolence of one 1MDB mastermind, Penang billionaire Jho Low, who donated hundreds of millions of ringgit to charitable foundations.

This was also about the time when the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak declared that “Not everything about the 1MDB is bad or negative” and lamented that many Malaysians were unaware that 1MDB had contributed a lot of good in many ways, like spending RM57 million since 2011 to finance 5,700 Malaysians to perform the haj. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad made a valid point when he asked the UMNO youth leader and Minister for Youth and Sports, Khairy Jamaluddin, why he is afraid of “old men” in politics because Khairy had asked Mahathir, Datuk Seri Anwar and I myself to retire from politics.

While we wait for Khairy’s reply, just as I am waiting for Khairy to elucidate the mysterious reason he had given asking for my retirement from politics, Khairy should explain why he is being overshadowed not only by “old men” in Pakatan Harapan, but also by “old men” in UMNO!

Khairy, who may regard himself as the greatest gift to Malaysians, has failed to stand heads-and-shoulders over the “half-past six” and “deadwood” Ministers in the Najib Cabinet which he joined in 2013 – an eloquent but sad testimony of the mediocrity of an Oxonian. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

The MCA President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, asked how the DAP could assume the responsibility of managing and governing at federal level when the DAP could not resolve its problem with the Registrar of Societies (ROS) for some five years with regard to the DAP Central Executive Committee elections in December 2012.

Liow is barking up the wrong tree, for the problem of the DAP CEC elections dragging on for some five years is solely the responsibility and doing of the Registar of Societies under the directive of the political masters, and not because of any wrongdoing on the part of the DAP.

Who would have imagined that the Registrar of Societies could ask the DAP to have DAP Central Executive Committee re-election some four years after the DAP had conducted such CEC re-election following the ROS’ directive on Sept. 29, 2013?

If Liow Tiong Lai is a conscientious, outspoken and responsible Minister, he should be speaking up in Cabinet to point out that it is extremely ridiculous and irresponsible for the ROS to want the DAP to conduct re-election of DAP CEC based on the 2012 DAP Congress delegates’ list when the DAP had done precisely this on Sept 29, 2013, and asked why the ROS had taken four long years over the matter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Australian newspaper, Sydney Morning Herald, recently carried a report about two individuals whom Malaysians should be familiar – Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr and the Penang billionaire Jho Low who is the mastermind behind Malaysia and the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s world-class financial scandal – the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal.

The Sydney Morning Herald article entitled “Miranda Kerr holidayed on Malaysian billionaire’s yacht after split from Orlando Bloom” was published after world publicity on Kerr’s handing over of tens of millions of ringgit worth of jewellery from her Los Angeles safe deposit box to US government agents after the third US Department of Justice (DOJ) suits to forfeit US$1.7 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland purchased from funds stolen from 1MDB and money-laundered through American banks.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported about Jho Low’s courtship of the Australian supermodel in 2014 on the US$250 million super-yacht Equanimity off the idyllic coastline of Corfu, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea.

Jho Low’s ‘”romance” with the Australian supermodel should be private matters except that the jewelleries presented by Jho Low to Kerr, which included a 11.72 carat heart-shaped diamond pendant, a Valentine’s Day gift from Jho Low in 2014, and even the US$250 million super-yacht Equanimity, with its gold-plated interiors, were stolen, misappropriated and money-laundered from 1MDB funds, which the US DOJ wanted to forfeit to return to the people of Malaysia. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Hornery
Private Sydney
Sydney Morning Herald
JULY 7 2017

While Miranda Kerr’s silence on her “romance” with Malaysian billionaire Jho Low, which last week resulted in her handing over $11 million worth of sparkly jewels from her Los Angeles safe deposit box to US government agents, has been deafening, PS has managed to unearth a few more details about the model and the moneybags’ seemingly unlikely connection.

Among the jewels Kerr handed over, according to The Wall Street Journal, was a 11.72 carat heart-shaped diamond pendant, a Valentine’s Day gift in 2014 from former “boyfriend” and Malaysian financier Low.

PS can reveal that later that year, in August, Kerr and her Californian-based agent Kristal Fox, enjoyed Low’s hospitality aboard his $250 million superyacht Equanimity while it was bobbing off the idyllic coastline of Corfu.

​Fresh from splitting with her husband Orlando Bloom, Kerr was spotted in Corfu at the time and even made the local press, but it was her host who is raising eyebrows three years later as the central figure in a corruption scandal that has engulfed Malaysia’s powerful elite. Read the rest of this entry »

DAP National Publicity Secretary and MP for PJ Utara, Tony Pua; DAP Assistant National Publicity Secretary and MP for Bukit Bendera Zairil Khir Johari; PKR Secretary-General Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail; Faiz Fadzil, AMANAH Deputy Youth Chief; Yaakob Osman, Penang Pribumi Bersatu Information Chief and DAP MP for Batu Kawan Kasthuri Patto are to be congratulated for a successful kick-off of the Pakatan Harapan nation-wide tour and campaign to explain the intricacies and complexities of the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal to Malaysians in the rural areas.

As the six Pakatan Harapan leaders told the inaugural “Sayangi Malaysia, Hapuskan Kleptokrasi” (Love Malaysia, Destroy Kleptocracy) 1MDB ceramah in Penaga, Penang last night, the expensive jewelleries, art pieces, even luxury properties which included Jho Low’s US$250 million (approximately RM1.069 billion) mega yacht – the 3,000-tonnes 54th largest yacht in existence which can carry 28 crew members and 18 guests – will all be sold and the money returned to Malaysians if Pakatan Harapan takes control of the government in the coming general election.

As Faiz Fadzil specifically mentioned, these properties include the much-talked-about US$27.3 million (RM117 million) 22-carat rare pink diamond set in a necklace, which the US Department of Justice (DoJ) alleged was purchased with stolen 1MDB money for the wife of “Malaysian Official 1” (MO1).

As Faiz said last night: “Her necklace, we will auction and sell it off and return the proceeds to the people.

“If we can recover the money, we can use it for the people. The pink diamond was bought with our money.” Read the rest of this entry »