What a far cry from what the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib said in his 2016 New Year Message on Dec. 31, 2015 that his RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion donation twin mega scandals had been resolved and were no more issues.

Since the 14th General Election on May 9,. 2018,, there was hardly a day when the 1MDB scandal did not dominate news headlines, very often with multiple items a day!

Today, for instance, there were four news stories connected to the 1MDB scandal in Malaysiakini, viz: “New Zealand gov’t: Jho Low not given passport”; “Jho Low drops claims to New York’s Park Lane Hotel to facilitate sale”;“1MDB probe to be completed in ‘another month or two’”; and “Najib upset over muted gov’t bench when he talks about 1MDB”. Read the rest of this entry »

Goldman Sachs Group Inc CEO David Solomon’s voice mail to Goldman Sachs employees that “This isn’t us” to distance the mega bank from the multi-billion 1MDB scandal is too late, too little and too paltry, when in July 2016 and later in June 2017 in its expanded and updated kleptocratic litigation to forfeit 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, US Department of Justice (DoJ) had listed the “material misrepresentations and omitted facts” of the three 1MDB bonds arranged by Goldman Sachs in 2012 and 2013 and the almost-instant misappropriation and fraudulent diversion of some 40 per cent each of the three bonds.

The guilty plea of Goldman Sach’s former top banker in Asia, Tim Leissner, to two counts of conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act in relation to the 1MDB scandal has undermined the mega bank’s attempt to wash its hands of responsibility for the 1MDB scandal.

In his guilty plea in a New York district court on August 28, which was unsealed on November 8, Leissner said others at the bank helped him conceal bribes used to retain business in Malaysia.

He said the culture of secrecy at the investment bank led him to conceal wrongdoing from the company’s compliance staff. Read the rest of this entry »

Six months ago, we were rushing headlong in the trajectory towards a rogue democracy, a kakistocracy where a Cabinet Minister could not differentiate between a turtle egg and a chicken egg and where even those with the of IQ of a carrot can hope to get into the Cabinet, and an instant global kleptocracy.

By a hair’s breadth, on May 9, 2018, Malaysians escaped the national catastrophe awating the country if we had continued unchecked towards such a trajectory towards disaster.

Voices are gathering saying that it is time to put the 1MDB scandal behind us now that multiple charges on the 1MDB scandal had been made against various personalities in the courts, including the former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, his wife Rosmah Mansor, and that the people should leave it to the courts to adjudicate on the matter.

I cannot disagree more. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Sessions was fired by US President Donald Trump as US Attorney-General six months too late to be of any use to Datuk Seri Najkb Razak to save him from the international 1MDB corruption, criminal breach of trust and money-laundering scandal.

This must be one of Najib’s greatest regrets – to think that he might have salvaged his political life and the Prime Ministership if Jeff Sessions had been sacked very much earlier, as he and his legion of propagandists and cybertroopers would then be able to crow that even President Trump had repudiated Jeff Session’s caustic indictment at the Global Forum on Asset Recovery last December that the 1MDB scandal was “kleptocracy at its worst” and that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was working to provide justice to the victims!

All these historic “IFs” were of course subject to the greatest “IF” of all, i.e IF Najib had not been thrown out of Putrajaya by the Malaysian electorate in the historic peaceful and democratic transition of power first time in six decades in Malaysia.

All these possibilities, combinations and permutations are now so much water under the bridge, for it is completely unthinkable that under the present circumstances, Trump would even spend a second of his time on the question of how to bail out Najib – although things might have been different IF Najib had won the 14th General Election and remained as Prime Minister. Read the rest of this entry »

I was in Perth in September and I met Greg Lopez, a research fellow at Murdoch University, who wrote a most prescient article in Forbes in August 2015 entitled “Malaysia’s Prime Minister: A Dead Man Walking?”.

Greg said the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak had broken “a cardinal rule in politics” in inadvertently admitting “guilt” when the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission cleared him of any wrongdoing in accepting the infamous RM2.6 billion “political donation”.

He said Najib’s position was no longer tenable as Malaysians questioned his sincerity and trustworthiness. Read the rest of this entry »

Can former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak continue to pretend that there is no such thing as the 1MDB scandal after the 1MDB criminal charges by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) against fugitive financier Jho Low, with former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner pleading guilty to 1MDB corruption and money-laundering charges?

Jho Low was charged in the federal court at the Eastern District of New York for conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB.

Low and former Goldman Sachs banker Ng Chong Hwa, also known as Roger Ng, were also charged with conspiring to violate Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to paying bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials.

Another former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner had pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiring to launder money and conspiring to violate the FCPA by paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials, and forfeited US$43.7 million as a result of the crimes.

My first thought at the news in the United States was what would have happened if UMNO/Barisan Nasional had won the 14th General Election and Najib had not been toppled as Prime Minister on May 9, 2018. Read the rest of this entry »

“When the new coalition under Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad reached 112 seats, we couldn’t help it. Both of us cried.”

This was said by a foreigner, former Swiss banker Xavier Justo when describing in an interview with Star what he and his wife, Laura, felt faraway in Switzerland on the historic night of the 14th Malaysian General Election on May 9, 2018.

The Swiss couple was not the only ones who cried that night.

Many Malaysians, inside and outside the country, cried that night – not out of anger, despair and hopelessness but because of disbelief, relief and hope that there is now a chance to save Malaysia.

These were the true patriots of Malaysia! Read the rest of this entry »

The last five days must have been Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s worst five days in his entire life, which collectively should be worse than his darkest day of May 9, 2018 when he was toppled as the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia and sent into the political wilderness.

On Friday, October 26, 2018, Najib’s house of cards propping up his claim that the international 1MDB corruption and money-launderintg scandal was fake news and a concocted internatuional conspiracy by his political enemie to topple him from power collapsed when Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel Ahmad Al-Jubeir met the Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and denied that Najib’s infamous RM2.6 billion in his personal bank accounts had come from Riyadh.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is going remain one of the mysteries of Malaysian politics as to why former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak decided to guillotine himself on the 1MDB scandal before a world media in his semi-aborted interview with Al Jazeera.

Najib had intended to vindicate himself as a great Prime Minister with his nine-year achievements and legacy in his interview with Al Jazeera, but at the end-of-the-day he had only succeeded in raising the question that apart from fugitive financier Jho Low and himself as the two masterminds of the international 1MDB corruption and money-laundering scandal, there may be a third “international mastermind” of the 1MDB scandal.

Is there a third mastermind in the 1MDB scandal as suggested by Najib in his interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday? Read the rest of this entry »

Malaysians must thank Datuk Seri Najib Razak for the semi-aborted Al Jazeera interview for it shows why the historic decision of the 14th General Election of May 9, 2018 to Save Malaysia was right and why Malaysians must forge ahead to build a New Malaysia which is far away from a rogue democracy, kakistocracy and global kleptocracy.

Although Najib staged a walk-out after some 20 minutes of the interview, enough damage had been done and it is no exaggeration to say that Najib had done more damage to himself with his semi-aborted Al Jazeera interview than the visit of the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister, Abdel Ahmad Al-Jubeir to publicly confess that Najib’s infamous RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account had not come from Riyadh. Read the rest of this entry »

October 26, 2018 was the day when former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak came in from the cold to brave nasty questions about the 1MDB scandal which he had been avoiding for more than five years since the 13th General Election when he accepted the invitation of Al Jazeera for an interview with its 101 East programme.

But it proved to the day when Najib was “hung up to dry” for on this day, the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel Ahmad Al-Jubeir met the Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to deny that Najib Razak’s infamous RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account had come from Riyadh. Read the rest of this entry »