Another world recognition for Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) reporting on the 1MDB global scandal in Malaysia is another nail in the coffin of Malaysia as the new kleptocracy in global society.

In fact, the Society of Publishers in Asia (Sopa) awards for WSJ and its Asian edition economics editor Tom Wright for their investigative reports on the 1MDB scandal is “a slap in the face” and as good as an international vote of no confidence in Najib as Prime Minister.

Unless the Prime Minister himself can conduct town-hall meetings in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar these two days and give full and satisfactory accounting on the nations’ first global financial scandals – the RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin scandals – and why there had been a string of adverse international developments and censures for Malaysia over the 1MDB’s global embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption, the voters of Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections on Saturday should stand up and speak with one voice on behalf of 30 million Malaysians to reject the UMNO candidates to send a clear and unmistakable message, viz:

“Enough is Enough. Malaysians have enough of the endless adverse international developments over the 1MDB scandal and want Najib to bring a closure to all the allegations of 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption before the 59th National Day on August 31, 2016 or he should step down as Prime Minister on the 59th National Day!” Read the rest of this entry »

The unprecedented appearance of the 1MDB president and executive director Arul Kanda in Sungai Besar is a triple admission – the impact of the Colloquium on 1MDB scandak in Sekinchan last Saturday which was opened by former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the lack and loss of credibility of government explanation on the 1MDB global scandal as well as the 1MDB impact on Saturday’s by-elections.

The 1MDB president and executive director’s programme in Sungai Besar showed that Arul Kanda’s job is more a PR one than to really solve the global financial scandal, especially as it is the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak himself who is sitting on top of the mountain of 1MDB debts and problems since the very start of the so-called national sovereign fund some seven years ago.

Why is Arul Kanda acting like “a thief in the night” refusing to comment when asked by the press whether he was campaigning for UMNO/Barisan Nasional in the Sungai Besar by-election, when his job should be to resolve Malaysia’s greatest global financial scandal in the nation’s history?

As 1MDB is a 100% government company, Arul Kanda is finally paid from the taxpayers’ monies and no more than a public servant.

As such, he should owe his loyalty to the 30 million Malaysians and not just to his formal employers – the 1MDB, the Ministry of Finance or the Prime Minister himself.

Can we expect Arul to give the 30 million Malaysians, who are his final employers, a full and unvarnished account of the woes of 1MDB, and how a “strategic” national sovereign fund should end up in such pathetic straits, threatening to drag the country to precedented debts and economic woes and liabilities? Read the rest of this entry »

by Shamim Adam
Bloomberg
June 14, 2016

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, embroiled in a debt payment dispute with 1Malaysia Development Bhd., is seeking $6.5 billion from the troubled Malaysian state investment company as it moves the spat into arbitration.

1MDB and its sole shareholder — Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance — haven’t perform their obligations toward International Petroleum Investment Co. PJSC, the Abu Dhabi fund said in a London stock exchange filing on Tuesday. IPIC and unit Aabar Investments PJS submitted the request to the London Court of International Arbitration, it said.

The Malaysian investment fund and IPIC are locked in a tussle that spilled over to repayments on bonds issued by 1MDB. That led to a default in April, adding to the financial scandals for the Malaysian company that’s already a target of global probes into alleged money laundering and embezzlement. 1MDB has denied wrongdoing. Read the rest of this entry »

The RM55 billion 1MDB global financial scandal, which included Najib’s RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal, is like a giant octopus with its eight tentacles wrapped so tightly around the country’s key personalities and institutions that Malaysia can only free and save itself if it could escape the strangling embrace of the giant octopus.

The Second Colloquium on 1MDB scandal is to explore how to bring a closure to the nation’s first global scandal, which had been hounding and haunting the country for the past six years.

I can envision the eight victims which are caught in the suffocating embrace of the eight tentacles of the giant 1MDB octopus, viz:

1. the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak;

2. UMNO whose leadership at the national, state and even divisional levels have been co-opted or compromised;

3. MCA, Gerakan, MIC and other Barisan Nasional component parties which is why no MCA, Gerakan or MIC Minister or leader dare to have a confrontation with the UMNO leadership over the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said’s Ministerial motion in Parliament on May 26 to fast-track Hadi’s hudud motion or to requisition an emergency meeting of Barisan Nasional Supreme Council with the dual objective to firstly, restore the status quo ante by reaffirming the Barisan Nasional’s 43-year consensus that hudud is against the Malaysian Constitution and not suitable for multi-religious Malaysia and secondly, to repudiate and sack Azalina for her Ministerial motion which violated BN spirit and consensus.

4. PAS President Datuk Seri Hadi Awang, the only opposition leader to come to the defence of Najib over the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal. As a result, Hadi has moved closer to Hadi, resulting in the Najib-Hadi plot of Hadi’s hudud bill in Parliament on May 26. Read the rest of this entry »

When DAP PJ Utara Member of Parliament and Public Accounts Committee, Tony Pua, spoke just now about the failures of the various national institutions in the 1MDB scandal, whether Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Bank Negara, the Police, Attorney-General’s Chambers or even the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), I thought about the three-day interrogation spanning some 23 hours of the Penang Chief Minister and DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng by MACC officers in connection with the corruption allegations about his RM2.8 million bungalow.

If Najib is given the same MACC treatment as Guan Eng in connection with the corruption allegation for his RM2.8 million bungalow, the Prime Minister would be questioned 12.3 years for his RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal.

This is because Najib’s RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal is 1,500 times bigger than Guan Eng’s RM2.8 million bungalow allegation, and if Najib is given the same MACC treatment as Guan Eng where the Penang Chief Minister was questioned for three days, Najib will have to be questioned 1,500 x 3 days, yielding 4,500 days. This works out to 12.3 years – imagine Najib going in and out of MACC office to be questioned for 12 years and four months, from wake up in the morning to retirement for sleep at night, and doing nothing else!

Another panelist, journalist P. Gunasegaram spoke about the 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption offences being instituted in foreign countries, and how it is most surreal that in Malaysia, we continue the pretense that these almost daily 1MDB developments all over the world do not exist.

This seems to be the success of the global cover-up of the 1MDB global financial scandal, but it is something which is not sustainable and cannot last. Read the rest of this entry »

What has the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Raak or the Prime Minister’s Office got to say on Wall Street Journal’s correction to say that the US$3 billion bond fund raised by Goldman Sachs went to BSI Bank in Switzerland and not Singapore, and part of it eventually landed in Najib’s personal bank accounts?

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has issued a correction, stating that the US$3 billion bond fund Goldman Sachs raised for 1MDB went to BSI Bank in Switzerland and not Singapore as initially reported.

In its correction, WSJ said its article earlier had “incorrectly stated the money was sent to 1MDB’s account at the private bank’s Singapore branch”.

The WSJ stood by the allegation that part of the US$3 billion sent to Switzerland (and not Singapore) ended up in offshore accounts that eventually landed in Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s personal bank accounts. Read the rest of this entry »

By WILLIAM PESEK
Barron’s Asia
June 8, 2016

Goldman Sachs finds itself ensnared in the 1MDB scandal which threatens to squeeze the nation’s credit rating.

Goldman Sachs is sharing its giant vampire squid with Najib Razak’s government in Malaysia.

The investment colossus has found itself at the scene of many a scandal – a financial Forrest Gump, if you will. From U.S. Treasury bidding probes to Greece’s debt crisis to the subprime meltdown, Goldman’s bankers were there reaping fortunes behind the scenes. In a 2009 Rolling Stone piece, Matt Tiabbi famously branded it “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Make that Malaysia, too. As the Wall Street Journal reports, U.S. officials are probing whether Goldman broke the law by not alerting authorities about dodgy dealings at state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

It’s the latest reminder of how Prime Minister Najib’s 1MDB mess is wrapping its tentacles around an entire nation. The unpredictable ways in which it threatens to drag Southeast Asia’s third-biggest economy under, like some massive vampire squid, can be seen in Putrajaya’s balance sheet. Could it even lead to a credit downgrade? Read the rest of this entry »

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s denial syndrome is the worst of all six Malaysian Prime Ministers when he could regard Singapore and Swiss crackdown on multibillion ringgit 1MDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption as “a problem of noise”.

Replying to a question on what his government was doing to re-establish the trust of investors at a panel discussion at a World Economic Forum meeting in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, Najib said the overall trajectory for Malaysia and the rest of Southeast Asia was positive, and he pointed to the long-term trend of rising foreign investment in his country as an expression of confidence.

He said: “The problem is a problem of perception, the problem is a problem of noise. The noise level is rather high, I admit it. But it belies the strong fundamentals and commitment [of] the Malaysian government to continued reforms.”

The Prime Minister cannot be more wrong, and he must be told in no uncertain terms that his premiership is now a liability and no more an asset to foreign investors weighing their options about their investments in Malaysia – unless he can come clean on the various financial and mismanagement scandals haunting and hounding the country for over a year. Read the rest of this entry »

If Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is granted the proverbial “three wishes”, one of them will be to wish that the RM55 billion 1MDB global scandal which includes his RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal would be buried long and deep and would not continue to hound and haunt him almost on a daily basis.

There is hardly a day where there is no news on one aspect or other on the 1MDB scandal.

Yesterday for instance, there were at least three news items on the 1MDB scandal, starting early in the morning with the Bloomberg report that “1MDB scandal taking toll on Malaysian stock market as foreigners sell”, followed up by the Finance Ministry announcement of the replacement of the 1MDB Board of Directors to pave the way for the dissolution of the national sovereign fund and thirdly, the opening of the Official Secrets Act trial of the PKR MP for Pandan, Rafizi Ramli.

The triple items served as yesterday’s daily reminder to Malaysians that despite all Najib’s greatest efforts to sweep the issue under the carpet, the 1MDB scandal, which has catapulted Malaysia to the top of the world as one of the leading nations notorious for global corruption, will not go away – whether inside the country or in the world as illustrated by the recent world-wide crackdowns against IMDB embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption in Singapore and Switzerland. Read the rest of this entry »

The adverse impacts of RM55 billion 1MDB global scandal are beginning to bite on the country’s long-term competitiveness prospects.

The ebullient statement by the Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad that Malaysia maintained its top 20 position among 61 global economies in World Competiveness Year (WCY) 2016 cannot hide the fact that Malaysia’s WCY ranking is the worst in the seven-year premiership of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Malaysia’s WCY rankings in the past seven years under Najib’s premiership, falling from the 10th ranking in 2010 to the present 19th position, were: Read the rest of this entry »

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said has been caught red-handed telling another lie about the RM55 billion 1MDB global financial scandal in Parliament, raising the question why Ministers are so prone to lie when it comes to the RM55 billion 1MDB global financial scandal.

In her written parliamentary reply to the DAP MP for PJ Utara, Tony Pua on Wednesday, Azalina insisted that Good Star Limited, the firm which received US$1.03 billion from 1MDB, belonged to PetroSaudi International, and was owned by PetroSaudi at the time the payment was made.

Azalina’s untruthful reply is doubly inexcusable for two reasons:

Firstly, it flies in the face of the Bank Negara letter to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Datuk Hasan Arifin on April 6 that “Bank Negara Malaysia had been informed voluntarily by the authorities of that country that Good Star Limited is a company owned by an individual that has no links to PetroSaudi Group” – and it was Azalina who cited this when defending the unilateral and arbitrary deletion by Hasan of this line in the PAC Report on 1MDB on the ground that this Bank Negara information was confidential and not meant for publication.

How could Azalina one day tell Parliament that Good Star Limited was not a company owned by PetroSaudi International but this information is confidential, and yet on the following week, blatantly lie that Good Star Limited was owned by PetroSaudi International – contradicting what she had said only a few days earlier?

What Ministerial standard is Azalina observing, telling one thing one day but a totally opposite thing a few days later? Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Peel, Jeevan Vasagar, Anjli Raval and Kara Scannell
Financial Times
May 27, 2016

The fate of more than $1bn paid out by Malaysia’s scandal-hit 1MDB state investment fund has come under a fresh spotlight after leaked central bank letters suggested it went to a mysterious offshore company controlled by a flamboyant young financier.

The company in question is the Seychelles-registered Good Star. It is owned, according to claims in one of the central bank letters, by Jho Low, a 34-year-old Malaysian dealmaker and socialite known for partying lavishly with celebrities such as Paris Hilton.

Mr Low has since emerged as a figure of increasing interest as international investigations on several continents gradually reveal more about a case that Swiss authorities say may involve the misappropriation of $4bn from Malaysian state companies.

US authorities are focusing on the Good Star cash flows, according to a person familiar with the matter. Read the rest of this entry »