“In fact, Jho Low’s ownership record for Good Star was a mere bearer
share - anyone holding that share will be the owner of the account which
had over US$1 billion in funds! Not just in Singapore but among a lot
of the banks and jurisdictions, very few questions were asked about
funds moving in and out.”
The above was based on a comprehensive
US Department of Justice (DOJ) filing in July 2017 for recoveries of
assets bought with stolen 1MDB money. The department estimated the theft
at US$4.507 billion then.
Here is another excerpt from the book:
“Jho Low, who is very close to Najib’s family, emerges as the mastermind
and there is collusion with key officials at 1MDB, especially Shahrol
Helmi, once CEO of 1MDB, former executive director Casey Tang and
general counsel Jasmine Loo. They misled the 1MDB board and in some
instances directly disobeyed board instructions.
“Also, such a
crime could not be perpetrated without the knowledge of prime minister
Najib who under Section 117 of 1MDB’s memorandum and articles of
association had to be informed of all major matters at 1MDB. Najib was
also finance minister, and therefore the highest officer of Minister of
Finance Inc which owned all of 1MDB. He was also chairman of the
advisory board.”
Just one more excerpt: “1MDB is a deliberate
scheme to steal billions from Malaysia. At the end of the day, all
evidence points to 1MDB being deliberately set up and manipulated to
make tens of billions of ringgit (money lost one way or another can
amount to as much as RM40 billion or more) with complicity from the very
top.
“If there was no such complicity, 1MDB’s losses would not
have happened. It is the largest such theft in the world and is a
shameless and audacious transfer of bond proceeds out of 1MDB and into
the hands of criminal conspirators on top of other misdeeds earlier such
as bond mispricing and overpayment for assets.”
Political expediency
Surely
Singapore, where the branches of banks which transferred these funds
were located, should know enough about the shenanigans at 1MDB. But
still political expediency takes precedence with what many see as the
impending ascendency of Najib, in one way or another, to a position of
power in the new Malaysian configuration.
By honouring a convicted
felon with such a meeting, who is facing numerous other charges related
to 1MDB, Singapore’s foreign minister dishonours all Malaysians who
have suffered much from the 1MBD scandal and face an ongoing political
crisis and upheaval which may see the return of officials who are close
to Najib to the top echelons of political leadership after the next
general elections.
Singapore should have been much more
circumspect about the issue and carefully avoided anything which might
be misconstrued as interfering in the affairs of another sovereign
country. No foreign minister meets with a convicted criminal of a
neighbouring country with which there are deep, long links of history,
friendship, family ties, animosity even, and strong mutual dependency.
At
this point in the conflict which we all face and grapple with as
Malaysians who have never been so divided before, it was rather callous
for the top Singapore foreign affairs official to meet the person
largely responsible for it all, Najib Razak, and give him some form of
legitimacy.
It would have been far more polite and political under
the circumstances to stay out of this crucial internal fray and not
honour in any way a convicted felon who has become a major divisive
figure in the country and regularly misuses social media to paint a
better, tainted picture of himself.
A well-respected judge has
written an 800-page water-tight justification for Najib’s conviction,
sentencing him to 12 years in jail and RM210 million in fines. This
judge is now facing an orchestrated attempt to defame him and, weirdly,
an investigation for corruption as a result of unsubstantiated allegations by a discredited blogger.
The
Court of Appeal has upheld this conviction in no uncertain terms and
Najib will exhaust all his legal avenues probably in August when the
Federal Court hears his appeal. As this goes on, there is swirling talk
of a royal pardon being lined up for Najib, talk which was fuelled by a reception that the king gave where Najib was present.
Meanwhile, Najib is facing a slew of other cases,
involving billions of ringgit, mainly for 1MDB-related charges, which
he is going to find hard to resist and defend successfully. The evidence
against him appears solid.
The decision by the Singapore foreign
minister to meet Najib, therefore, is injudicious, inappropriate,
insensitive, inconsiderate, insulting, indifferent, interfering and
insolent to say the least.
