Sarawak Report lied, 1MDB is A-okay!

Umar Mukhtar

Free Malaysia Today‘s Calvin Sankaran did some detective work and concluded that Sarawak Report set 1MDB up by fabricating and forging e-mails purportedly from 1MDB, Jho Low and people associated with it, to back up SR’s fiction on the heist of the century.

Without taking away credit from Calvin’s good work, many had their suspicions too and did similar work quietly. Unlike Calvin, in the course of doing so, maybe they had also discovered enough things which aroused their suspicions about what were really going on in 1MDB. Maybe that’s the idea, huh, SR? Anyway, now that the Auditor General is called in, he will separate the chaff from the hay. So why bother.

Let’s assume the SR story and the so-called evidence it presented were all truly hogwash. So the USD700 millian is safely paid to PetroSaudi. The loan from 1MDB was also paid back with profits and was invested in the Cayman Islands where everybody goes to invest. So say TV3. Part of the money was used to pay debts and part of it, USD1.103 billion was dutifully brought back to Singapore and deposited in BSI Bank where it lies there to this day. I am buying Calvin lobster lunch in celebration of a close call to a messy affair. Great!

Meanwhile, during this time, 1MDB had some innocent-looking cash-flow hiccups to meet its loan commitments but good samaritans like Ananda Krisnan or somebody helped a bit here and there. Also it did borrow a very expensive one-year USD975 million loan from Deutsche Bank syndicate to pay something legitimate in Dubai. Now they have to pay that back in July with the money in BSI which is enough. Great!

This BSI Bank must be paying high interests, say, at least 12%. Otherwise 1MDB would have retired the 11% loan from Deutsche Bank. And Ananda or whoever must also lent money so cheaply that couldn’t beat BSI’s interests. And there’s enough leftover from the USD1.103 billion to pay some small interest payable of about USD50 million about now. But maybe arm twisting Tabung Haji for immediate cash sale inspite of the hue and cry from some sourpuss, is easier instead, yeah?

Didn’t 1MDB ask for some more cash from the cabinet recently? About 900 over million ringgit sort of overdraft to finance their operating needs? Ignore the fact the sum was used up in a blink of the eye. All are evidence of prudent financial management. Great!

My nine-year old grandson was doing his homework when I asked him to subtract 30 from 42. And he answered proudly 12. Mmm, I thought that’s a healthy balance, meaning subtracting all of 1MDB’s purchases from all of it’s published borrowings. And let’s say it’s overheads was about 2,000 million ringgit the last six years, just a teeny weeny bit more than Petronas. That leaves MR10,000 million ringgit in the bank. Thank God! Great!

Let’s also assume everything from expiring IPPs to lands in Penang was bought by 1MDB grossly overpriced by 5,000 million ringgit in total except for the TRX lands which they got for a pittance from the government. That still leaves half of their balance. 1MDB is okay.

So I wonder why they may give up the 3B power project which they had fought hard to win and why TRX is still in abeyance. Oh, the cash they have commands higher returns in the bank than the projects. Which bank is this? I want to put my money there. Hush…….OSA! So let’s just leave 1MDB’s money there and have a good night sleep.

Let’s wait till September and 1MDB will show what Sarawak Report is all about and to all gullible Malaysians, what 1MDB is made of. Meanwhile ssssshhhhhhhh, keep quiet, that’s our style. Mysterious is fun.

And Calvin will choke on his lobster. Like everything else, he sees only the flesh and not the spits of shell in between.