Could this be the Smoking Gun for Malaysia’s PM?
The danger is that there have been so many smoking guns in the past, including detailed evidence by French investigators of bribes to buy French submarines when Najib was defense minister, that yet another won’t matter.
John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel
The publication today, Friday July 3, of devastating articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Sarawak Report tying Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to the diversion of nearly US$700 million from the state-backed 1Malaysia Development Bhd into his own accounts could be the final blow to bring down a leader who has been bullet proof from years of charges against his integrity.
The danger is that there have been so many smoking guns in the past, including detailed evidence by French investigators of bribes to buy French submarines when Najib was defense minister, that yet another won’t matter. Nonetheless, according to the two publications, government investigators in Malaysia have traced the money in deposits from 1MDB into Najib’s personal bank accounts. The investigators’ findings apparently were leaked, possibly through former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has been on a two-year crusade to drive Najib from office and put him in jail.
Given the considerable details of the information now in print, he may well succeed. Indeed sources in Kuala Lumpur have told Asia Sentinel that Mahathir has considerably more information. Attempts to reach the former premier in the past have been uniformly unsuccessful.
“If this is true, it’s a TKO for Najib,” said a Kuala Lumpur-based lawyer. “Go to jail, do not pass go. It looks like the Tun [Mahathir] has dropped the nuke.”
It’s all a plot
A spokesman for Najib denied any wrongdoing to the Wall Street Journal and said the allegations had been fabricated by his political enemies. Nonetheless, the investigation documents, made available to the two publications, mark the first time Najib has been connected personally to irregularities over the fund, which has amassed RM43 billion [US$11.3 billion] in liabilities, as much as RM25 billion of it believed to be unfunded.
Four separate Malaysian agencies are probing the fund. But government agencies are notoriously beholden to the United Malays National Organization, the leading component of the Barisan Nasional, the ruling national coalition. According to the reports, the bulk of the money was transferred by wire from the Singapore branch of the Swiss Falcon private bank, owned by the Abu Dhabi- based Aabar fund, into Najib’s private AmBank account in Kuala Lumpur in March 2013, just prior to the government’s calling the last general election.
Najib has withstood a continuing barrage of difficult questions about the fund for more than two years, blaming political enemies and repeatedly rounding up the divisional warlords of UMNO to back him, primarily because he has provided them with vast amounts of money for their personal operations, much of it flowing from the 1Malaysia Foundation. Equally devastating stories about the activities of Najib’s wife and money steered to the 2013 election in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal respectively have been shrugged off without apparent serious damage to the prime minister although he recently delayed the UMNO party elections for 18 months to forestall any challenge from Mahathir’s forces in the party.
