I was offered $2.7m for stolen data: Ex-PetroSaudi employee Xavier Andre Justo on the 1MDB saga
He alleged that those he met had talked about using the documents “to try to bring down the Malaysian government”, adding that they also referred to plans to “modify the documents”.
The Straits Times
Swiss national Xavier Andre Justo – who is now in jail in Thailand in connection with trying to blackmail his former employer, PetroSaudi, which is entangled in a huge scandal involving the Malaysian government – has claimed that he was promised US$2 million (S$2.7 million) in exchange for data he stole from his former employer.
He also told The Straits Times in a prison interview that he was never paid what he was promised by a prominent Malaysian businessman. Justo claimed a deal was reached in Singapore in February on the sale of the documents, which was followed by lengthy discussions on how he would be paid.
The group of people he met in Singapore to negotiate the sale of the data were named in a 22-page confession Justo made to Thai police. He showed a copy of the confession to The Straits Times.
“I tried to open an account in Singapore, to have the money paid directly from (the buyer’s) account,” Justo said. “DBS Bank refused, I don’t know why. After that I opened an account in Abu Dhabi in my own personal name which was refused by (the buyer) because it had my name on it.”
“Then I tried to use my company account in Hong Kong and he said the same, after that it was through a Luxembourg company and then again (the buyer) refused and after that Clare Brown took the lead,” he said.
He was referring to Ms Clare Rewcastle-Brown, the Malaysian-born British-based editor of the Sarawak Report, which over the past year has made astonishing claims about the misappropriation of billions at state investment firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), whose advisory board is headed by Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Justo claimed the buyer also “offered to pay me by cash”.
He said: “So I was supposed to go to Singapore every week or every other week to receive an envelope with a few thousand or tens of thousands, and repeat this process for months until the final amount will have been paid. And again I refused.”
Justo echoed what Thai police said last week, that his confession was backed up by documents including a record of his WhatsApp conversations with the buyers.
“All of what is written in my confession, most of it is proven by e-mail conversations, WhatsApp messages I have had with (them).”
Ms Rewcastle-Brown had agreed to receive the US$2 million from the buyer and send him US$250,000 a month for consultancy services, he claimed.
“I don’t know if she received the money or not, (because) I was arrested,” he said. “I have no idea.”
Contacted by The Straits Times, Ms Rewcastle-Brown rubbished the allegations as “bunkum”.
“What I have presented on 1MDB and has been clarified by The Edge and corroborated by several other official sources is a coherent explanation of events, versus the dodging, changing stories of 1MDB,” she said. The Edge is a Malaysian daily whose chief executive officer, Mr Ho Kay Tat, was questioned by Malaysian police yesterday over articles it published related to 1MDB.
On Monday, in a note published on the front page of his daily, Mr Ho said the newspaper had “a public duty to find and report the truth”.
“We were not involved in any theft, we did not pay anyone, and we did not tamper (with) any of the e-mails and documents we were given,” he added.
He also said the newspaper was handing over to Malaysian government investigators printed documents and the hard disk that contains bank transfers and statements linked to the 1MDB scandal.
