Topping up the wrong lunch account at the cafeteria almost starved my son at school
Umar Mukhtar
Last week when my son asked me to top up his lunch account at the school cafeteria because it was empty, I obliged. Instead of waiting for my wife to do it as is normal, I did it immediately myself because it was empty. On Monday, he told me he couldn’t buy anything because it was still empty. How can that be? I was sure that I had made the deposit at the cafeteria machine.
Upon checking, I found out that I had made the deposit into the wrong account. I had punched in a wrong digit. It was an honest mistake by an old man with unsteady hands. I am sure that the unintended recipient will return it or even if he doesn’t know that someone had made a deposit into his account (as is common apparently since it even happened to our PM), what the heck! RM100 is not much in these hard times, only a week’s lunch money.
I hope that that it is a similar case with 1MDB paying 13,000 million ringgit to the wrong company. 1MDB CEO Arul Kanda has finally admitted IMDB could be a victim of a fraud. An honest mistake! A negligent act by people entrusted to safeguard our billions of ringgits and not worth 5 sen of the huge salaries they were paid.
That the two top executives of Aabar had facilitated for 1MDB to pay 13,000 million ringgit into the bogus company Aabar Investments PJS Limited account instead of the correct company, Aabar Investments PJS is now obvious. In their position they could also slow down the fraud’s discovery by the public.
All it takes now is find out who controlled the bogus company, its shareholders and the signatories to its bank account which has now been emptied and the company wound up. Then follow the money trails to see how the money was spent or given to whom. It’s not rocket science and soon enough it will be public knowledge.
If some of that money went for the use of anybody who has anything to do with 1MDB, then collusion is likely. Not an honest mistake. If that is true, they deserve to face a firing squad. 13,000 million ringgit would pay for so much that the country needs. Heck, it will pay for the whole Pan Borneo Highway plus some!
Like I wrote before, the buck has to stop somewhere. My son’s lunch money for the week is coming from my cigarette money or I will never hear the last of it from my wife. But 13,000 million ringgit is a bit over anybody’s budget, even the PM.
But for the PM’s personal lawyer to feel compelled, as was reported, to defend the PM by saying that the PM’s signature doesn’t mean he’s liable because the PM doesn’t know what he is signing, sent chills down my spine. If the PM’s signature is not worth the paper it is signed on, I dread the numerous times I had advised my clients to the contrary. It is worth a lot! The idiot lawyer was just not articulate enough to explain stuff he may not understand,
With a lawyer like that, the PM’s fate is sealed. What the lawyer meant was the representations made to the adviser by the Board of Directors count. If the representations were wrong, the PM is not liable for the mistake but the liability is on the Board. The lawyer couldn’t even explain that coherently when he wasn’t even asked about the PM’s liability. That’s what you get for hiring a wet-behind-the-ears lawyer who is easily overcome by an occasion whose challenges exceed what he usually merits.
Half of the PM’s problems could be solved if his cheerleaders would just shut up or think first before opening their mouths. We don’t even know who the chief cheerleader is. But you can bet it is not this punk.
