1 MDB : Promise of a RM 120 million reward makes AMBank and ANZ boards vulnerable to whistle blowers
Ganesh Sahathevan
There is likely to be more than one AMBank employee who is aware of this and related transactions
ANZ’s former CEO Mike Smith who led the bank’s Asian expansion would know from the time he spent at HSBC in Kuala Lumpur that Malaysians in general are always (and I mean always) on the look out for a deal to at least supplement meager incomes, if not get rich quick.
Given that deal making propensity, news of the the SEC’s recently reported USD 22 million payout (RM 88 million) to a whistle blower, the largest this year and second only to its record payout of USD 30 million (RM 120 million) will prove too much for AMBank staff to resist.
Given the central role that AMBank and its ANZ led management played in the 1 MDB theft, which the US Justice Department described as the biggest case of kleptocracy, fraud and theft it has ever seen, AMBank staff can be expected to have already done the math and determined that speaking to the SEC might well set them up for life.
