Award Canceled for Children’s Group With Ties to Malaysia’s First Lady
(NY Times) – Organizers of a high-profile event to be held during the annual United Nations conclave this week have at the last minute canceled an award they had planned to give a Malaysian organization over concerns about its links to Malaysia’s first lady, whose family is mired in corruption allegations.
The event, to be held Thursday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, honors people and groups that have fought extremism. Among the scheduled honorees was Permata, a Malaysian children’s organization that was founded several years ago under the auspices of Rosmah Mansor, the wife of the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak.
Ms. Rosmah is known for her lavish spending on luxury items like Hermès Birkin bags.
The couple’s family and close friends are at the center of a Justice Department lawsuit claiming that $1 billion in assets — including a $30.6 million penthouse at the Time Warner Center in New York and a $39 million mansion in the Los Angeles hills — were bought with money stolen from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
A statement on Sunday from Tudor Parfitt, a scholar involved in the event, confirmed that the honor had been withdrawn.
The statement said that questions had been raised about the sources of Permata’s funding, and that although the event organizers were not aware of any specific wrongdoing, they did not have time to vet the organization.
