Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the murder of Jalil Ibrahim
The Third Force
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad has distanced himself from allegations that he once controlled the nation’s revenue and expense streams. In a video posting that surfaced on the internet yesterday, the 12th of April 2017, the former premier insisted that he was minister in charge of the country’s finances only to a point, and not throughout his premiership as with the case of current premier Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak.
According to Mahathir, his ‘brief’ stint with the Ministry of Finance was only to fill a void created by Tengku Tan Sri Razaleigh Hamzah, who he claimed had ‘left’ the ministry in 1984. Mahathir insisted that his role with the ministry was transitionary, unlike Najib, who he implied was keeping a latch on the country’s financial coffers for very sinister reasons.
In light of this development and for the sole purpose of setting some records straight, I have taken the liberty to pen this piece to help Mahathir ‘remember’ history as it had truly unfolded. However, I’d like to stress that this article does contain some revelations that are likely to trigger frenzy, though to what extent, I can’t be certain.
That said, and without further ado, let us begin.
Did Razaleigh leave the Ministry of Finance on his own volition?
Yes. And here’s why:
In July 1983, a former Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Berhad (BBMB) official was strangled in a hotel room in Hong Kong before his body was dumped in a banana plantation. The said banker, the late Jalil Ibrahim, was in the midst of a phone call with someone from Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF), the Hong Kong based subsidiary of BBMB, when the assailant suddenly struck from behind.
To this day, the official version has it that a man named Mak Foon Than (Dax Mak) was instructed to finish Jalil off. According to some reports, Mak murdered Jalil for prying too deep into the affairs of certain BBMB and BMF officials who were suspected of defrauding the Malaysian government. That would have been an accurate depiction had it not been for one thing – Mak did not commit the murder.
However, the Malaysian national was indeed an accomplice to the murder. Unbeknown to many, the instruction to have Jalil killed was derived off a conversation that took place between Mak and a third party, a high-ranking Malaysian official. The instruction was then delivered by Mak to another man who eventually committed the murder.
The official is someone I will name at a later date. That said, Mak knew exactly who the murderer was but was sworn to secrecy for some unknown reason. What my team is sure though, is that Jalil’s murder caused a huge upset within Mahathir’s innermost circle and forced the then premier to trigger the alarm. One of those particularly panicky about the whole affair was none other than Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the then Minister of Finance.
Razaleigh probably had a lot on his mind. For one, he would have known how tangled Mahathir was in a web of deceit involving billions that had been spirited through BMF by very crooked banking officials. The billions ended in the hands of some tycoons and gangsters from Hong Kong right after the Carrian Group went bust.
Prior to that, officials from both BMF and BBMB were already panicking and began working some ‘magic’ to narrow down instances of mismatches between the two institutions. The instruction to streamline “all concomitant ledger entries by whatever means necessary” was delivered by a certain Dato’ Seri, said to be from the Ministry of Finance.
Notwithstanding the Dato’ Seri, Mahathir and Razaleigh had by then undertaken in an agreement to restructure the Ministry of Finance. I am told, under the terms of this secret agreement, Razaleigh committed to ‘handing the finance portfolio over’ to Mahathir, who I am further told abused his position in the Prime Minister’s office to prevent an in-depth discovery into the scandal.
Razaleigh was made to understand that Tun (then Dato’) Musa Hitam would be given the finance portfolio once things were ‘sorted out’. However, that never happened. Instead, Mahathir handed over the portfolio to Tun Daim Zainuddin and tasked the latter with sweeping BMF’s dirt under the carpet. Razaleigh was pissed with the decision but couldn’t do much – both he and Mahathir knew they had a lot to lose should the nitty gritty details of the scandal have blown into the open.
When will we know more about Jalil’s murderer?
My team in the midst of a discovery into that matter. It is something that warrants absolute certainty and isn’t a laughing matter. At the moment, all I can say is that a high-ranking Malaysian official was responsible for giving out the order to have Jalil murdered. However, I refuse to name the official until such a time that I am given the green light to do so.
Why was Jalil murdered?
For knowing too much and doing too little.
Jalil knew exactly how much money had been dissipated through BMF. He knew the extent of Mahathir’s involvement in the scandal and knew what the bank’s then chairman, the late Lorrain Esme Osman, was up to. The BBMB auditor was torn between his duty as a banking official and his allegiance to quarters high up in the Ministry of Finance. That allegiance got him into trouble the minute he took instructions from another group associated with Mahathir.
But that is not to say Mahathir or his men had anything to do with Jalil’s murder. On the contrary, Jalil’s murder came as a shock even to Mahathir, who was visibly disturbed by the tragedy. I am told, so disturbed was Mahathir, he went out of his way to find out what had actually transpired, although, I can’t be certain if Mahathir knows or has an idea of who gave the order to have Jalil killed.
So Tengku Razaleigh left the Ministry of Finance due to the BMF scandal?
Yes.
But the Kelantan prince went about telling his friends that he was punished for orchestrating dissidence in UMNO. Just to be sure, that may have been true, but only to an extent.
Around the time of Jalil’s murder, Mahathir had reason to believe that Razaleigh and Musa Hitam were discussing succession within the party. To preempt what may have been a coup plot (though there is no evidence to suggest Razaleigh or Musa Hitam were planning a coup), Mahathir decided that he or a trusted aide of his needed to be in control of the country’s purse strings.
When Razaleigh agreed to ‘hand over’ the finance portfolio to Mahathir, he did so thinking Musa Hitam would eventually step into the role. However, Mahathir did a surprise U-turn and gave the Kelantan prince a million and one reasons why it was necessary for someone who wasn’t holding a very senior position in cabinet to helm the ministry.
As Razaleigh would probably have known then, the reasons were merely to pave the way for a Mahathirist to have absolute control over the nation’s financial coffers. The deception became glaringly evident some years later when Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim was allowed to retain the finance portfolio despite being deputy premier. But that only lent credence to Razaleigh’s claim that he was punished by Mahathir for going against the flow of tyranny within the party.
Never mind BMF. Isn’t it true what Mahathir says, that Najib is hogging the finance portfolio?
Let me ask you guys – who is Mahathir to set the bar?
Mahathir was Prime Minister from 1981 to 2003. He conveniently forgot to mention that he had reassumed the role of Finance Minister in 2001 and held on to that portfolio until his retirement in 2003. What he handed down to his successor was the ruins of Mahathirism, an era filled with corruption and massive instances of nepotism and cronyism. Najib had to spend millions of ringgit just to set things right and is still working hard to undo the damage caused by Mahathir.
For this reason and this reason alone, it is absolutely necessary for Najib to hold on to the finance portfolio until such a time that the country’s fundamentals are commensurate with its growth potential and capacity to retain a given debt load. The Prime Minister needs to make sure that the country is back on track before he can entrust someone else with the nation’s finances. If you have trouble grasping this concept, you shouldn’t be talking about finances in the first place.
And that brings me to the topic of Najib’s skeptics – and you’ll be surprised, this includes very educated professionals, multimillionaires, immigrants and what have you. If you’re one of them, then, I implore you to spend your time contributing to the betterment of this nation rather than bitching around like a prostitute. Otherwise, you should stop referring to yourself as a Malaysian and start looking for a new country!
