‘Flattered’ Syed Saddiq lodges report against Raja Petra
(FMT) – Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has lodged a police report against blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin for alleging that he was behind the United States Department of Justice’s (DoJ) 1MDB-related lawsuits.
The PPBM Youth chief said while he was flattered that Raja Petra thought he was powerful enough to influence the DoJ, the claim was “nonsensical”.
He also said the allegations were just part of a political ploy to divert attention from the findings published by the DoJ last week.
“First of all, the claim doesn’t make sense because the US attorney-general (AG) and the DoJ are transparent and independent.
“Even (US President) Donald Trump couldn’t control the AG,” he said in a press conference here today, pointing to Trump’s failed attempt to impose a travel ban on those coming to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“I’m very touched that Raja Petra thinks I’m so powerful than I can play an important role in dictating DoJ’s movements, but I already made a police report on this and I hope the police can take action against him.”
Raja Petra in a blog post dated June 18, alleged that Syed Saddiq had met with PPBM chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad and former finance minister Daim Zainuddin 20 months before the DoJ filed its latest civil forfeiture suit over assets allegedly paid for by funds siphoned from 1MDB.
The UK-based blogger had also alleged that after the meeting, Syed Saddiq had told his three youth exco members of how RM50 million was being spent on attempts to play out the DoJ suits.
“The Clinton Foundation received US$5 million, or about RM22 million of that RM50 million, and Daim arranged the payment through a ‘middleman’,” wrote Raja Petra, citing the unnamed exco members.
According to Syed Saddiq, he knew who Raja Petra’s informants were, but insisted that they were party members who have been bought over by Umno.
“This is part of Raja Petra’s tactics to divert the people’s attention away from something that is much bigger.
“I think he had approached the three exco members who had sold their dignity to Umno-BN, and they just agreed to whatever allegations he fed them with.
“But the trio are the problematic exco members who held a press conference recently attacking the PPBM leadership,” Syed Saddiq said, referring to Hafiz Azhar, Taufik Abbas, and Wahazir Wahabi.
Syed added that he along with other PPBM youth leaders have repeatedly attempted to contact the three, but to no avail.
If they are unreachable even after the Raya celebration this weekend, then the youth wing will hold a meeting to discuss their fate in the party, he said.
In its latest court filings in California, the DoJ is seeking to seize US$540 million (RM2.3 billion) in assets including art works, jewellery and film rights said to have been paid for with funds allegedly embezzled from 1MDB.
This action follows last July’s civil forfeiture suit which sought to recover all the assets including but not limited to the Park Lane hotel in New York, a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills, condominiums in New York, a private jet, expensive works of art, as well as the financing of Martin Scorsese’s movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
The value of the assets sought by the DoJ now totals US$1.8 billion (RM7.7 billion).
The DoJ had also charged that from 2009 through 2015, more than US$4.5 billion (RM19 billion) belonging to 1MDB had been diverted by high-level officials of the fund and their associates.
