Yes, Dato’ Seri Najib Razak, the Opposition blew up 1MDB issues to topple the Government because we are now a world-renown kleptocracy

For the local and foreign investors listening to the Prime Minister’s speech when opening the InvestMalaysia 2017 conference, it must have been an utterly surreal experience.

While he acknowledged that there “were lapses in 1MDB's governance”, and he had “personally given instructions for a rationalisation of the company's operations”, he denied culpability and even blamed the Opposition for fanning the flames.

"But let's not forget that while there were issues in 1MDB, certain politicians blew them out of proportion, and tried to sabotage the company, in an attempt to topple the government in between election cycles,” he said. 

In a parallel development, the opening of the mid-year Parliamentary sitting this week saw more than 30 questions thrown out for utterly bizzare and frivolous reasons.

My question on the current value of the 1MDB “units” investment and who is the custodian bank was rejected because they apparently contained questionable assumptions (“sangkaan”) and were a figment of my imagination (“buah fikiran”).

My question on whether the Attorney-General had investigated the claims made in the latest United States Department of Justice (US DOJ) suit to seize up to US$1.7 billion worth of launder assets from 1MDB funds was similarly and incomprehensibly rejected because it was deemed a “sangkaan”. 

I had a total of 5 questions relating to 1MDB which were rejected.

The investors on the floor would have loved an opportunity to ask the the Prime Minister, if he had indeed done no wrong, why would he not just give simple answers to the simple questions above? 

In fact, Malaysians would also like to know why Dato’ Seri Najib Razak only has the courage to deliver his “defence” of 1MDB with a straight face to an audience without a opportunity to raise questions, and refused over the past 5 years to address the Parliament? 

In fact, the Prime Minister would have had the best opportunity to make the Opposition look like complete idiots if it were true that the latter was blowing the issue “out of proportion”.

What’s more, Malaysians would also like to know why Dato’ Seri Najib Razak has refused to comment on the origins of the US$731 million which was deposited into in personal bank account in Malaysia since the anti-kleptocracy action was filed in July last year by the US DOJ?

How about the latest expose last month where the US DOJ also discovered that a 22-carat pink diamond necklace cum ring was purchased by the Prime Minister’s wife for US$27.3 million with money traced back to the sums deposited in his personal bank account?  Why haven’t the Prime Minister or the wife refuted the above “discovery”?

What’s more, while the Prime Minister wants to take credit to initiating investigations into the 1MDB fiasco, he failed to highlight the fact that he replaced the Public Accounts Committee Chairman with Dato’ Hassan Ariffin who refused to summon the Prime Minister for questioning because he had to “cari makan”.  The Prime Minister also ‘retired’ an Attorney-General who was about to prosecute him and he refused to instruct 1MDB to comply fully with the Auditor-General after the company failed to provide any of its overseas bank records and statements for audit.

Let us make it clear that the Opposition did not sabotage 1MDB.  The Prime Minister and the 1MDB top management did the sabotaging by carrying out misappropriations exceeding US$5.7 billion (RM25 billion) resulting in the company failing to meet its debt obligations.

However, we are in agreement with the Prime Minister that we are indeed fanning the single largest financial scandal in the history of Malaysia.  This is in order to topple his disgraced administration, which has become a renown kleptocracy in the eyes of the world.

The investment community are not gullible fools who would believe the naked emperor.  Their confidence in the country will only be returned when a new clean and competent government gets elected by 2018.

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Rahman Dahlan disparages US DOJ's US$1.7 bil. asset seizure suit; doesn't deny Mr. & Mrs. MO1 received US$732 mil. cash and US$27.3 mil. pink diamond pendant

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Dato’ Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan continued his tirade against the US DOJ again yesterday, accusing the DOJ of publishing a “half-cooked report”.

He even insinuated that the United States of attempting to influence the results of the impending Malaysian election.  "Is it because the election is around the corner and some desperate quarters need a leg-up?" he tweeted.

This is on top of the Minister in charge of the Economic Planning Unit berating the US DOJ the previous day, “you (DOJ) mock, you gave the impression that Rosmah and the diamond did something wrong.  But in the document you submitted, you didn't include the diamond as one of the items that you want to seize. It was unnecessary to put the name there.”

The Minister is saying that since elections is around the corner, the US DOJ should not have filed the updated suit last week as it might influence the results of the election, since it implicates both the Prime Minister and his wife of misappropriating state funds for their own personal benefit?

Is the Minister trying to tell the US that they should have waited until the election is over and the Najib administration has won a new mandate, before publishing such scandalous allegations against those who have misappropriated more than US$5.6 billion of funds from 1MDB?

Does the Minister realise how ridiculous he sounds?  Is he really that half-witted, or is he only pretending to be so?

In responding to Dato’ Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan’s criticism, the US DOJ said that they “have to allege enough facts to show a reasonable belief that United States money laundering and other criminal laws were violated and that the subject assets were involved in or traceable to these illegal transactions.”

Surely Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan would know that the way to fight a factual allegation is to provide factual evidence which destroys the allegations.  The daily repetitive attempts by the Minister and his colleagues to taint the US investigations with insinuations of political and other motives not only does not help the cause of the Prime Minister and his wife, they actually worsen the negative perception because the alleged facts have not been challenged.

Malaysians are asking, if the US DOJ is indeed concocting malicious allegations against the Prime Minsiter and his wife as the Cabinet Ministers continue to insist, why haven’t the allegations been denied?

In fact, why hasn't Dato’ Seri Najib Razak produced proof that this bank account(s) never received the purported US$732 million which had originated from 1MDB?  Why hasn't Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor come out to publicly deny that she had indeed acquired, or received as a gift, the alleged US$27.3 million pink diamond pendant?

Their silence speaks a thousand words, while the aimless barking by the Prime Minister’s lieutanants only served to confirm without a doubt in the minds of the people, the truth of the US DOJ scandalous allegations.

Perhaps in his eagerness to castigate the US DOJ, Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan has merely forgotten to establish the facts.

Let me challenge Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan once again, did or did not the Prime Minister, referred to as MO1 in the US DOJ suit, receive more than US$732 million in his personal bank account in Malaysia while his wife, Mrs MO1 acquired a US$27.3 million diamond pendant after trips to Monaco and New York in 2013?

If the EPU Minister can’t answer the above questions, then he should stop making a complete fool of himself and further destroy whatever is left of the good name of Malaysia to a watching international audience.

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Why is Rahman Dahlan not outraged by the allegation that US$27.3 mil. of 1MDB funds helped buy a 22-carat pink diamond pendant necklace for Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor?

Malaysians are amused by the sardonic entertainment the Barisan Nasional (BN) Ministers are putting up for us on a daily basis in response to the recently updated US DOJ suit to seize an additional US$540 million worth of assets laundered with funds from 1MDB.  This sum is on to of nearly US$1.2 billion in the suits filed since July last year.

At the heart of the scandal is the involvement of a “Malaysian Official 1” (MO1) who received more than US$732 million of the laundered funds in his personal bank account in Malaysia.  What further stunned the nation was when “MO1’s wife” was mentioned in the updated kleptocracy suit, when DOJ alleged that she spent US$27.3 million on a 22-carat pink diamond pendant necklace with that money.

Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin Hussein would put up a blank face feigning ignorance and asked “for all we know it could be anyone. ‘MO1’ could be (Second Finance Minister) Johari (Abdul) Ghani.”

This of course runs contrary to Economic Planning Unit (EPU) Minister, Dato’ Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan’s public admission on BBC in September 2016 that “obviously, if you read the documents, it is the prime minister…”

This confirmation is on top of the Minister’s earlier contemptuous remark made in August 2016 that “only an idiot doesn’t know who MO1 is”.

The question as to whether Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan would tell Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin Hussein that the latter is “an idiot” is perhaps best left for the former to answer.  What is perhaps comically incongruent is how two senior Ministers in the Prime Minister’s office held 2 contradictory positions over the simple poser.

They were both however consistent in ignoring the elephant(s) in the room pointed out by the DOJ – that MO1 received more than US$732 million in his personal bank account while Mrs MO1 got her US$27.3 million necklace with money borrowed by the Government’s wholly-owned subsidiary.

Yesterday again, the EPU Minister, who is also BN Strategic Communications Director, confirmed that MO1 is Dato’ Seri Najib Razak, and MO1’s wife would be Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.

However, Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan took pains to lament that “you (DOJ) mock, you gave the impression that Rosmah and the diamond did something wrong.  But in the document you submitted, you didn't include the diamond as one of the items that you want to seize. It was unnecessary to put the name there."

The Minister clearly and intentionally missed the woods for the trees.  Instead of asking why “implicate” Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, should the Minister, whose primary responsibility is not to protect the Prime Minister’s wife but the interest of the Rakyat, confirm if the US$27.3 million diamond necklace was indeed purchased with money laundered from 1MDB?

It is worth noting that the EPU Minister did not deny these facts.  He is merely making a hue and cry of the exposure of these “facts”.

Before Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan decides to speak to the press again regarding this issue, let me challenge him to confirm these simple facts exposed by the DOJ with Mrs MO1:

1.     On or about July 5, 2013, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor met New York jeweller, Lorraine Schwartz together with Low Taek Jho and others aboard the 147 meter Topaz, one of the largest private yachts in the world in Monaco.  There group discussed the design of the necklace to hold the 22-carat pink diamond, which itself would be made of smaller diamonds.

2.     On or about September 28, 2013, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor again met Schwartz with Low in a hotel suite in the Mandarin Time Warner in New York in order to show them the layout of the necklace that Schwartz had designed.

3.     The finished 22-carat pink diamond necklace, which included the 22-carat pink diamond as a pendant, was delivered to a friend of Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor in Hong Kong on or about March 7, 2014, for delivery to the wife of the Prime Minister in Kuala Lumpur.

If Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan can provide evidence, on behalf of Mrs MO1 that the above allegations are brazenly untrue, then let me assure the Minister and everyone else in the Cabinet that I will be the first from the opposition bench to sit with him in a press conference to publicly denounce the DOJ allegations.

If not, then let me remind Dato’ Seri Rahman Dahlan, that as a responsible Minister and citizen, he must report the above transgression to both the Police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for their respective investigations.

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