The Third Force
Clare Rewcastle Brown is up to no good
again. This time the Chief Editor of Malaysia’s number one fake news portal,
Sarawak Report, is busy coating old stories with new fluff and dishing them out
as ‘bombshell exposes’. A few lines into her postings immediately reveals the
new agenda – to derail the government’s truth campaign by flooding the internet
with new lies.
Now, that’s a tall order for someone who
has yet to debunk a series of articles that detail the extent of a global
conspiracy to sabotage 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s
sovereign wealth fund. The series (links provided below), written by me and
last published on the 1st of February 2017, has thus far revealed the names of
Malaysians who were complicit with a group of foreigners to bankrupt the wealth
fund.
The names of these Malaysians topped a
laundry list of criminals who conspired with Maybank officials in 2013 to leak
classified banking documents and other forms of government secrets to top
executives at JP Morgan and Chase. The leak came to light following the
discovery of email communication that took place between these executives and
officials from the domestic banking scene.
Some of those documents wended their way
to the desks of world-renowned figures, the most notable among them being
billionaire George Soros and former British premier Tony Blair. Others who got
a hold of those documents include officials from the World Bank’s StAR
division, a group of Emirati businessmen, several media head honchos and
financial analysts based in the United Kingdom (UK).
The wealth of classified information
helped the Emiratis plan their every move. Their leader, Khadem al-Qubaisi, came
to know that a group of Malaysians had contrived a scheme to sabotage a planned
listing of 1MDB’s power assets. Without the listing, Qubaisi knew that the
Malaysian fund would run into defaults with a syndicate of domestic banks that
part financed the purchase of those assets.
And that is precisely what Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad wanted. The former Malaysian premier was determined to bankrupt 1MDB to
validate claims that the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Seri Najib Tun
Razak, had siphoned wealth from the fund for personal gain. Ms. Rewcastle took
things a step further, implying that Najib was complicit with unnamed
government officials to funnel that wealth into companies based in the British
Virgin Islands (BVI).
But that’s not all.
Ms. Rewcastle channeled a large part of
her fluff through a network of fake news portals she controls. For instance, a
recent posting by the Tian Chua run Malaysia Chronicle (the Chronicle) bore
signature traits to the kind of rubbish you’d expect from Sarawak Report. The posting
concerned the administration of newly elected United States (US) president
Donald J. Trump and its alleged links with Najib and members of the Government
of Malaysia (GOM).
We’re now being told that Trump is going
out of his way to ensure that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) does not
pursue action against Malaysian officials ‘accused’ of stealing funds from
1MDB. According to the Chronicle’s posting, Trump made sure of this by firing a
federal prosecutor who would likely have implicated these officials of
wrongdoing.
Yet another day, yet another claim. And
that’s how it is with the Chronicle and Sarawak Report, two of Malaysia’s
foremost fake news channels. The question is, why is there a sudden and
seemingly urgent need for Ms. Rewcastle to drag Trump into the picture? Is
there something the Chief Editor of Sarawak Report is keeping concealed from
Malaysians, something I have yet to make public?
And that is what we’re here to uncover.
Through this article, Malaysians will learn of developments that took place in
recent weeks that may have caused the Sarawak Report Chief Editor and her
Malaysian overlord, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, to go into panic mode. But first, let
us revisit the billion-dollar question that I’m told still lingers within the
Malaysian conscience to this very day.
Was money ever stolen from 1MDB?
Once again, it was.
As a matter of fact, this has been
addressed to the minute detail in parts 9 through to 12 of the aforementioned
series. There, I revealed the names of Malaysians who conspired with a group of
foreigners determined to rob the wealth fund of its worth. These foreigners
belong to the same group of people who triggered the 2007/2008 financial crisis
that caused major financial institutions worldwide to collapse.
To recap, a group of Emirati businessmen
led by Qubaisi, the former Managing Director of IPIC, worked out an elaborate
yet convoluted scheme to generate wealth using funds siphoned from 1MDB. They
planned to accomplish this by moving the funds around a network of BVI and
Panamanian registered entities with cross-continental ownerships that secretly
belonged to both Qubaisi and Soros.
Qubaisi was assisted by a group of
cash-rich Emiratis introduced to him by Marcus Ambrose Paul Agius, the current
senior non-executive director of the BBC. Marcus seemed to owe a debt of
gratitude to Qubaisi and his then business partner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed
al-Nahyan, for helping pull off the biggest con-job ever in the history of Abu
Dhabi (refer part 9, link below). But Marcus wasn’t the only one lending
support to Qubaisi.
With him was Blair, who had in his possession
confidential banking documents and secrets that pertained the GOM. Some of
these documents and secrets had originated from Maybank and were fed to him by
a top executive from JP Morgan and Chase. The remaining documents were derived
from Mubadala and Petrosaudi officials through Blair’s associations with the
founders of those entities.
Blair handed these documents and secrets
over to Qubaisi, who in turn, handed them over to the group of cash-rich
Emiratis. The documents had to do with 1MDB’s dealings with Maybank and the
Mideast, while the secrets concerned Najib’s financial history and minutes of
Cabinet meetings. By April 2013, Blair could more or less tell you how much
Najib was worth and the kind of money the Prime Minister had in the bank.
With the wealth of information at
Qubaisi’s fingertips, it was all systems go. The only thing left for him to do
was to get some Malaysian officials on his side. Qubaisi set his sights on two
people befitting the description of ‘money-crazed men’. One of them, a minister
attached to the Ministry of Finance, happened to be the guy Najib tasked to
overlook the affairs of 1MDB.
The listing, scheduled to take place
during the first quarter of 2013, was deferred to allow the government to focus
on the then upcoming general election. In this period, 1MDB resorted to other
means of reducing its debt load. But once the election was over, the fund’s
board found that the road towards an Initial Public Offering (IPO) was strewn
with hurdles that seemed to have deliberately been placed there.
The person responsible for placing those
hurdles was none other than Ahmad Husni, who, along with a top official from
Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and another from CIMB (who went by the pseudonym
‘dungeon master’), delivered instructions to officials from Maybank to prevent
1MDB from “reducing its debt to equity ratio.”
Husni came to know early in 2013 that a
group of Emirati businessmen linked to Blair and Marcus were engaged in a
scheme to siphon wealth from the Malaysian fund. But Husni wasn’t the first to
discover this scheme. Late in December 2012, the former CEO of 1MDB, Dato’
Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi, discovered that a company registered in the BVI
purported to be one of IPIC’s was in fact a bogus entity that had nothing to do
with the Abu Dhabi fund.
The truth is, Shahrol came to know late
in 2012 that the company, Aabar Investments PJS Limited, was among the
thirty-odd BVI companies that Qubaisi secretly owned through a convoluted
scheme involving cross-continental ownerships. Through a third-party associate,
Qubaisi urged Shahrol to channel funds from 1MDB to the BVI Aabar as part of an
agreement by the Malaysian fund to fulfill its obligations to IPIC.
Shahrol acquiesced to the arrangement
and was promised a reward amounting to USD10-15 million. My team is working to
establish if the sum was promised by Qubaisi or someone associated with Blair.
What is clear though, is that both Shahrol and Husni failed to properly advise
the Prime Minister and 1MDB’s board of the BVI Aabar’s bogus status.
Husni’s and Shahrol’s shenanigans caused
the GOM undue duress and embarrassment when IPIC fraudulently filed a case
against 1MDB at the London International Court of Arbitration. I say
fraudulently, because the person who ordered the filing had himself conspired with
Qubaisi to rob the Malaysian fund of its worth. That person is none other than
the chair of IPIC himself, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Why is Clare Rewcastle Brown desperate
for a verdict against 1MDB?
There are basically 101 reasons for
this, and I can’t explain them all in one article. However, you will find bits
and pieces of information that address these reasons if you care enough to read
parts three to twelve of my series in detail (links below). For now, I will
focus on how she stands to gain should 1MDB fail in its bid to dispel IPIC’s
claims at the London court.
In a nutshell, a verdict in favor of
IPIC would help Ms. Rewcastle ‘prove’ that Najib went ahead and channeled funds
to the BVI despite knowing of the BVI Aabar’s bogus status. By doing that, she
would raise suspicion among Malaysians that Najib conspired with Qubaisi to rob
the Malaysian fund of its worth. It would also help her advance the notion that
Najib and his wife conspired with Penang born billionaire Jho Low to siphon funds
from 1MDB for personal gains.
Getting Malaysians to believe such lies
is no longer an easy task, something Ms. Rewcastle has come to terms with.
Seeing her readership plummet by almost 77 percent since the 1st of January
2016, she is desperate to earn her keep with Mahathir. She realises that a
verdict in favor of IPIC would help her do that. Only with such a verdict would
she convince Malaysians that Mahathir was right all along, that Najib had
dissipated funds from 1MDB worth RM42 billion into thin air.
The more Malaysians buy into her lies,
the more she gets away with murder by wrapping untruths around hearsay and
apocryphal stories designed to invoke paranoia, implying that Najib is simply
bad news for the country. She will no longer need to support her claims with
evidence – just the usual dose of crap she is usually dishes in multiple
flavors and persuasive tones.
And the more persuasive she gets, the
more valuable she is to Mahathir in complimenting his extended campaign against
UMNO and the ruling Malaysian coalition. Now can you imagine the kind of
millions the grand old man would be willing to pay her just for that?
So It’s all about the money?
Like I said, there are 101 reasons why
Ms. Rewcastle needs 1MDB to ‘perish’ at the London Court of International
Arbitration. Many of these reasons are far too complicated to be squeezed into
a single article. However, there is a new development I think the GOM should be
made aware of. To better appreciate the finer points to this development, let
us begin with the press conference that former US attorney general Loretta
Lynch delivered on the 20th of July 2016.
On that day, Lynch announced the filing
of civil forfeitures complaints against an American movie Production company in
the presence of Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI. According to
Lynch, the company had benefited from the corrupt practices of 1MDB officials
that resulted in money being laundered through the US financial system.
Lynch deliberately crafted her speech in
a way that implied Najib was the ringleader. Though never stated explicitly, a
report furnished by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) drove that impression
further, leading to countless allegations by leaders of the Malaysian
opposition that Najib was indeed the person the DoJ referred to as Malaysian
Official 1 (MO1).
A group of legal experts from California
are convinced that the DoJ and the FBI lack evidence to support claims made by
Lynch at the presser. They further note that investigations by the FBI were
proven incomplete and inconclusive at the time Lynch made the announcement,
meaning, Lynch had no business insinuating the involvement of any Malaysian
official.
The group is adamant that Lynch
maliciously intended to implicate Najib in a scheme he may or may not have been
involved with. They plan to hold her and McCabe accountable for abusing their
positions in office to commit democratic thievery against the Prime Minister of
a sovereign democracy. Lynch has since come to know of the plan and triggered
alarm within the Clinton circle.
The word she got was that the
Californians plans to throw her under the bus. She somehow traced the
whereabouts of the Californian group and began prying into its affairs. But
every attempt she made to squeeze details out of the group proved futile. Then,
on the 3rd of March 2017, it was brought to her attention that Washington had
in its possession enough evidence to throw her under a bullet train, forget the
bus.
In a fit of panic, Lynch got in touch
with Theodore S. Greenberg (refer part 2) to enquire if he knew anything about
plans by the Trump administration to finish her off. Greenberg, now a private
consultant for the World Bank’s StAR division and the US DoJ, replied by saying
that the only person who had the answer to such a question was Andrew G.
McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI.
When Lynch informed Greenberg of
McCabe’s refusal to entertain her calls, the DoJ consultant contacted an
attorney linked to John Forbes Kerry, the former US Secretary of State and
staunch Mahathirist. Kerry’s attorney engaged the services of a go-between who
then contacted Mahathir – directly – to enquire if the former premier knew
anything about Najib’s alleged links to the Trump administration.
Now, this is the same guy who acted on
behalf of McCabe in 2015 when arranging a meeting between Dato’ Seri Khairuddin
Abu Hassan and Matthias Chang with FBI officials. Two years later, on the 5th
of March 2017, this guy goes on to ask Mahathir if Trump is perceived a threat
by the Malaysian opposition to the DoJ’s case against a movie Production Company
that is alleged to have benefited from the corrupt practices of 1MDB officials.
Nine days later, on the 14th of March
2017, Tian Chua hosts a publication, purportedly by Asia Sentinel (the
Sentinel), alleging that the Trump administration is in cahoots with persons
linked to the Najib administration. According to the author, Trump deliberately
fired a US attorney to demolish the DoJ’s case against the movie Production
company.
A mere coincidence? You tell me.
So did Trump really fire a US attorney,
and did it have anything to do with the DoJ case?
Yes and No.
When Trump first took office as
President of the US, a large number of federal prosecutors voluntarily tendered
their resignations. Their actions were not in protest but expected of federal appointees
when faced with a change in the federal administration.
And that is a fact Malaysians need to
understand. The American constitution clearly empowers the US president to
appoint a list of public officials, federal prosecutors included, with the “advice
and consent” of the US Senate. These officials serve at the pleasure of the
president and are expected to reflect his or her policies to the best of their
ability.
Given that a change in the federal
administration would likely involve changes in ideology, federal appointees are
customarily expected to resign the minute a new president takes the oath of
office. If they refuse to resign, it becomes the president’s prerogative to
either retain them or to have them fired. When Trump was sworn in, 46 federal
prosecutors did not tender their resignations and chose to stay on.
One of them was Manhattan attorney Preet
Bharara, who claimed that Trump had requested him to stay on prior to the
latter’s inauguration. But Preet wasn’t the exception. What he failed to tell
reporters was that Trump had also requested several other US attorneys to stay
put. The only reason Trump did that was to ensure that the legal fraternity was
not faced with a sudden vacuum that would disrupt due process and the course of
justice.
But not Trump, who was hailed as being
among the few presidents in US history that did not force the resignations of
all federal appointees. Unlike his immediate predecessor and the guy who
preceded him, Trump was bent on making sure that his list of potential
replacements would pass the US Senate before deciding to relieve the remaining
attorneys.
Once the list was finalised, Trump
instructed Jeff Sessions – the newly appointed US attorney general – to request
(and not instruct, as reported by CNN and CNBC) the remaining federal
prosecutors to tender their resignations. Preet ignored the request and told
everyone that he was determined to stay on. Every attempt to reach Preet and
talk him into resigning proved futile.
Trump was left with little choice but to
exercise his constitutional power by firing Preet. But that is exactly what
Preet desired. My team confirms that not only was Preet asked to make a public
spectacle of himself by refusing to resign, he may have been paid to do so.
There are leads to suggest that Preet received funds leftover from the Clinton
presidential campaign, though my sources are working hard to confirm this.
So yes, Trump fired Preet. And no, it
had nothing to do with the DoJ case as alleged by the Chronicle, which most
likely was the doing of Ms. Rewcastle. Like I said, the only thing Ms.
Rewcastle is good for is using a network of fake news channels she controls –
the Chronicle, the Sentinel and Sarawak Report – to spread lies, more lies and
nothing but lies.
And yes, she will always be under my
foot. She is no match for my team which is dedicated to upholding the truth and
championing justice. And as you all probably already know, the truth always
prevails. There are no two ways about it.
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