Malaysia's Tenth Prime Minister

Malaysia's Tenth Prime Minister
YAB Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Eyeing issues on 1MDB Malaysia episode 13

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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