I tweeted “Najib’s strategists world’s dumbest unable to nail a lie!” when I read Malaysiakini’s report “PM’s aide: RM2.6b came from 1MDB a lie by Mahathir” last evening.
When Malaysiakini uploaded the Bernama report “Senators urge Mahathir to apologise to Najib”, it confirmed that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has a most dim-witted team of strategists, lacking nimbleness of wit and mind or the ability to improvise on-the-run, but continuing to expect UMNO/BN Ministers, leaders and MPs to follow a script which had already been discredited and should have been chucked into the garbage can.
Najib may have among the world’s highest-paid professionals in his propaganda and psychological warfare team, but what could they produce when they are headed by loud-mouthed and low-IQ czars for strategic media communications?
Let me explain.
UMNO/Barisan Nasional Senators who continue to re-cycle Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir’s so-called “confirmation” that Najib’s RM2.6 billion in his personal banking accounts were Saudi “donations” and the purported “exoneration” of Najib of any wrongdoing in 1MDB scandal by Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Deputy Chairman Dr. Tan Seng Giaw are either “laggards” who could not keep abreast of fast-paced developments in 24/7 Information Age or downright political “cretins” who do not know what they are doing.
But I am dumbfounded by the statement yesterday by Najib’s press secretary Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad that allegations that the RM2.6 billion donation in Najib’s personal accounts came from 1MDB was a lie by former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, which the former premier had “unsuccessfully used to try and unseat a democratically-elected government”.
The simple question is if it is true that allegations that the RM2.6 billion donation in Najib’s personal accounts came from 1MDB was a lie, why Najib and his highly-paid strategists have not been able to nail the lie once and for all for so many months?
The Wall Street Journal report yesterday alleging that part of the US$3.5 billion paid by 1MDB to a fake Aabar firm incorporated in the British Virgin Islands had ended up in another bogus firm which transfered the RM2.6 billion into Najib’s accounts was nothing new, as it had been reported and have been in the public domain since last year.
Tengku Sariffuddin said Najib “has consistently maintained that the funds were a donation from the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia”.
If Najib’s propagandists and strategists do not know how to nail such a “lie” once and for all, in a manner nobody, whether Tun Mahathir, Wall Street Journal or the whistleblowing website Sarawak Report, could continue to use it to attack Najib, I offer my services to Najib to nail such a “lie” once and for all.
There is however one proviso – Najib must prove to me that the allegations that RM2.6 billion “donation” originated from 1MDB was a lie!
Can Najib do so?
The narrative of the 1MDB-IPIC dispute appears to be as follows:
Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic) ended its relationship with IMBD in a filing to the London Stock Exchange on Monday, saying 1MDB and Malaysia’s ministry of finance were in default on a multi-billion USD deal, including an obligation to pay US$1.1bn plus interest, and that 1MDB continued to be bound by its commitments under the agreement.
Rather than send money to Abu Dhabi’s Aabar, an IPIC subsidiary, the 1MDB fund ended up transferring US$3.5 billion to a different company with a name nearly identical to Aabar’s but incorporated in British Virgin Islands.
Some of that money in turn was transferred, via intermediaries, to a shell company called Tanore Finance Corp., registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Global investigators believe it was from Tanore that US$681 million was transferred to Najib’s accounts at AmBank in March 2013. In all, more than US$1 billion was deposited in the prime minister’s accounts over several years, including US$200 million from a Saudi individual and the Saudi finance ministry.
Surely, it should not be a herculean task for Najib to prove that the narrative about the payment of RM2.6 billion of 1MDB money from shell company Tanore Finance Corp or all in, more than RM4.2 billion deposited into his personal banking accounts were false and untrue.
If such allegations of such astronomical sums of billions of ringgit of donations, through various shell companies, had been made against the DAP, there can be no doubt that DAP leaders would instantly be the subject of investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
The MACC immediately swung into action after the corruption allegations against DAP Secretary-General and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng by UMNO/BN leaders, despatching scores of MACC officers to investigate Guan Eng’s case, but similar actions had not been taken with regard to the first global corruption scandal in the country, involving the Prime Minister Najib Razak.
As Najib’s RM4.2 billion donation scandal is 1,500 times bigger than Guan Eng’s alleged RM2.8 million bungalow scandal, while the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal is 20,000 times bigger than the alleged RM2.8 million bungalow scandal, had MACC assigned hundreds of MACC officers to investigate Najib’s twin mega scandals, when it could assign scores of MACC officers to Guan Eng’s case?
The MACC Deputy Chief Commissioner (Prevention) Datuk Mustafar Ali said in Kuantan a few days ago that MACC would “haul up” Guan Eng for investigations into Guan Eng’s purchase of the RM2.8 million bungalow in Jalan Pin Horn, George Town.
Had the MACC “hauled up” Najib for investigation into the nation’s first global financial scandal, running into tens of billions of ringgit, which had been the subject of international news reports for the past nine months?
If the RM2.6 billion was a donation, why was there a need to create so many shell companies and do so many offshore banking?
For 15,000 years, fraud and shortsightedness has never worked, not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south.
It appears too many especially in UMNO/BN never learned this inevitability.