Two days ago, I posed five questions to the “alpha and omega” of Malaysia’s first global financial scandal, Penang-born billionaire Jho Low, but as expected, no answer had been forthcoming.
In the past 48 hours, there had been more world-wide developments in Malaysia’s first global financial scandal, a salutary reminder that in the borderless world of 24/7 era of information, where information travels at the speed of light, it is no more possible for one country to sweep scandals under the carpet, especially when the financial scandal is of global reach and dimension like the RM50 billion 1MDB scandal.
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak can try to impose a total clamp on all investigations and information about the 1MDB scandal, and even virtually ban discussion on the subject in the highest legislative and political chamber in the land, Parliament, but what is the purpose of such puny national efforts at censorship when the global community and some ten countries are conducting separate investigations related to the 1MDB scandal?
Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal has been described by the influential financial weekly, the Economist, as “an important test of how the world deals with cross-border corruption”, especially after the leaking of the Panama papers – after describing investigations within Malaysia as have been “timid or stymied”.
Such adverse international commentary on the 1MDB scandal a fortnight after the tabling of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Report on 1MDB to Parliament vindicated what I had said right from the beginning – that Najib was wrong in regarding the PAC Report as a “comprehensive, conclusive and definitive report” on 1MDB when it was only the first step to reveal and unveil the full “horrors” of Malaysia’s first global financial scandal. Continue reading “How long can Jho Low disappear or go incognito?”