Scopene Submarines Purchase and Murder Scandal

A brief summary
by Koon Yew Yin
September 24, 2012

Pakatan Rakyat has invited Suaram to talk about the Scopene Submarines Purchase and the Murder scandal at 8PM at Hotel Excelsior , Ipoh on Sunday, 30th Sept 2012. My purpose of writing this summary is to help the attendees understand the talk better. As you know Suaram needs money to do the work for us in exposing the corruption and murder involved. We are expected to donate whatever we like at the admission.

In November of 2009, Suaram, the Kuala Lumpur-based human rights NGO, asked a French investigative law firm to look into what appeared to be huge bribes and kickbacks paid to Malaysian politicians by the French state-owned defence company DCN and its subsidiaries for the 2002 purchase of two submarines and the lease of a third.

The story was complicated by the sensational 2006 death of a Mongolian translator and party girl, Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was shot by two of then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak’s bodyguards and her body was blown up with military explosives. While the bodyguards were convicted of her killing, the court appeared to have actively suppressed any mention of who allegedly paid the two to kill her, raising Suaram’s concerns that there would be no justice delivered.

In the intervening three years, Suaram’s request to the law firm, headed by the Paris-based William Bourdon, resulted in a probe that exposed the bribe of about US$200 million paid to Abdul Razak Baginda, a close friend of Najib Tun Razak for the purchase of two submarines costing about US$ 800 million.

Eventually, when a Paris-based investigating magistrate began to examine the evidence, the court turned up voluminous memos, emails and other documents from a raid on DCN’s offices indicating that massive bribes had been paid with the full knowledge of Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, Dr Mahathir, then the prime minister of Malaysia, and Najib, then the Defence Minister who had negotiated the purchase. The evidence detailed a host of other sleazy dealings.

The bulk of 133 documents came from DCN’s files and they dealt with the Malaysian contacts. They were presented to the court on April 7,2010 by investigators from the anti-organized crime unit of the French Directorate of Judicial Police, not Suaram and not Suaram’s lawyers.

These documents tie Altantuya Shaariibuu to the case despite numerous statements by the critics that she had never visited France or had anything to do with the submarine transaction.

The documents indicate that DCN and its subsidiaries steered the money to two companies controlled by Prime Minister Najib’s best friend, Abdul Razak Baginda, in contravention of the OECD convention on bribery by routing the money through companies controlled by Jean-Marie Boivin, the former DCN finance director, who stepped out of the defence contractor to become the thin wall of insulation between DCN and the Malaysian officials who got the money.

As much as UMNO want to discredit Suaram, they cannot discredit the 133 documents submitted to the French Court . As the next general election is coming soon, UMNO want to stop the spread of this corruption and murder scandal at all cost.