World’s top banks in US government cross-hairs over dealings with Malaysia’s 1MDB

by Praveen Menon and Saeed Azhar

Australian Financial Review Weekend

Apr 3 2016

US Department of Justice officials have asked Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase & Co to provide details on their dealings with 1MDB, as global investigations into the troubled Malaysian state fund widen.

US Department of Justice officials also travelled to Kuala Lumpur to speak to senior bankers and other people with close links to the state fund, three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. They said JPMorgan and Deutsche were not the target of investigations at this stage, but had only been asked to provide details.

Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan declined to comment. The Department of Justice also declined to comment.

The US move marks the latest development in a wide-ranging global investigation across three continents into possible corruption and money-laundering at 1MDB, whose advisory board is chaired by Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Najib has denied any wrongdoing and said he has not taken any funds for personal gain, but opposition leaders and government critics have stepped up calls for him to resign.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media. It was unclear how long the US officials were in Kuala Lumpur, or whether they had completed their visit.

A team of lawyers for Deutsche Bank are in Kuala Lumpur preparing the report they intend to submit to the Department of Justice, one of the sources said.

Malaysia’s Attorney General, who was hand-picked by Najib, cleared him of all criminal offences in January, declaring that $US681 million ($888 million) that were deposited into his personal bank accounts were a gift from Saudi Arabia’s royal family.

The Wall Street Journal reported in March that more than $US1 billion was deposited in Najib’s account and global investigators believe much of it originated from 1MDB.

The fund has consistently denied these claims and repeated again on Thursday that no 1MDB funds went into the prime minister’s personal accounts.

Deutsche Bank is one of the many global lenders who had dealings with 1MDB, as the energy-to-real estate group expanded rapidly after its inception in 2009. The bank provided a $US975 million loan for 1MDB in late 2014, which was repaid last year.

The German bank was also advising the fund on a proposed $US3 billion initial public offering of its energy assets, which never took place.

JPMorgan normally acts as a US clearing bank for lenders operating in Malaysia. Its dealings if any with 1MDB were not immediately clear.

The US government is already reviewing Goldman Sachs’ relationship with the Malaysian fund. A Federal Bureau of Investigation team specialising in “international kleptocracy” is leading the bureau’s inquiries, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last year.

Goldman came under fire for the fees it charged for helping 1MDB raise funds through bond offerings. The fund racked up borrowings of about 42 billion ringgit ($US11.5 billion), before selling off assets in 2015 to pay down debt. Goldman has declined to comment.

Other international banks that have dealt with the fund are also facing questions.

Singapore’s central bank said on Friday it had asked financial institutions to provide details of any transactions linked to 1MDB, without identifying any lenders by name.

The burgeoning 1MDB scandal has rocked Najib’s government as public outrage over the alleged mismanagement and corruption grows. The scandal has fuelled a sense of crisis in a country under economic strain from slumping oil prices and a prolonged slide in its currency last year.

Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s longest-serving leader and once Najib’s patron, has become his fiercest critic and is leading a campaign to oust the prime minister with the support of some opposition leaders.

Mahathir quit the long-ruling United Malays National Organisation party, and joined hands with long-standing foes to crank up pressure on Najib to quit.

Along with the United States and Singapore, other countries are conducting investigations.

On Thursday, Luxembourg’s state prosecutor launched a judicial inquiry into allegations of money laundering involving hundreds of millions of dollars against 1MDB.

This follows a similar inquiry by Swiss prosecutors, who said earlier this year they had identified four cases of alleged criminal misconduct in the suspected misappropriation of about $4 billion from Malaysian state companies.

Malaysia’s central bank also said it would pursue administrative action against 1MDB for missing a deadline to submit documents on its finances abroad.

Reuters

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 3 April 2016, 2:25 pm and is filed under
Corruption
,
Financial Scandals
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Malaysia’s government silencing dissent

Ross Tapsell, ANU

East Asia Forum

30 March 2016

The current scandal embroiling Prime Minister Najib Razak has led the Malaysian government to crack down on press freedoms. But a restricted mainstream Malaysian media has not stopped the publishing online of information on the ongoing corruption scandal surrounding the Prime Minister and 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). It remains to be seen whether Najib’s crackdown will secure his position or whether the media will help unseat him.

Earlier this year, Thomas Carothers from the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace described our current times as a ‘paradox’. Despite rapid and transformative advances in communications and information technology allowing for greater freedom of expression, the number of democracies today is basically no greater than it was at the start of the century. How has the ‘paradox’ unfolded in Malaysia?

Malaysia’s online media is not exempt from legal and state pressures, but former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s decision in 1996 not to regulate or censor the internet has allowed Malaysia’s online media to become a relatively more open and vibrant space.

Malaysia’s internet penetration rate is now at 68 per cent of the population and well over 80 per cent in urban areas. At the same time, newspaper circulation has decreased in government-owned newspapers such as Utusan Malaysia, The Star, The New Straits Times and Berita Harian. Print media circulation is dropping in most countries worldwide where internet penetration is rising. In Malaysia this has been fuelled by the reality that many Malaysians are tired of government-sponsored messages and are reaching for alternatives.

Internet users are also younger. In the lead-up to the 2013 election, 64 per cent of Facebook users in Malaysia were aged between 18–34 years, while 62 per cent of the total unique visitors to the internet were aged between 15–34 years old. As Meredith Weiss has argued, Malaysia’s young voters’ ‘political identities will have been moulded in a fundamentally different discursive environment than those of their elders’. This is in no small part due to the changing nature of information disseminated via digital media platforms.

Social media played a prominent role in mobilising events such as the Bersih [Clean] rallies, which called for free and fair elections, and in the flourishing of anti-government material spread through young, urban communities. In a telling sign, in the 2013 election, urban voters largely voted for the opposition.

There is little doubt that changes in digital media technologies have tested the regime’s ability to control and massage the flow of information in Malaysia. Numerous international media have reported on the corruption scandal involving Prime Minster Najib, as well as the story of Mongolian model Altantuyaa Shaariibuu, who was murdered at the hands of the prime minister’s former bodyguards. These stories put Najib’s ‘already unstable tenure on even shakier ground’.

All these stories are regularly reported in Malaysia’s online media and shared on social media sites. These stories may be written or produced by ‘foreigners’, but they easily enter the local news cycle in the digital era. Online media sites such as The Sarawak Report, Malaysiakini and (until recently) The Malaysian Insider have regularly covered the investigations of other news outlets, in addition to the various investigations of their own.

Malaysia’s The Edge Financial Daily also reported on irregularities pertaining to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in 2013 and 2014. In the aftermath of the recent 1MDB scandal it continued to boldly uncover details of the case. It was a path that Edge Group founder Ho Kay Tat said was ‘one that we knew will be fraught with risks to ourselves personally and to our organisation’. Even the flagrantly pro-government newspaper Utusan Malaysia has seen a long-time editor resign over the scandal.

Najib believes that the 1MDB scandal has become a ‘trial by media’, and has claimed the allegations were a ‘political conspiracy’ against him. The Edge was suspended from publishing, with the excuse that it ‘threatened public order’. The Sarawak Report founder Clare Rewcastle-Brown was banned from entering Malaysia in 2013, and in July 2015 the site was blocked in Malaysia for its coverage of the 1MDB scandal.

In early 2016, the US-based website Medium.com was likewise unable to be accessed in Malaysia because it republished material from The Sarawak Report. Most recently, The Malaysian Insider was forced to close because, in the words of its founder Jahabar Sadiq, sites like his had become ‘too free for the government of Malaysia’.

Meanwhile, Malaysian citizens warned that sharing ‘misinformation’ via social media sites could lead to police intervention. Najib has threatened to sue international media such as The Wall Street Journal as well as the Sydney Morning Herald. Al Jazeera journalist Mary Ann Jolly was banned from entering the country, while Australian journalists working with the current affairs program Four Corners were arrested in Sarawak for ‘doorstopping’ the prime minister. They were later released, but left the country immediately.

Many Malaysians are still hoping that increased transparency, participatory media and the 24-hour news cycle enabled by digital media will bring about meaningful political change. But at the moment the harsh retaliations from the state are ushering in a more ruthless and resilient authoritarian regime, ultimately negating the pro-democracy forces in the country.

Dr Ross Tapsell is a lecturer in Asian Studies at The Australian National University. He researches the media in Indonesia and Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 4 April 2016, 2:53 pm and is filed under
Financial Scandals
,
Media
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Razaleigh is wrong to say Save Malaysia  Citizens’ Declaration is unconstitutional when it is in fact seeking a return to the fundamental principles of the Merdeka Constitution 1957 and Malaysia Constitution 1963 on democracy, rule of law, fundamental liberties and doctrine of separation of powers

UMNO veteran leader Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah is wrong when he said that the Save Malaysia Citizens’ Declaration first signed by 42 political and civil society leaders in Kuala Lumpur on March 4, 2016, including former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir and former Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, was unconstitutional or contemplated unconstitutional action.

Nothing could be further from the truth as it is in fact seeking a return to the fundamental principles of the Merdeka Constitution 1957 and Malaysia Constitution 1963 on democracy, rule of law, fundamental liberties and doctrine of separation of powers.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong, unconstitutional or undemocratic in calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister of the day, whether in Malaysia and in any other country practising parliamentary democracy, whether Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada,  India or even the United States in calling for the resignation of the President.

If the call for resignation of the Executive head of the land from the country’s citizenry is loud, clear and imperative, the democratic will and wishes of the people must prevail through the constitutional processes available – whether through voluntary resignation or a vote of no confidence in the highest legislature in the land.

Secondly, all the 42 signatories of the Save Malaysia “Citizens’ Declaration” are committed to  peaceful, non-violent,  democratic and constitutional processes and abjure any resort to any violent, undemocratic or unconstitutional means to achieve the demands of the Citizens’ Declaration, which are contained in Paragraph 36 of the Declaration, viz:

a) The removal of Najib as Prime Minister of Malaysia through non-violent and legally permissible means.

b) The removal of all those who have acted in concert with him.

c) A repeal of all recent laws and agreements that violate the fundamental rights guaranteed by the federal constitution and undermine policy choices.

d) A restoration of the integrity of the institutions that have been undermined, such as the police, the MACC, Bank Negara and the PAC.

Thirdly, the Citizens’ Declaration launched on March 4 in Kuala Lumpur is in fact to return to the fundamental principles of the Merdeka Constitution 1957 and Malaysia Constitution 1963 on democracy, rule of law, fundamental liberties and doctrine of separation of powers, as powerfully affirmed by Paragraph 37 of the Citizens’ Declaration, viz:

“37. We call upon all Malaysians, irrespective of race, religion, political affiliation, creed or parties, young and old to join us in saving Malaysia from the government headed by Najib, to pave the way for much-needed democratic and institutional reforms, and to restore the important principle of the separation of powers among the executive, legislature and judiciary which will ensure the independence, credibility, professionalism and integrity of our national institutions.”

The call of the Citizens’ Declaration in the final Paragraph 37 is in fact a summation of the speeches  which Tengku Razaleigh himself had made down the decades in his political career.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 4 April 2016, 8:25 am and is filed under
Constitution
,
Malaysian Dream
,
Najib Razak
,
nation building
,
Razaleigh Hamzah
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


ANZ quizzed over AmBank link to Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal

Leo Shanahan

THE AUSTRALIAN

APRIL 4, 2016

ANZ’s deputy chief executive and acting chief financial officer has been quizzed over the bank’s holdings in Malaysia’s AmBank amid the multi-billion dollar 1MDB corruption scandal engulfing that country’s government.

Appearing at a Senate committee looking into constructive default loans, Graham Hodges defended the role of ANZ in sitting on the board of Malaysian bank AmBank which held billions in the 1MDB funds at the centre of a global financial scandal.

With ANZ holding almost a 25 per cent shareholding in the Malaysian bank, ANZ has three permanent positions on AmBank’s board, which will soon include Mr Hodges himself and, formally, ANZ’s chief executive Shayne Elliott.

Under questioning from senators Mr Hodges described as “simplistic” allegations ANZ had governance questions to answer over AmBank and the scandal involving state investment fund 1MDB.

“Clearly the directors on that board are not at liberty to talk about what goes on … we do not control that bank. We are directors on that bank, it is a separately listed public company,” Mr Hodges told the committee in Sydney.

“As an ANZ executive and one which is a shareholder in that are we happy with that? Certainly not. But that’s different to implying that the culture or the integrity of one of the people who sat on the board is less than it should be because they’ve sat on the board.”

The scandal surrounds money transfers totalling more than $US1 billion alleged to have flowed into Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts between January 2011 and April 2013 — much of it from 1MDB.

The scandal has rocked the Malaysian government and triggered financial investigations by authorities on three continents.

Mr Najib has denied any wrongdoing and in January his hand-picked new Attorney-General, Mohamad Apandi Ali, demanded all Malaysian investigations into the transfers be closed, declaring the bulk of the money a gift from Saudi royalty.

The ANZ has been a major shareholder in Malaysia’s AmBank for almost 10 years, after buying a 24.9 per cent stake in 2006.

A partnership agreement drawn up after the acquisition and lodged with the ASX not only gives ANZ seats on AmBank’s board and empowers it to parachute its staff into key management positions, it also obliges the Malaysian institution to follow its Australian partner’s rules of probity and core policy “to the extent appropriate in Malaysia”. It must also consult ANZ before approving any business plan, major mergers, disposals, acquisitions or changes in capital structure or direction.

Mr Hodges told the Senate committee that ongoing banking scandals in Australia, including in financial planning and insurance, had hurt the bank’s public reputation and said the banks did have serious questions to answer to the public.

“We all have a heightened sense of focus around where customers have found themselves in difficult situations where it relates to the bank. I don’t think that’s recent, but there have been a lot of recent examples, and I think the banks have something to account for. Banks are acutely aware of this and I can’t say any of us enjoy having these circumstances to be honest,” Mr Hodges said.

“So whether it’s for us, we’ve had issues of managing Timbercorp, as you’d be very aware. There’s recent issues around insurance, or the impaired loans here. You can go back further as well to financial planning. So there’s a clear range of issues which have emerged.”

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 8:21 am and is filed under
Corruption
,
Financial Scandals
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Ariff: Malays must shed fairy tales, false notions

Joe Fernandez | April 5, 2016

Free Malaysia Today

Mahathir, like the Malays, was wrong to assume that Najib Razak’s nobility can be equated to him doing what’s right and carrying out noble deeds

ariff,mahathir

KUALA LUMPUR: Raub MP Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz, taking to his blog, said that he was present at Dataran Merdeka on April 1 when former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, at 91, addressed the crowd at an anti-GST rally. “The gathering this time was not as large as that during the Bersih rallies although the issue was also about Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.”

“The weather was too hot and besides, the GST issue was too technical for many unlike what Bersih was all about.”

The people, added the MP, prefer the big picture. “The people want to see Najib out from Putrajaya and replaced by a government that’s aware of the environment.”

As Mahathir spoke, said Ariff, he couldn’t help but feel that Najib was also a result of the former Prime Minister’s fault. “It was a mistake on his part to believe that Najib comes from a noble family and will naturally do what’s right.”

“This is the fault of the Malays too, to believe that only the nobility has a monopoly on noble values and deeds.”

The Malays, he pleaded, must stop dwelling in false notions and fairy tales, in claiming that it was Mahathir’s backing of Najib that eventually led to the latter eventually taking to power.

The bottomline, alleged Ariff, is that the people are caught up in regrets and suffering under the Najib Administration.

“Mahathir at 91 wants to get past his regrets and help put things right. We have no choice but to support him, not so much to help him deal with his mistakes, but for the sake of the country.”

Ariff claimed that Najib was trying to divert the attention of the people from his misdeeds by delving into other issues like Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s purchase of his residential bungalow. “If there’s substance in the allegations against Lim, the matter should be brought to Court. He’s ready to be judged in Court.”

Again, said the MP, this can be attributed to the fact that Malays can be easily bought. “Let’s hope this phenomenon is confined to the three million Umno members and does not involve the 15 million Malays who refuse to have anything to do with the party. If it’s the latter case, Malaysia can still be saved. We need a government based on the rule of law.”

He referred to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s recent expose on Najib as one which has brought matters to a head.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 6:21 pm and is filed under
Lim Guan Eng
,
Mahathir
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Battle of Sarawak in the 11th Sarawak State General Election is the Battle for Malaysia for future generations in Sarawak as well as rest of the country

The Battle for Sarawak in the 11th Sarawak State General Election with the dissolution of the Sarawak State Assembly on April 11 is the Battle for Malaysia for future generations, in Sarawak as well as rest of the country.

Never before have the Sarawak state general election been so important in the 53-year history of Sarawak, for what happens on Sarawak polling day is not just about Sarawak, about how  big a majority  Chief Minister Datuk Adenan Satem will have  in the new State Assembly, but even more important, how it will affect Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s tenure as sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia and his ability to deflect or to continue to disregard the national and international furore over his RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin mega scandals.

In fact it is no exaggeration to say that  the forthcoming Sarawak State General Elections is even more important to Najib than to Adenan in determining the fate of the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia.

This is the reason for Najib’s cryptic remark in Kuching yesterday that he was fighting fit for the crucial Sarawak state general election, with the symbolic reference of his choosing between two T-shirt sizes – XL and XXL.

He chose the XL and he said he could wear it, and the message is clear: “I am fighting fit and I will take on anyone”.

In Miri yesterday, Najib said he had visited Sarawak as Prime Minister 49 times already, and not just because of state elections but because he sincerely want to see Sarawak’s development catch up with other states in the peninsula.

Has Najib visited Sabah 49 times since becoming Prime Minister, and if not, is this because he did not want Sabah’s development to catch up with other states in the peninsula?

The people of Sarawak and Malaysia are not children, for it is obvious to all that Najib had visited Sarawak 49 times since becoming Prime Minister precisely because  of the impending Sarawak state general elections and not so much about his wanting Sarawak’s development to catch up with other states in the peninsula.

May be Najib can give a breakdown of the number of his visits to Sarawak before and after the May 5, 2013 national general elections.

As there is nothing wrong about the Prime Minister’s visit to Sarawak,  why should Najib try to camouflage  it under some hifalutin ground when all know that all these “noble motives” are untrue and the real reason is the impending Sarawak state elections?

The Sarawak state general election will be a most extraordinary state general elections, for at stake is not so much the future of Sarawak Chief Minster Datuk Adenan Satem but the fate of the Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Nobody disputes that the Adenan will be returned as the Sarawak Chief Minister in the 11th Sarawak state elections.

The question on polling day is not whether Adenan will win the simple majority to form the new Sarawak State Government, but whether he will be able to secure a two-thirds majority in the Sarawak State Assembly – i.e. winning at least 55 State Assembly seats or ensuring that the Opposition in Sarawak do not collectively win a total of 28 seats.

The position of Adenan as the Chief Minister of Sarawak is very safe, secure and unchallenged,  and the only question is whether he will have two-thirds majority in the State Assembly.

One lesson from history, including Malaysian history, is that two-thirds majority whether Parliament or the State Assembly without proper checks and balances is vulnerable to gross abuses of power, which gets worse with the passage of time.

It is in the interests of the people and to the system of parliamentary democracy that such checks-and-balances against abuses of power are strongly and effectively put in place.

The issue in the Sarawak state general elections is not whether Adenan will continue as Sarawak Chief Minister but  whether the Sarawak Barisan Nasional should be given a two-thirds majority in the 11th Sarawak polls.

The most powerful reason why the Sarawak Barisan Nasional should be denied a two-thirds majority in the Sarawak State Assembly  is to provide the necessary checks-and-balances to avoid abuses and excesses of power.  This is not in the best interest of promoting the state autonomy rights and powers as spelt out in the Malaysia Agreement 1963.

Furthermore,  a two-thirds majority victory for Sarawak Barisan Nasional  in the Sarawak state general election will be taken as a vindication of the Najib premiership, especially Najib’s RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion twin mega scandals, and as a mandate for the Najib administration to resort to undemocratic and repressive policies to stifle democracy, human rights as well good governance principles like the National Security Council Bill.

The Battle for Sarawak in the 11th Sarawak State General Election with the dissolution of the Sarawak State Assembly on April 11 is not just about Sarawak but is  the Battle for Malaysia for future generations, in Sarawak as well as rest of the country.

(Speech at the Official Commemorative Book Launch of “Impian Sabah & Sarawak: A Malaysian Dream”, and forum “Battle of Sabah & Sarawak, Battle for Malaysia” at the KL-Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall (KLSCAH), Kuala Lumpur on Monday, 4th April 2016 at 8 pm)

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 5:32 am and is filed under
Elections
,
Malaysian Dream
,
Sarawak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


The Brain, Mind, and Mindset

M. Bakri Musa

5th April 2016

A discussion on the “free mind” begins with clarifying three related terms:  brain, mind, and mindset.

            The brain is the jelly-like structure in our skull, part of our central nervous system. To use the language of computers, the brain is the central processing unit of our nervous system. It is, however, much more; the brain is the core of our consciousness.

            Like any other organ, the brain has its own blood supply, support structures, and nutritional requirements. Like the heart, any developmental or other abnormalities of the brain will adversely affect its many functions. Unlike the heart however, which is fully developed and functional at birth (a baby’s heart functions in the same manner as an adult’s), the brain continues its development for many years after birth. Indeed, significant development of the brain occurs after birth, especially in the first few critical years of early childhood.

            There is another major difference between the brain and other organs. While the internal parts of the heart for example, do communicate with each other, they do so only so they can function in a coordinated and rhythmic way to make the organ mechanically efficient. In the brain however, the communications of its various internal parts define the function of the whole brain. The significant point is that this development of communication pathways is as much dependent on what had been programmed in that individual through his genetic make-up as much as on the environment, internal and external, physical as well as non-physical.

            The definition of the mind that is relevant here refers to the intellect and consciousness, our thoughts, perceptions, memory, emotions, will and imagination, among others. The mind is also our thinking process, the rational aspects of our behavior. Thus behaving in an aberrant fashion is referred to as being out of one’s mind. Dispensing with the philosophical and theological, and stating it differently and briefly while albeit simplistically, the mind is the brain at work. If the brain does not work, as for example by the clamping of the blood supply and thus depriving it of life-giving oxygen, the brain would be dead, and with that, the mind and the person.

            I am aware of the many accounts of near-death experiences that would seem to challenge this assertion. As a junior physician I was part of a team that successfully resuscitated a journalist who had a heart attack. Later he was able to recall the drama minute by minute. It was as if, as he related, he had had an out-of-body experience and was watching the whole event from the ceiling, detached. Others have described similar experiences. The overall theme, heavy with religious connotations, is that the mind or soul is separate from and independent of the anatomical brain. I will leave it at that and not get into that line of inquiry, which is heavy on philosophy and theology.

            Mindset on the other hand refers to our outlook in or philosophy of life. It is the set of ideas, attitudes and assumptions that we as individuals or members of a group share of reality, or what we perceive to be it. Neurologically speaking, mindset is the preexisting neural pattern in our brain; conceptually, it is our mental hypothesis of reality.

            While the brain is something physical and can be touched, mind and mindset are but concepts. All three are interrelated but the nature and level of the relationships are not well understood. Increasingly but not exclusively they point towards the molecular (specifically neurotransmitter) level, or what neuroscientists refer to as the “neurotransmitter correlates of consciousness.”

            Two relevant and related insights of modern neuroscience are the brain’s ability to change with new experiences or in response to injury, an attribute termed neuroplasticity, and the other, the concept of “use it or lose it.”

            At the cellular level, neuroplasticity means the ability of the brain to form new pathways based on fresh stimuli (experiences). This is best demonstrated in the almost miraculous ability of the adult brain to readjust following injuries. Initially this plasticity was thought to be the exclusive property of the young brain, but now it is recognized to be a lifelong capacity, although obviously most pronounced in the young.

            As for “use it or lose it,” a baby’s brain has almost limitless ability to learn and form new neural networks. However, over time if these pathways are not used, meaning, if a particular mental faculty associated with that network is not utilized, then it will atrophy, a process termed “synaptic pruning.”

            The classic example is the lazy eye syndrome in childhood; untreated it will lead to blindness of that eye. When the muscles of one eye are not well coordinated or weak, that eye sends a different image from that of the good eye. This confuses the brain, and it adapts by “ignoring” the image from the bad eye. Over time through synaptic pruning, the neural wiring from that bad eye to the brain will atrophy and you will get the condition of “cortical blindness” where between the brain and that eye has atrophied from disuse.

            Conversely, those mental faculties (and thus neural networks) that are used often will be strengthened. In this regard the brain is like the muscle, the more we use it the stronger it becomes; the less, the faster it atrophies.

            The environment, especially social and emotional, plays a major role in both neuroplasticity and synaptic pruning; hence the importance of a nurturing and stimulating environment especially in early childhood.

            Lifelong neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to form new networks in response to new experiences or injuries, and “synaptic pruning,” letting those rarely-used pathways atrophy, are the essence of the brain, not its size, proportion, capacity, or whatever innate ability.

            There are exceptions, of course, specifically the outliers at either end of the spectrum. At one end are the unfortunate few with mental developmental deficits. At the other, unfortunately equally few, are the exceptionally gifted and talented. While we know more about the first group, to the extent of being able to prevent or ameliorate specific maladies as with phenylketonuria (PKU – mental retardation due to the inability to utilize the essential amino acid phenylalanine), we are woefully ignorant of those with exceptional talents.

            Again cognizant of the complexity, the brain’s plasticity is the good news, but not all the time. There is no guarantee that when those new networks are formed as a consequence of new experiences that they would always be beneficial. They could well be maladaptive and confer no benefits and may indeed make things worse. An example would be the phantom pain syndrome amputees suffer. Here the nerve to the amputated leg has been severed but the brain forms new pathways to compensate for that loss. Consequently the patient still suffers from the old pain he had before the amputation. This new phantom “pain” can just be disabling.

            Simplistically put, the mind is the brain with the composite of all these neural networks together with its established patterns and archives of memories. To use the computer analogy, the brain is the combination of both hardware and software, while the mind is the computer, which in addition to its hardware and software would also include all applications and files, downloaded materials that had been stored, and the set default positions.

            In so far as those from the same family, tribe, race, culture and profession would share commonality of experiences and learning, then we could have the Malay mind, the legal mind, or the mind of an economist.

            As cultures differ, and with that our experiences, norms and values, it is not a surprise that there should be differences between a Malay and English mind for example, just as we would expect differences between a legal mind and the mind of an economist. A policeman used to encountering the criminal elements of society would greet a stranger in a very different way than a priest. The former would be more circumspect and suspicious while the latter, spontaneous and warmly welcoming.

            These are the predictable and understandable differences. Physicians are specifically trained to be sensitive to these nuances in our patients, to be alert and able to read, as it were, their patient’s mind. To a stoic farmer, “It hurts just a wee bit!” has an entirely different meaning from, “It hurts all over!” lament of a hysterical actress.

            It is less important whether we have a Malay or an English mind, or whether we approach a problem with a legal mind or the mind of an economist, more important that we have a free mind unencumbered by or at least aware of the baggage of our preconceptions and past experiences. Our past experiences should be a guide or compass, not a trap or a baggage.

            To summarize, the brain with all its existing neural networks and stored memories is the mind. That is an oversimplification but operationally it is sufficient for the purpose of this book. A free mind is not a brain that denies or pretends that all these networks and stored memories do not exist, rather one that still maintains its plasticity, meaning the ability to form new networks and store new memories. In short, a free mind is a brain that remains as fresh as that of a newborn, ever eager to learn from new experiences and more than ready to give up its old, no longer valid pathways and assumptions.

Excerpts from the author’s last book, Liberating The Malay Mind, ZI Publications, Petaling Jaya, 2013.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 7:51 am and is filed under
Bakri Musa
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


The Tragic-Comedy Continues…

By Martin Jalleh

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 11:49 am and is filed under
Financial Scandals
,
Martin Jalleh
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


A sad and tragic contrast!

By Martin Jalleh

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 3:00 pm and is filed under
Financial Scandals
,
Martin Jalleh
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


How a Cryptic Message, ‘Interested in Data?,’ Led to the Panama Papers

by Nicola Clark

New York Times

APRIL 5, 2016

PARIS — The leak of millions of private financial documents linking scores of the world’s rich and powerful to a secretive Panamanian law firm peddling in shell companies and offshore bank accounts began more than a year ago with a cryptic message to a German newspaper from an anonymous whistle-blower.

“Hello, this is John Doe,” the source wrote to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich-based newspaper that had worked on several investigations into tax evasion and money-laundering scandals. “Interested in data?”

“We’re very interested,” replied Bastian Obermayer, a veteran of several investigations into financial scandals.

In the months that followed, the confidential source fed Süddeutsche’s reporters a steady stream of emails, scanned letters, photographs and client data ripped from the servers of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama City law firm that has been dogged for decades by investigations into its suspected connections to money laundering. It was a trove that ultimately added up to 11.5 million individual files equivalent to 2.6 terabytes of data.

The German reporters worked for more than two months verifying that the documents were genuine and trying to unravel the complex web of secret transactions. “It became an addiction,” Mr. Obermayer’s colleague, Frederik Obermaier, wrote in an emailed response to questions. “We often messaged each other at crazy times, like 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. about the newest findings.”

But the sheer volume of data contained in the initial batch soon overwhelmed the German newspaper’s five-person investigations team. The paper turned for help to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington, D.C., which has coordinated several previous global projects on financial data leaks.

Within weeks, the ICIJ had assembled an army of about 400 journalists from more than 100 news organizations in 80 countries, including The Guardian and BBC in Britain, the French daily Le Monde, the Sonntagszeitung in Switzerland, and L’Espresso, an Italian weekly newsmagazine. Many of the same journalists had collaborated with the center before on investigations into tax havens including the “Swiss Leaks” project in 2015 and the “Lux Leaks” series in 2014.

The ICIJ did not approach to The New York Times to participate. “This is an important subject, which we have written about ourselves, and continue to follow,” said Matt Purdy, a deputy executive editor at The Times. The leaked documents provide even more information, he added, and the work is to be applauded.

The media partners dissected the mountain of data that the Süddeutsche’s journalists received in several batches, each of which were forwarded to a secure ICIJ server. The project was code-named Prometheus, after the Titan from Greek mythology who stole the secret of fire from the gods.

Luke Harding of The Guardian, a former Moscow correspondent and a veteran of several international collaborations, including WikiLeaks in 2010 and the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, said the constant stream of new material meant that reporters were regularly relying on each other to help them keep track of new details.

Unlike past projects, where the leaked data were provided as a “discreet, one-off leaks” of hundreds or at most thousands of documents, “this was in real time,” said Mr. Harding, whose team focused on transactions involving individuals with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “We were constantly getting new data.”

With such a large number of people trolling through the same database, the partners needed to agree early on with a common strategy for collaboration and for parsing out the research, as well as a joint promise to hold off on publishing until everyone was ready. The partners held a series of secret meetings, some of which involved more than 100 people. The first took place at a rented room of the National Press Club in Washington in June, followed by others in Munich, London and Lillehammer, Norway.

“The danger was always that if something happened in the world and the reporters in that country would get terribly excited and want to publish right away,” Gerard Ryle, the director of ICIJ, said.

About a dozen staffers at ICIJ, plus freelancers, devoted themselves entirely to the project, building the tools used by its partners while also preparing a dozen or so of its own stories on the leak. Mr. Ryle and his deputy, Marina Walker Guevara, were in near-constant communication with what had become a sprawling team.

“This was not a story where the documents were the whole story,” Mr. Ryle said. “You had to work for it, you had to go outside of the documents. You could see a window, but you had go out and look.”

The ICIJ made a number of powerful research tools available to the consortium that the group had developed for previous leak investigations. Those included a secure, Facebook-type forum where reporters could post the fruits of their research, as well as database search program called “Blacklight” that allowed the teams to hunt for specific names, countries or sources.

While the original documents were written in 25 different languages, most of the communication on the forum took place in English, with reporters actively sharing interesting tidbits with the relevant specialized teams. Each news organization took their own precautions, restricting access to the secure computers that were used to connect to the ICIJ’s servers and ensuring that these were not accessible through their newsrooms’ regular networks.

Once specific names were found in the database, reporters dug deeper for any clues that might connect those individuals with a shell company, a bank account, or an ever-widening cast of characters. Working in concert with a team of reporters out of The Guardian’s safe room, Mr. Harding uncovered a web of more than 100 complex international transactions that revolved around an offshore firm linked to a musician named Sergei Roldugin, who is one of Mr. Putin’s closest friends.

“We knew there was a link to Putin’s buddy,” Mr. Harding said. “We knew money was being sent offshore from Russian state banks and being recycled back into Russia” through the offshore company.

Late last year, he said, the teams ultimately managed to establish a connection between that firm and another that owned an upscale ski resort near St. Petersburg that is a favorite of Mr. Putin. Further reporting eventually revealed that the same resort was the venue for the secret 2013 wedding of Mr. Putin’s daughter Yekaterina news of which only surfaced last year.

“In the Panama Papers, there was no Swiss bank account” that could provide a clear money trail, Mr. Harding said. “But in Russia, where your daughter gets married says a lot about what places you hold dear.”

Other news organizations used the Mossack Fonseca documents to expose the offshore accounts of political figures in countries like France, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as several international film stars and sports luminaries.

By Tuesday, the disclosures had already claimed their first high-level political victim. Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, the prime minister of Iceland, announced his resignation after revelations that he and his wife were clients of the Panamanian firm.

“Many rich and powerful people who have accumulated a lot of wealth must be having a spasm of panic about now,” Mr. Harding said. “They are realizing that actually their banking secrets are not safe and email is not a private medium.”

“I think we are entering a new golden age for investigative journalism,” he said.

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington and Ravi Somaiya from New York.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 7:44 am and is filed under
Corruption
,
IT
,
Media
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


IGP should be jailed by Parliament for contempt if he violates the unanimous resolution of Parliament and obstructs  Rafizi from attending last two sittings of Parliament today and tomorrow

The Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar should be jailed by Parliament for contempt of Parliament if obstructs the PKR Secretary-General and MP for Pandan Rafizi Ramli from attending the last two sittings of the current parliamentary meeting, i.e. today and tomorrow.

This is because Khalid would have violated the unanimous resolution passed by Parliament at the beginning of the current parliamentary meeting instructing the Inspector-General of Police to ensure that there is no obstruction for MPs to make their way to and from Parliament.

Now we have the IGP himself obstructing an MP from attending the last two sittings of Parliament with the “ambush” and arrest of Rafizi outside the gates of Parliament yesterday.

If Rafizi is not allowed the liberty to attend today and tomorrow’s Parliamentary sitting, a motion should be passed unanimously by Parliament today citing the Inspector-General of Police for contempt and putting him in jail until he purges the parliamentary contempt.

This is not a partisan issue, affecting the MP from PKR or Pakatan Harapan but an issue affecting parliamentary privileges of all MPs, regardless of political party.

The police arrest of Rafizi  is a clear-cut case of  parliamentary contempt especially the way Rafizi was ambushed and arrested outside the gates of Parliament – which is doubly unacceptable and inexcusable when there is an unanimous motion passed by Parliament instructing the IGP to ensure no obstruction for MPs to make their way to and from Parliament.

Is IGP Khalid trying to show that he is himself above Parliament, and not subject to the instructions of Parliament –turning the whole system of parliamentary democracy and principles of government responsibility and accountability   upside down!

All Members of Parliament, regardless of party affiliation as well as the Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, must stand as one on  this issue of parliamentary privileges and now allow the IGP to thumb the nose of Parliament.

The question whether the police can and should arrest Rafizi for alleged violation of the Official Secrets Act is a separate and secondary question.

Why can’t Rafizi be arrested after the adjournment of Parliament tomorrow?

Will the whole system of law and order come crumbling down?

Malaysia cannot allow the IGP to thumb the nose of Parliament as well as the nose of the international society, with the latest revelation of the Panama Papers, where 11.5 million documents – or 2.6 terabytes of data – provide a trove of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama, Mossack Fonseca, described as the fourth largest offshore law firm in the world, exposing how some of the world’s most powerful people used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes, raising questions about corruption in the global financial system.

I am still  suspended from Parliament for six months but I add my voice to those of all MPs who cherish  parliamentary privileges and dignity in Malaysia  and demand that IGP Khalid must not  obstruct Rafizi from attending the last two sittings of Parliament today and tomorrow, or Khalid should be jailed by an unanimous  parliamentary motion until he purged his contempt of Parliament.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 8:56 am and is filed under
Parliament
,
Police
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Inside Cyberjaya, Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley

by NICOLE KOBIE

Wired

05 APRIL 16

It’s past three in the morning, and our cab driver is lost – not only had he never heard of the city of Cyberjaya, but he also couldn’t find our hotel at its centre, the wonderfully named Cyberview Lodge Resort, built twenty years ago when ground was first struck at this would-be Malaysian Silicon Valley.

As we swung around yet another empty roundabout in the middle of the jungle, naked of any buildings or road signs, it was hard to fault the driver.

Ask government officials and developers, and Cyberjaya is a success, the heart of its knowledge-based economy: 85,000 people live there, they say, and dozens of multinationals have offices – and in a few years the train lines will reach out here, too. But ask a taxi driver in capital city Kuala Lumpur, only thirty minutes’ drive away, and they haven’t a clue what you’re on about.

Even those embedded in the tech industry might not be aware of Malaysia’s early attempt to jump on the digital bandwagon; I first heard of it via a now obscure story by Canadian journalist Chris Turner, who visited Cyberjaya in 2000, three years after its press launch.

Cyberjaya is a 30 minute drive from bustling Kuala Lumpur, but has struggled to realise its lofty ambition of becoming the Silicon Valley of MalaysiaGoogle Maps

Writing for Shift magazine, now defunct (and not online; the essay lives on via his latest book), he too asked his driver “Do you know where you’re going?” and noted an absence of people, anywhere. Turner also struggled with the disconnect between a country trying to build the next Silicon Valley while simultaneously having a derisible record of online freedoms. Last month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation described Malaysian internet censorship as going from “bad to worse”.

In some ways, little has changed in the nearly two decades since Malaysia dumped billions of dollars into building the city to house the Silicon Valley of the east. On a driving tour of the district, we looped around a large lake, past low buildings, and along near-empty roads all named “multimedia” this and “cyber” that.

It was hot and rainy, perhaps explaining why we spotted only a handful of people on our driving tour of the district – though the weather didn’t keep the pack of feral dogs off the lawn of the local police station. New restaurants and malls were pointed out and dutifully admired, but they must compete with the manic, bustling allure of KL, as Malaysia’s capital is better known.

I was in Malaysia as part of a trade mission for British technology firms organised by UK Trade and Investment and Innovate UK. Their hope? To win partners and investment in the so-called Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). One investor who attended the trade mission’s pitching meetings said his company had an office in Cyberjaya, because that ensured a decade or more of tax breaks, but he avoided it in preference of the KL location – where there’s stuff to actually do after work.

There has been some progress at Cyberjaya, however. Back when Turner visited, there were 25 companies based there; there are now 800, of which 40 are multinationals. Our guide Fina Ishak, head of investment promotion at developer Cyberview, told us Cyberjaya had so far drawn 86,000 residents, though a quarter of those are students at one of the five universities or colleges. And 40 per cent of those are from overseas.

Forget the retro-named, empty streets: the real problem is the work on offer. The 35,000-odd people who are actually employed in the district aren’t building the Googles of the future, but providing support and call centre services for global IT firms, who are in turn drawn by the cheap rent, budget broadband and tax deals. A local recruiter laughed at the idea of a Silicon Jungle, saying Cyberjaya was purely low-level employment. Ishak described the jobs on offer as shared services outsourcing (SSO), describing them as “mostly desk-bound” and “customer-service oriented jobs” that paid about £300 a month.

Malaysia has slowly realised it’s missed the value in technology, and Cyberjaya is attempting to catch up. It’s time to forget Silicon Valley – it’s time for something new, Melissa Teh, business development lead at Cyberjaya, told me. “Now we’re going to be a tech hub that’s self-sustaining.”

Moving away from outsourcing and into more creative, lucrative work won’t be easy. Cyberjaya will focus on the internet of things, and in particular smart cities and also encourage startups to move into the area. “In the first few years of its inception Cyberjaya only housed SSO workers, which do not go up to the high income chain, hence the shift whereby we now focus more on innovative works and creativity,” Ishak said. “When you have startups, that’s where you have all this innovation coming up and thus will assist the country to move up the high-income chain.”

The upside of building a city from scratch is that it gives you full control to try out new ideas, so Malaysia is now pushing Cyberjaya as a “living lab”. Have a smart technology you want to try in a real city? You’re very welcome in Cyberjaya.

The plans aren’t that ambitious – it’s mostly smart traffic lights, electric vehicles, and digital signage – but the ability to link it all together in one city could be compelling. And it gives a head start to internet of things and smart city startups based locally, desperate to trial their ideas in a real-world setting.

Dubbed MaGIC (Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre), Cyberjaya’s startup hub has a wide-ranging programme, from co-working to developer training and business bootcamps. There’s also a four-month accelerator for startups, which attracted 800 applications for its first session. A total of 50 spots were filled, split 30 local and 20 foreign.

The foreign attendees won’t feel out of place: the MaGIC headquarters are a mashup of Shoreditch and Google – Ishak said the developers visited Western co-working spaces as well as Google’s offices with the aim of aping their decor. The interior uses bold primary colours, with breakout rooms covered in fake grass instead of carpet. Outside, there’s a hotel made of shipping containers, home to a selection of startups who have won support to come and live and work locally.

Inside, you’d be hard pressed to tell if you were in London, San Francisco or Malaysia – the most noticeable difference is the higher proportion of women here than in Western accelerators I’ve visited. Startup founders gather at MacBooks in desks scattered about, though their Beats headphones sit atop hijabs. The walls proclaim “fireside chats” and a weekly “happy hour” mixer, though it serves teh Tarik, the local flat-white of teas, rather than bottles of beer.

Cyberjaya’s MaGIC startup hub took inspiration from Google and other western companies, introducing breakout rooms and decorating in bold, primary coloursNicole Kobie

To date Silicon Valley mimicry has failed Cyberjaya, so what can it do to be different? The accelerator is advertising for applicants from Japan and China, and happily takes startups from around the world. There’s a worse way to explore the Asian market for your startup than a tax-free tech hub with free accommodation and, in the near future, its own pool beneath the palm trees.

Back in 2000, Turner suggested it was easy to “laugh at the MSC’s folly,” thinking that there’s “no way a place like this is going to become the next Silicon Valley,” but even then realised it was better to see Cyberjaya as something entirely different. It was foolish to think that Malaysians “were busy building the next Silicon Valley. They’re not,” he said. “They’re building the first Multimedia Super Corridor.”

Whatever the MSC might turn out to be, Turner’s right, though it’s impossible to say if the attempted shift from Silicon Valley to homegrown Malayasian talent will be enough to reboot Cyberjaya as a home for innovation rather than call centres.

But it’s surely on a better road than before: imitating Silicon Valley led to roundabouts looping pointlessly through the jungle, after all.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 9:16 am and is filed under
IT
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Ministers’ failure of leadership and lack of   moral courage which is why the  Malaysian government has lost its moral compass and Malaysia  lost its way in the sixth decade of nationhood

The Higher Education Minister, Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh today gave an example of the Ministers’ failure of leadership and lack of moral courage which is why the Malaysian government has lost its moral compass and  Malaysia lost its way in the sixth decade of nationhood.

In answering the question by the PKR MP for Penampang Darell Leiking, Idris defended the two forums against Christianisation held by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), claiming that they were meant to explain the threat of Islamic State (IS) and Syiah teachings.

In a written parliamentary reply, Idris said:

“The objective of the seminars were to discuss academically the pros and cons on the matter in line with the intellectual culture at the higher education level.

“The seminars basically explained the issues of IS, Syiah and the crusade, from the historical point of view, as well as the development of Islam, which (they could) share with the UiTM students.”

How sad, the Higher Education Minister defending the indefensible, and what is patently wrong and unconstitutional – a complete failure of leadership and lack of moral courage to admit and declare that what UiTM had done in organizing the two anti-Christianisation forums were wrong and an assurance to Parliament the nation that such unMalaysian and unconstitutional activities will not be allowed in Malaysian public universities.

Idris and UiTM seem not to know that Article 3 and Article 12 of the Malaysian Constitution provide that Islam is the religion of the Federation but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony; with every Malaysian given the guarantee of freedom of religion,  the right to profess and practice his religion, subject to the state laws prohibiting proselytization of Muslims by other religions.

This means that public institutions, particularly public universities, should not engage in any anti-Christianisation or any  activities anti any religion – as it will be going against the  basis of Malaysia’s nationhood,  our plural character as a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation.

What shouts from the roofstops from Idris’ answer is his political, moral and intellectual cowardice in admitting that it was wrong for UiTM to conduct anti-Christianisation forums and to give an  assurances to Parliament and the nation that public universities will not be allowed in conduct any activities which promote hatred against any religion in Malaysia.

When will Malaysia have Ministers and leaders in government who have the moral, intellectual and political courage to defend and uphold the plural character of Malaysia’s nation-building basis, take a bold stand on moderation against all forms of extremism and intolerance, whether in public universities or elsewhere?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 1:33 pm and is filed under
Education
,
Parliament
,
university
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


The Panama Papers: Here’s What We Know

by Liam Stack

New York Times

APRIL 4, 2016

A group of global news organizations published articles this week based on a trove of leaked confidential documents from a law firm in Panama. They exposed how some of the world’s most powerful people were said to have used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.

The documents, known as the “Panama Papers,” named international politicians, business leaders and celebrities in a web of unseemly financial transactions, according to the articles, and raised questions about corruption in the global financial system. Many of the figures named in the leak have denied in the strongest terms that they had broken any laws.

This explainer has been tracking significant developments resulting from the disclosures. Among them:

• The prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned Tuesday.

• Gonzalo Delaveau Swett, the president of Transparency Chile, a branch of a global anti-corruption group, stepped down on Monday.

What are the Panama Papers?

The Panama Papers are 11.5 million documents — or 2.6 terabytes of data — provided by an unnamed source to a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, more than one year ago. They were taken from the files of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, described as the fourth-largest offshore law firm in the world.

Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the data with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit organization, along with reporters from over 100 news agencies around the world, including The Guardian, the McClatchy newspapers, Fusion and other outlets. The New York Times did not have access to the leaked documents.

Those media outlets are expected to publish more articles based on the Panama Papers in the coming days.

What are the most serious accusations made by the articles?

The articles said nearly 215,000 offshore shell companies and 14,153 clients were tied to Mossack Fonseca. They linked 143 politicians, their families and close associates — including 12 highly placed political leaders — to the use of tax havens to shield vast wealth.

Among those named were President Mauricio Macri of Argentina; President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine; Mr. Gunnlaugsson, then the prime minister of Iceland; Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan; King Salman of Saudi Arabia; the former emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and its former prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani; and the Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi, according to the consortium.

The cellist Sergei Roldugin, a close friend of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was also named in the documents. The Guardian described Mr. Roldugin as being at the center of a $2 billion scheme “in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore.”

On Tuesday, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino was linked to the scandal. The Guardian reported that the leak showed the first ties between the Union of European Football Associations (U.E.F.A.), the governing body of European soccer, and an offshore company owned by a businessman involved in the corruption scandal that lead to the ouster of Sepp Blatter as FIFA chief last year.

That link came in the form of a series of contracts between U.E.F.A. and the company, Cross Trading, that were signed by Mr. Infantino, who succeeded Mr. Blatter and served at the time as the director of legal services for U.E.F.A.

Juan Armando Hinojosa, who has been described as the “favorite contractor” of the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, was also mentioned in the leaked documents, which the consortium said showed that he had created “a complex offshore network” spread across nine corporate entities in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to hold roughly $100 million. Mr. Hinojosa was said to have created that financial arrangement shortly after he was embroiled in controversy over the sale of a $7 million house to Mexico’s first lady.

Mossack Fonseca also counted among its clients close associates of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to the BBC, and eight current and former members of China’s Politburo and the families of Chinese officials. Dozens of influential donors and politicians in Britain have also been named, including Ian Cameron, the father of Prime Minister David Cameron, who ran an offshore investment fund that avoided paying taxes in the United Kingdom, according to The Guardian. The elder Mr. Cameron died in 2010.

Are any Americans named in the leaked documents?

The documents indicated that 3,500 people who owned shares in offshore companies provided the Panamanian law firm with an address in the United States, but that does not mean they are American citizens. Scanned copies of at least 200 American passports were included in the trove of documents, according to McClatchy, which said that many appeared to be retirees using offshore companies to buy real estate in Latin America.

In addition, almost 3,100 companies incorporated by the law firm were linked to what McClatchy called “offshore professionals” based in the United States.

But it is not clear how many United States citizens were implicated in the schemes described by the articles. So far, the documents have connected no American politicians or other influential people to Mossack Fonseca, according to McClatchy and Fusion.

One reason there may be relatively few Americans named in the documents is that it is fairly easy to form shell companies in the United States. James Henry, an economist and senior adviser to the Tax Justice Network, told Fusion that Americans “really don’t need to go to Panama.”

“Basically, we have an onshore haven industry in the U.S. that is as secretive as anywhere,” he said.

Do the Panama Papers show evidence of any crimes?

It is not clear. Several countries began investigations into the leaked data on Monday, including the United States, France, Germany, Australia, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Holding money in an offshore company is generally not illegal, although such financial arrangements can be used in illegal ways — for example, to facilitate tax evasion or money laundering.

What has Mossack Fonseca said about the leak?

In a lengthy statement to The Guardian, the Panamanian law firm defended its practices and appeared to threaten the news agency with legal action.

The firm said that it was “legal and common for companies to establish commercial entities in different jurisdictions for a variety of legitimate reasons” and maintained that it had “always complied with international protocols” to the best of its ability to ensure that companies it incorporated were not being used for illegal or illicit purposes.

But it said the news agency had obtained “unauthorized access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company.”

“Using information/documentation unlawfully obtained is a crime, and we will not hesitate to pursue all available criminal and civil remedies,” its spokesman, Carlos Sousa, wrote.

What has been the fallout from the leak so far?

One of the first major repercussions occurred on Tuesday in Iceland, where Prime Minister Gunnlaugsson resigned, a day after thousands of people protested outside Parliament calling for him to step down.

Mr. Gunnlaugsson’s name appeared in the leaked documents in connection with an offshore company he established in the British Virgin Islands with a partner, whom he later married. The leak suggested that he had sold his shares of the company to his wife for $1 just before a new law took effect that would have required him to report his ownership of it as a conflict of interest.

Mr. Gunnlaugsson maintained that he had not concealed his assets or avoided paying tax.

On Monday in Chile, the president of the country’s branch of Transparency International, an anti-corruption group, quit after the Panama Papers linked him to at least five offshore companies.

The organization said in a statement that though its president, Mr. Delaveau, was not accused of illegal activities, it was “deeply troubled by what has happened.”

Many of the other figures named in the leaks have denied any wrongdoing. A spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, called the Panama Papers a case of “Putinophobia” and a plot to destabilize the country.

The spokesman’s wife was also named in the documents as the owner of an offshore company.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016, 7:56 am and is filed under
Corruption
,
IT
,
Media
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Child marriage is another form of modern day slavery

Syerleena Abdul Rashid

April 7, 2016

Pasir Putih MP Nik Mazian Nik Mohamad made a mockery of our institution today, by opposing the ban of child marriages by justifying that “If we restrict them from getting married, (their) lust will remain, and they will be exposed to premarital casual sex”. Not only is this justification sexist, it is a huge blow to social justice and human rights in our country.

Child marriage is catastrophic. Common sense dictates that it is immoral and the response given by Nik Mazian, indicate the distressing deterioration of reason and logic in our present day society.  According to UNICEF, approximately over ‘700 million women alive today were married as children’ and similar reports by the UN, estimate that between 2011 and 2020, over 140 million children – mostly, girls, will become child brides.

Although in Malaysia, the legal minimum age for marriage under civil law for both genders is 18, girls can marry at 16 under Islamic law – and sometimes even younger with the consent of the Syariah court. In 2014, the Malaysian Syariah Judiciary Department received roughly 600 marriage applications for couples below the age of consent and approximately 446 of these applications have been approved by the department.

Young girls who marry early put themselves at risk because they become susceptible to various health risks that are both physically and psychologically harmful. Complications of pregnancy and child birth are the leading causes of death for young mothers below the ages of 18.

Even though, Malaysia has adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which actively endorses to end child marriages and to protect the rights of children by honoring civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights; statistical data and the reactions displayed by several of our male elected leaders show that there is very little political will to see this atrocity come to an end.

Child marriage is a gross violation of human rights because it robs children of their adolescence. It puts children in situations where the level and quality of education are severely compromised, hence, barring them from actively participating in this country’s labour force. It simply hinders any opportunity for them to gain skills, develop proficiency and mature as coherent adults in an increasingly globalized culture. These issues are enough to reaffirm why child marriages must never be allowed.

Child marriages occur not because of religious sanctions but because of patriarchal cultural systems that allow such marriages to take place. The most common reasons for child marriage are poverty, lack of education, gender inequality in society, insufficient laws and the cultural belief that a girl ‘would be safer once married’.

In these communities, decisions are being made by men (i.e. political and religious leaders) and women often feel incapable of making their voices heard. Therefore, we must empower both girls and women through education and raise awareness to ensure they understand their rights.

Child marriage is just another form of modern day slavery and has nothing to do with preventing ‘lustful girls engaging in casual sex’. There are ways to combat social ills but sanctioning something that only legitimizes pedophilia is not something Malaysians need to be associated with.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 6:44 am and is filed under
Human Rights
,
Syerleena Abdul Rashid
,
women
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Fed Warned Goldman on Malaysia Bond Deals

by Justin Baer and Bradley Hope

Wall Street Journal

April 6, 2016

Regulator raised concerns about risk to firm’s reputation from work on 1MDB transactions

Regulators at the Federal Reserve have raised concerns with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that deals it helped put together for a controversial Malaysian government investment fund could have put the firm’s reputation at risk, according to people familiar with the matter.

Those deals are increasingly under a brighter spotlight, as additional details emerge about the alleged actions of the firm’s former Southeast Asia head who handled transactions for the fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd. or 1MDB.

People familiar with the matter said the partner, Tim Leissner, was suspended from the firm for writing a letter vouching for a financier with ties to that fund. Mr. Leissner was suspended and later quit early this year after a review of his email found he had allegedly written an unauthorized reference letter on behalf of Jho Low, a Malaysian investor who helped found 1MDB and was involved in some transactions done by the fund, people familiar with the matter said.

When it disclosed Mr. Leissner’s suspension, Goldman didn’t name Mr. Low. The fact that Mr. Leissner wrote a letter of reference to another financial institution for someone involved in 1MDB puts the firm deeper into the controversy surrounding the fund, lawyers say.

People familiar with the matter said Mr. Leissner’s letter had included details on Mr. Low’s finances, while overstating the extent to which Goldman had done due diligence on him.

Goldman is withholding unvested stock worth millions of dollars from Mr. Leissner going back several years until it completes its internal investigation on his dealings with 1MDB and Mr. Low, people familiar with the matter said. Goldman and Mr. Leissner have been negotiating over his compensation since he resigned.

Mr. Leissner, who has been subpoenaed in the probe and is cooperating with investigators, has not been accused of wrongdoing in the 1MDB deals. He didn’t respond to requests for comment about the letter and his involvement with Jho Low.

In writing the letter vouching for Mr. Low, which was reported earlier Tuesday by Bloomberg News, Mr. Leissner was lending Goldman’s name to a person whose lavish lifestyle and reputation for partying with celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have been well documented by celebrity gossip sites and tabloids.

Goldman Sachs was the main banker to 1MDB, advising on three acquisitions and arranging the sale of three bonds valued at a total of $6.5 billion, that brought in $650 million for the firm. Mr. Leissner, who was among the bankers working on the deals in 2012 and 2013, helped counsel 1MDB from its inception.

Investigators in at least six countries plus Malaysia are probing 1MDB. U.S. investigators are trying to determine whether Goldman misled investors who bought the 1MDB bonds, a person familiar with the matter said. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that Goldman was part of a broad probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. The investigation remains in its early stages, and neither Goldman nor 1MDB has been accused of wrongdoing.

By early 2014, The Federal Reserve, Goldman’s main U.S. regulator, was scrutinizing the bond deals, questioning the firm on why 1MDB had continued to sell bonds despite holding ample cash, the people said. Fed officials were also critical of Goldman’s vetting of the 1MDB deals, noting they had posed reputational risk.

Fed officials have continued to monitor Goldman’s role in the Malaysia scandal, the people said.

A Fed spokesman declined to comment.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 1:56 pm and is filed under
Corruption
,
Financial Scandals
,
Najib Razak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


How Muslim Governments Impose Ignorance

Mustafa Akyol

New York Times

MARCH 16, 2016

ISTANBUL — I recently spent a few days in Malaysia, where I was promoting the publication of the Malay edition of my book, “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.” The publisher, a progressive Muslim organization called the Islamic Renaissance Front, had set up several talks for me in Kuala Lumpur. As any author would be, I was happy to learn that the team was enthusiastic about my book and had been getting good feedback from audiences and readers. But I was troubled by something else that I suspect many Muslim authors have experienced: My publisher was worried about censorship.

The risk, I was told, was that the Department of Islamic Development, a government body that “was formed to protect the purity of faith,” could ban the book if it was viewed as violating traditional Islamic doctrine.

So far, the Malaysian government has not banned my book. But if it did I wouldn’t be surprised. The department has already outlawed more than a thousand books translated into Malay. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was banned because, according to the home minister, it “goes against Islamic teachings,” and even “endangers public harmony” — whatever that means. “Islam: A Short History,” a fairly sympathetic study by the best-selling author Karen Armstrong, was similarly banned for being “incompatible with peace and social harmony.”

Malaysia isn’t an anomaly in the Muslim world. In the more extreme case of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Information can censor any publication it wants, and the religious police can confiscate books if they detect what they perceive as a hint of blasphemy. Even the Bible, the world’s best seller, is banned in Saudi Arabia — no matter that the Quran praises it. In Egypt, under the iron fist of President Abdelfattah al-Sisi, a range of literary works can be outlawed. Last month, a novelist was sentenced to two years in prison for “violating public modesty.”

None of this is news, of course. The scarcity of intellectual freedom under self-described Islamic states has received criticism from many corners, from Islamophobic conservatives to Muslim liberals. In response, the authorities who censor books or ban blogs usually shrug. They typically think that freedom of speech is a Western invention to which they don’t have to subscribe. In Malaysia, the government brazenly condemns “liberalism” and “human rights-ism.”

These censors like to think that by protecting believers from dangerous ideas they are doing a great favor to Muslim societies. They are doing the opposite. Their thought-policing only helps enfeeble and intellectually impoverish Muslims: When Muslim minds aren’t challenged by “dangerous” ideas they cannot develop the sophistication needed to articulate their own.

I first realized this limitation about two decades ago when Richard Dawkins’s books “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker” were first published here in Turkey. The books presented an aggressively atheist interpretation of evolution. As a faithful Muslim and an aspiring writer, I wanted to write a rebuttal. As I started to do research, I realized that all of the reasoned arguments against Dr. Dawkins and other “new atheists” had been written by Western Christians. Since they lived in open societies where religion could be freely criticized, Western Christians had developed an intellectual tradition of apologetics. In Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other countries suffering under the yoke of censorship, however, Muslims hadn’t tried to counter the atheists. The government solved that the problem for them — by banning atheist books, if not also punishing atheists.

This willful closed-mindedness is not an inherent feature of Islam. A thousand years ago, Muslim societies were open and curious, while Christian Europe was insular and fearful of “blasphemy.” Aristotle’s books were translated and studied in Baghdad and Córdoba, and banned in Paris and Rome. No wonder the Muslim world was then the home to groundbreaking discoveries in science, medicine and mathematics. In theology, too, Muslim thinkers like Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroës, developed sophisticated arguments that would inspire Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas — thanks to the Muslim engagement with Greek philosophy.

Today, many Muslims, including those who censor books or punish “heretics,” long for that “golden age of Islam” and lament that our civilization is no longer great. Few seem to realize, however, that the greatness of Islam was made possible thanks to its openness to foreign cultures and ideas. The Muslim world began to stagnate and then decline after the 13th century, as this cosmopolitanism was replaced with self-isolating dogmatism. In the meantime, Europe flourished as Europeans began to think more openly.

The Muslim world today is in a state of malaise. Muslim societies are underdeveloped in science, technology, economics and culture. This will be overcome only with more freedom. Progress depends on more Muslims questioning whether policies that promote ignorance are really devised to protect their faith — or to protect the power of those who rule in its name.

Mustafa Akyol is the author of “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty,” and a contributing opinion writer.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 6:32 am and is filed under
Islam
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Lets work for a Three Wins  result in the  11th Sarawak State General Election – victories for Pakatan Harapan, Sarawak and Malaysia

The Battle for Sarawak in the 11th Sarawak State General Election with the dissolution of the Sarawak State Assembly on April 11 is the Battle for Malaysia for future generations, in Sarawak as well as rest of the country.

Never before have the Sarawak state general election been so important in the 53-year history of Sarawak, for what happens on Sarawak polling day is not just about Sarawak, about how  big a majority  Chief Minister Datuk Adenan Satem will have  in the new State Assembly, but even more important, how it will affect Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s tenure as sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia and his ability to deflect or to continue to disregard the national and international furore over his RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion “donation” twin mega scandals.

In fact it is no exaggeration to say that  the forthcoming Sarawak State General Elections is even more important to Najib than to Adenan in determining the fate of the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia.

This is the reason for Najib’s cryptic remark in Kuching on Sunday that he was fighting fit for the crucial Sarawak state general election, with the symbolic reference of his choosing between two T-shirt sizes – XL and XXL.

He chose the XL and he said he could wear it, and the message is clear: “I am fighting fit and I will take on anyone”.

In Miri, Najib said he had visited Sarawak as Prime Minister 49 times already, and not just because of state elections but because he sincerely want to see Sarawak’s development catch up with other states in the peninsula.

Has Najib visited Sabah 49 times since becoming Prime Minister, and if not, is this because he did not want Sabah’s development to catch up with other states in the peninsula?

The people of Sarawak and Malaysia are not children, for it is obvious to all that Najib had visited Sarawak 49 times since becoming Prime Minister precisely because  of the impending Sarawak state general elections and not so much about his wanting Sarawak’s development to catch up with other states in the peninsula.

May be Najib can give a breakdown of the number of his visits to Sarawak before and after the May 5, 2013 national general elections.

As there is nothing wrong about the Prime Minister’s visit to Sarawak,  why should Najib try to camouflage  it under some hifalutin ground when all know that all these “noble motives” are untrue and the real reason is the impending Sarawak state elections?

The Sarawak state general election will be a most extraordinary state general elections, for at stake is not so much the future of Sarawak Chief Minster Datuk Adenan Satem but the fate of the Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Nobody disputes that the Adenan will be returned as the Sarawak Chief Minister in the 11th Sarawak state elections.

The question on polling day is not whether Adenan will win the simple majority to form the new Sarawak State Government, but whether he will be able to secure a two-thirds majority in the Sarawak State Assembly – i.e. winning at least 55 State Assembly seats or ensuring that the Opposition in Sarawak do not collectively win a total of 28 seats.

The position of Adenan as the Chief Minister of Sarawak is very safe, secure and unchallenged,  and the only question is whether he will have two-thirds majority in the State Assembly.

One lesson from history, including Malaysian history, is that two-thirds majority whether Parliament or the State Assembly without proper checks and balances is vulnerable to gross abuses of power, which gets worse with the passage of time.

It is in the interests of the people and to the system of parliamentary democracy that such checks-and-balances against abuses of power are strongly and effectively put in place.

The issue in the Sarawak state general elections is not whether Adenan will continue as Sarawak Chief Minister but  whether the Sarawak Barisan Nasional should be given a two-thirds majority in the 11th Sarawak polls.

The most powerful reason why the Sarawak Barisan Nasional should be denied a two-thirds majority in the Sarawak State Assembly  is to provide the necessary checks-and-balances to avoid abuses and excesses of power.  This is not in the best interest of promoting the state autonomy rights and powers as spelt out in the Malaysia Agreement 1963.

Furthermore,  a two-thirds majority victory for Sarawak Barisan Nasional  in the Sarawak state general election will be taken as a vindication of the Najib premiership, especially Najib’s RM55 billion 1MDB and RM4.2 billion twin mega scandals, and as a mandate for the Najib administration to resort to undemocratic and repressive policies to stifle democracy, human rights as well good governance principles like the National Security Council Bill.

The Battle for Sarawak in the 11th Sarawak State General Election with the dissolution of the Sarawak State Assembly on April 11 is not just about Sarawak but is  the Battle for Malaysia for future generations, in Sarawak as well as rest of the country.

Lets work for a Three Wins result in the 11th Sarawak State General Election – win for Pakatan Harapan, win for Sarawk and win for Malaysia.

By “win for Pakatan Harapan”, I do not mean Pakatan Harapan capturing the Sarawak State Government, which I have already ruled out. I mean Pakatan Harapan fighting the Sarawak State General Election as one unit, and improving on Opposition showing as compared to the 2011 Sarawak State General Election.

It has been said that it is easier to attack than to defend.

The forthcoming Sarawak State General Election is going to be an uphill battle for DAP, depending on two outcomes: firstly, whether we can defend our 12 State Assembly seats in the urban areas; and secondly, whether we can win a breakthrough into the Dayak seats DAP will be fielding candidates.

As the Battle of Sarawak in the 11th state polls is in fact a Battle for Malaysia, I call on everyone in Sarawak and Malaysia to help to achieve Three Wins in the Sarawak Polls – victories for Pakatan Harapan, Sarawak and Malaysia.

(Speech at the opening of the DAP Sarawak Election National Mobilisation Briefing and Workshop at Starlight Seafood Naturalle, Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 7th April 2016 at 11am)

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 11:14 am and is filed under
Elections
,
Pakatan Harapan
,
Sarawak
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


The Panama Papers’ Sprawling Web of Corruption

by The Editorial Board

New York Times

APRIL 5, 2016

The first reaction to the leaked documents dubbed the Panama Papers is simply awe at the scope of the trove and the ingenuity of the anonymous source who provided the press with 11.5 million documents — 2.6 terabytes of data — revealing in extraordinary detail how offshore bank accounts and tax havens are used by the world’s rich and powerful to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes.

Then comes the disgust. With more than 14,000 clients around the world and more than 214,000 offshore entities involved, Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm whose internal documents were exposed, piously insists it violated no laws or ethics. But the questions remain: How did all these politicians, dictators, criminals, billionaires and celebrities amass vast wealth and then benefit from elaborate webs of shell companies to disguise their identities and their assets? Would there have been no reckoning had the leak not occurred?

And then the core question: After these revelations, will anything change? Many formal denials and pledges of official investigations have been made. But to what degree do the law and public shaming still have dominion over this global elite? A public scarred by repeated revelations of corruption in government, sports and finance will demand to know.

It took scores of reporters convened by the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the recipient of the leaked cache, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, with whom it shared the data, more than a year to sort through the information, and it will take governments, commissions and prosecutors a long time to determine what laws have been violated, what taxes have been avoided and what remedial steps must be taken.

The fallout from the revelations has already begun. The prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, linked in the papers to a secret account, on Tuesday became the first public official forced to resign. Britain and Germany, among others, have announced that they are investigating whether citizens named in the papers avoided paying taxes. Americans do not figure prominently in the data trove, though that should not excuse the United States government from joining in a thorough investigation.

Offshore banking is not in itself illegal, and not all those named should be presumed to have done wrong. But it is clear that the secrecy of the sort Swiss banks formerly provided and now lawyers in Panama offer is a magnet for ill-gotten fortunes and tax evaders.

The papers chronicle a global industry developed to enable an international elite enriched by corrupt or illegal means to conceal its wealth and dealings from taxation, prosecution and public wrath. They expose the questionable riches that public officials have concealed, whether in Iceland, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia or Malaysia. President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia have already clamped down on the media for shining an unwelcome light on the shady financial dealings of their cronies and family members.

Above all, the Panama Papers reveal an industry that flourishes in the gaps and holes of international finance. They make clear that policing offshore banking and tax havens and the rogues who use them cannot be done by any one country alone.

Lost tax revenue is one consequence of this hidden system; even more dangerous is its deep damage to democratic rule and regional stability when corrupt politicians have a place to stash stolen national assets out of public view.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 6:19 am and is filed under
Corruption
,
IT
,
Media
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.


Three basic flaws of the long-awaited Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on 1MDB

Two important events  happened this morning which would have far-reaching consequences on the development of  democratic governance in Malaysia.

The first was the unprecedented march by scores of Members of Parliament from Parliament House to Bukit Aman to protest the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar’s  utter contempt of Parliament  in the police arrest of PKR Secretary-General and MP for Pandan Rafizi Ramli despite a long-standing parliamentary motion instructing the Inspector-General of Police to take all necessary measures to ensure that there  is no obstruction to MPs travelling to and fro parliamentary meetings.

The second item was the tabling of the long-awaited Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on 1MDB.

I have not read the PAC report but clearly the PAC report is guilty of major failings even without having to refer to it.

There are at least three basic flaws in the PAC report on 1MDB.

Firstly, the PAC Report on 1MDB does not append the Auditor-General’s Interim Report on 1MDB submitted to the PAC in June last year.

Secondly, the PAC Report on 1MDB does not append the Auditor-General’s 300-page final audit report on the 1MDB submitted to the PAC last month.

The PAC is a committee of Parliament which  is delegated the responsibility to scrutinise the value for money – the economy, efficiency and effectiveness – of public spending and holds the government and civil servants to account for the delivery of public services and submit reports to Parliament.

The PAC does not exist on its own right and every document or report presented to the PAC is meant for final presentation to Parliament in the PAC report.

How can Hasan, as PAC Chairman,  be responsible for the gross dereliction of duty of PAC  in failing to append the Auditor-General’s two reports (Interim Report and Final Audit Report) to Parliament when presenting the PAC report on 1MDB?

In the recent controversy over whether the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB presented to the PAC last month was a classified document under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), the PAC Chairman Datuk Hasan Arifin is on public record as declaring that the Auditor-General’s final audit report will no longer be a classified document under the OSA when the PAC tables its report in Parliament  – which was 10 am in Dewan Rakyat this morning.

Why have PAC Chairman omitted the Auditor-General’s final audit report in the PAC report on 1MDB and why are there attempts to argue that the Auditor-General’s final audit report is still a classified document which is covered by the OSA?

The net effect of such turn-and-twists to continue to bar the Auditor-General’s final audit report from general publication can only increase public suspicion that the powers-that-be have a lot of things to hide on 1MDB, which will only further undermine the Najib government’s very low-level credibility and trustworthiness.

PKR MP Rafizi has been arrested for allegedly making a disclosure from the Auditor-General’s final audit report to the PAC.

Going by what PAC Chairman had said publicly, that the Auditor-General’s final audit report would cease to be a classified document under the OSA, this would mean that what Rafizi is alleged to have disclosed from the Auditor-General’s final audit report is now no more “classified” official secret.

This would mean that Rafizi would at most be guilty of a technical offence under the OSA for revealing what is in the Auditor-General’s final audit report a few days before it was declassified with the tabling of the PAC report on 1MDB today – which means that Rafizi was never  involved in any major security crime which could bring about enormous and irreparable  harm to the country as to justify the arbitrary police arrest of Rafizi as actually happened, as if  Rafizi is as  dangerous as a Islamic State terrorist!

The third major flaw of the tabling of the PAC report on 1MDB in Parliament today is the disappearance of the PAC Chairman, Datuk Hasan Arifin.

A text message from the PAC Secretariat to PAC members yesterday gave notification that the PAC Chairman would not be holding a press conference today after the tabling of the PAC report on 1MDB, as Hasan is ill and would only answer media questions on the PAC report on 1MDB  in the next Dewan Rakyat meeting.

What sickness is Hasan suffering from that he anticipated such a long illness?

I wish Hasan swift and full recovery, but PAC has a deputy chairman, the MP for Kepong Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, who should be able to stand in Hasan’s stead to conduct a media conference on the tabling of the PAC report on 1MDB.

Is Hasan implying that he has  absolutely no confidence in his No. 2 in the PAC?

The PAC Report on 1MDB is undoubtedly the most important one in the history of PAC in Malaysia in the past 47 years, attracting not only  national but also  international attention and interest.

The PAC should feel proud of its report which is regarded of  such national and international attention, but the PAC seems to be very uncomfortable about the PAC report to the extent that a media conference on the PAC Report on 1MDB has been put off for over a month.

Something is really very wrong about the 1MDB and the PAC report on  the 1MDB.

[Speech (2)  by DAP Parliamentary Leader and MP for Gelang Patah Lim Kit Siang at the opening of the DAP Sarawak Election National Mobilisation Briefing and Workshop at Starlight Seafood Naturalle, Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 7th April 2016 at 11am]

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 April 2016, 3:55 pm and is filed under
Corruption
,
Financial Scandals
,
Najib Razak
,
Parliament
. You can follow any responses to this entry through
RSS 2.0
.