In Malaysia, Humor Is No Laughing Matter

By Sarah Hucal

US News

Aug. 16, 2016

A political cartoonist’s court case raises questions about this Asian nation’s limits on expression.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – His office has been raided, his employees arrested and his books banned. His last publisher worked at night, unwilling to take a sample of his previous work, lest it be discovered. Yet political cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, known to most as Zunar, refuses to put down his pens, providing cartoon commentary on the Malaysian government.

Zunar has been charged with nine counts of Malaysia’s Sedition Act for social media posts criticizing the Federal Court’s decision to uphold the sodomy conviction of Anwar Ibrahim, the ruling party’s main political rival. Yet, despite facing a possible 43 years of jail time, the award-winning cartoonist continues to encourage what he says is the safest and most-powerful form of protest: laughter. “There’s no law to stop you from laughing,” points out the cartoonist during an interview in his office in the Malaysian capital.

The cover of his latest book portrays Prime Minister Najib Razak as a swashbuckling pirate. The prime minister is shown wielding a bag of 2.6 billion Malaysian ringgit, representing the $731 million the U.S. Justice Department alleges he received illicitly from the public investment fund he oversees.

Najib has denied wrongdoing and maintains the money was a gift from an unnamed Saudi donor.

Najib leads United Malays National Organisation, head of the coalition that has been in power since Malaysia’s independence from Great Britain in 1957. Yet, even as global investigators follow a multi-billion-dollar trail of cash from Malaysian public investment fund 1 Millennium Development Board to his bank account and associates and friends, he refuses to step down, and has instead doubled efforts to clamp down on critics.

Independent news sites have been blocked, peaceful protesters arrested and laws strengthened in what many see as a fight or flight struggle for the leader to maintain credibility. In August, the controversial National Security Council Act came into force, giving Najib the right to declare near-martial law in areas perceived to be a security threat. Rights groups fear it will allow the prime minister to act with impunity.

“We are seeing a crackdown that’s unprecedented in the last 30 years” says Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. Zunar, he adds, is at the forefront of this. “He is quite clear that he will use his freedom of expression to demand that what he sees as a just and fair outcome for Malaysia comes to pass.”

Zunar’s caricatures resonate with a broad audience, transcending language and cultural barriers in the diverse country of 28 million. Ethnic Malays, the majority of whom are Muslim, make up 67 percent of the population followed by Malay Chinese and Malay Indians.

The cartoonist has tens of thousands of followers on social media, but the Malaysian government has failed to find the humor in his caricatures. In 2010, the government banned the printing, distribution, sale and possession of his books, claiming they were prejudicial to public order.

A frequently used legal tool of the government is the Sedition Act. “Sedition is kind of a catch-all that the government uses in order to restrict the expression of all sorts of people,” says David Kaye, a lawyer and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Kaye has sent numerous letters urging the Malaysian government to repeal the act on behalf of the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N.-approved standards allow governments to restrict expression because of national security or public order concerns, says Kaye, “… but Malaysia can’t show that in the case of Zunar or lawyers, protestors or publishers.”

When Najib came to power in 2009, he pledged to repeal the Sedition Act. Instead, the law was used 91 times in 2015, nearly five times more than in its first 50 years of existence. It was strengthened in April to include increased jail time and restrictions on speech.

Malaysia has a history of restricting expression said to upset the country’s social harmony. Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, in office from 1981 to 2003, the media was tightly controlled as the economy grew. Mahathir persuaded the public that rapid economic development would need to come at the expense of some liberties, according to Azrul Mohd Khalib of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, a Kuala Lumpur think tank.

A media career takes off

For Zunar, a little-known talent in the early 1990s, selling political cartoons to the mainstream media was next to impossible. A job at newspaper Berita Harian led to frustration as an editor continued to suggest topics less likely to ruffle feathers. Finding the same self-censorship at other publications, he walked away from political cartooning.

But in 1998, protests against Mahathir’s party and widespread corruption brought new hope. “It changed the political scenario in Malaysia. People started to wake up and go to the streets, which was very rare,” recalls the cartoonist. Rejuvenated, Zunar began publishing in Harakah, a publication put out by the opposition party.

The rise of the internet provided a new space for independent voices. With the launch of the government’s Multimedia Super Corridor, envisioned as Asia’s answer to Silicon Valley, the government pledged not to censor the internet. Seizing the opportunity, independent online news sources began to report critically on topics the mainstream media largely avoided. Zunar received a column on the Malaysiakini news website. His cartoons questioning judicial independence, corruption and censorship found an eager audience.

The internet has become a vital space for Zunar to share his work, yet this, too, is under threat. In March, The Malaysian Insider closed a month after the state media regulator blocked it for reporting the ongoing 1MDB scandal. UK-based Sarawak Report also was blocked after publishing articles on the topic.

Steven Gan, editor-in-chief of Malaysiakini, worries that the proposed strengthening of the Communication and Multimedia Act to be debated in October could adversely affect his news site, which is already struggling with lawsuits and office raids. Malaysiakini and peers would be required to put in a “deposit,” which the government can draw from. “They don’t have to prove anything or take it to court. That will be painful for us,” Gan says.

Social media censorship, too, is a concern, says Zunar. “In Malaysia, Twitter and Facebook are not social media anymore, they’re an alternative media” says the cartoonist, who fears talk of legislation that would target those who share or like his social media posts.

“The past pledges not to censor the internet are long gone,” says Shawn Crispin, Senior Southeast Asia Representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “They see this space as a central threat to the prime minister and UMNO more broadly.”

Zunar’s next court appearance is in September. In the meantime, he’s been busy producing a new cartoon book and traveling abroad to raise awareness of his case and the state of freedom of expression in Malaysia.

“Do I fear? Yes, we are human,” he says. “But responsibility is bigger than fear. “In my lifetime maybe I don’t see the change I want to see, but for future generations this is really important.”

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 17 August 2016, 1:24 pm and is filed under
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Pokemon Go Turned One Couple’s Life Into ‘A Nightmare.’ Now They’re Suing.

Lauren C. Williams

ThinkProgress

August 16, 2016

A Michigan couple is suing the game’s co-creators Nintendo, Niantic, and Pokemon Co. for turning their street into “a nightmare.”

Scott Dodich and Jayme Gotts-Dodich live on what used to be a “peaceful, quiet, and safe” suburban street directly across a small public park in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. But since Pokémon Go was released July 6, the couple’s quaint neighborhood located outside of Detroit, has turned into “a nightmare,” according to court documents.

The Dodiches filed a class-action lawsuit with the U.S. District Court of Northern California alleging that the augmented reality mobile game’s co-creators— the developer, Niantic software company, Nintendo, the owner, and Pokémon Co., which licenses the game—are responsible for player trespassing private property and threatening homeowners in pursuit of catching Pokemon.

The residents of Revere Street had their lawns trampled. They were yelled at for calling the police, according to the complaint, and were threatened by players visiting the popular Pokéstop and Pokégym or hangout in nearby Wahby Park. Players also peered into the windows of residents’ homes, hiding in bushes after dark to wait out the police.

Pokémon Go players “are on our lawns . . . looking right into our windows to catch a Pokémon,” the Dodiches said in the complaint. As residents “[we] don’t feel safe sitting on our porch.”

The problem stems from the GPS map Niantic created for a previous sci-fi game, Ingress, which designated locations as “exotic matter” — now called Pokéstops for Pokémon Go. The maps closely correlate and Pokemon Go players have been using the Ingress map to catch more Pokemon. Niantic has been criticized for its map because it leaves out minority-dense neighborhoods.

Jayme Gotts-Dodich wrote and email to Niantic CEO John Hanke to explain the “havoc” the game has caused in their neighborhood:

The past few weeks have been an absolute nightmare… The stops/gyms border directly on our street, causing the gamers to take over our property as well as the parks. They are on our lawns, with the newest being looking right into our windows. How is this acceptable? They hang out on our lawns, trample landscaping, look in vehicles, hang out in the middle of the street looking at our homes while playing their game, so I hope. We ask them to leave but 75% percent of the time, they ignore us or call us names. . . .

We don’t feel safe having people on our property looking into our home. Nor do we feel safe with random vehicles parking, driving slow, and hanging out on our street. We don’t know who is playing the game, who is looking at our homes to break in or steal, who is a pedophile or rapist. I don’t feel safe sitting on our porch, something we love to do. We have gotten heckled and yelled at for calling the police and we didn’t ever do so. I have been threatened because I asked someone to leave, he said shut up b**** or else. What does or else mean?

Niantic didn’t respond to the email and hasn’t released a statement addressing the lawsuit.

St. Clair Shores Police Chief Todd Woodcox’s office wasn’t available for comment on the number of Pokemon Go related complaints filed with the department.

The Dodiches lawsuit, which represents others “similarly situated,” is the legal culmination of weeks of media and police reports of Pokémon Go players acting inappropriately. Apartment complexes, businesses, museums, cemeteries, and even pop artists have had to issue warnings to players to be respectful.

Injuries to players and bystanders are climbing, and robberies have also been reported. Under pressure from police and regulators, Pokémon Go added new warnings to the game, urging players to pay attention to their surroundings and to not play the game while driving.

The augmented reality game’s popularity has highlighted society’s seemingly lack of preparedness for technology that melds the virtual and tangible. Socially acceptable behaviors such as not being raucous in a cemetery aren’t readily considered by players enthralled by the ability to virtually catch super-powered creatures.

It was only a matter of time before someone sued.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 17 August 2016, 1:01 pm and is filed under
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Leonardo DiCaprio, the Malaysian Money Scandal and His “Unusual” Foundation

By Gary Baum

The Hollywood Reporter

August 17, 2016

According to the Justice Department, certain donations to the Oscar winner’s charity came directly from a multibillion-dollar embezzlement drama in Southeast Asia.

On the evening of July 20, under a tent at a vineyard in St. Tropez brimming to his specifications with booze, billionaires and babes, Leonardo DiCaprio was preparing to host one of the glitziest charitable events of the year: the third annual fundraiser for his Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Earlier that same day, under far less glamorous auspices half a world away, the U.S. Department of Justice was filing a complaint with the U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles that suggested the recent Oscar winner is a bit player in the planet’s largest embezzlement case, totaling more than $3 billion siphoned from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB.

While the complaint does not target DiCaprio — he’s referred to twice in the 136-page document and only as “Hollywood Actor 1” — the scandal shines an unfamiliar light on the charitable foundation of the most powerful actor in Hollywood thanks to the way the LDF has benefited directly from DiCaprio’s relationship with key figures in the saga. And much like the gala in St. Tropez, with its expressions of one-percenter excess ostensibly in support of saving the environment (guests helicoptering in to dine on whole sea bass after watching a short film about the dangers of overfishing), a closer look at the LDF itself raises questions about its ties to the 1MDB players as well as the lack of transparency often required (or offered in this case) for the specific structure the actor has chosen for his endeavor.

Set up not as a nonprofit but instead as a donor-advised fund (DAF) attached to the California Community Foundation, which is a nonprofit, the LDF therefore is not required to file itemized public disclosures about its own revenue, expenditures and disbursements. “It’s difficult to characterize the giving of the DiCaprio Foundation because its status as part of the CCF makes it impossible to look at its finances,” industry trade journal Inside Philanthropy noted in 2015.

Despite repeated efforts, DiCaprio, 41, the LDF and the CCF all declined to fully answer fundamental questions related to transparency and accountability of the foundation — a decision that disappoints charity experts consulted by THR. “Everything might be perfectly fine, but we don’t know,” says Aaron Dorfman, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, of the LDF.

Among the questions asked: Who pays for the LDF’s six-member staff (the CCF is not allowed to cover the expense) as well as underwrites the events and other operating costs? What’s the total overhead, and how much of the money raised goes into operations versus charitable grants?

Also, is the LDF’s global finance chairman, Milutin Gatsby — a Serb likely originally known as Gijic — operating under a pseudonym? (Yes, Gatsby-and-Gatsby jokes were on the lips of just about everyone at the St. Tropez event.) The LDF wouldn’t make Gatsby available for comment.

(It also is unclear whether the DOJ will try to recoup 1MDB assets donated to the LDF. The Justice Department would not comment, other than to say this is an ongoing investigation. THR has learned, however, that charities are not off-limits in such asset-seizure cases.)

Multiple attendees who spoke to THR describe the annual LDF galas as freewheeling bacchanals in which wives feel outnumbered by suspiciously predisposed Slavic women in bustiers and couples openly cavort in the bathroom stalls. At the July 20 event in St. Tropez, where tickets started at $11,778 (10,500 euros) DiCaprio greeted a roomful of approximately 500 partygoers, including oligarchs (Dmitry Rybolovlev), supermodels (Naomi Campbell) and plenty of fellow A-listers, among them Bono, Charlize Theron, Tobey Maguire, Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Notably absent this year was Jho Low, 35, the bespectacled Malaysian businessman and party boy at the center of the 1MDB scandal who, at least as early as 2010, became a regular drinking buddy of DiCaprio’s (the biggest star on a roster of Low’s celebrity friends that includes Paris Hilton, Jamie Foxx and Alicia Keys). Low, notorious for stunts like sending 23 bottles of Cristal to Lindsay Lohan for her 23rd birthday at the club 1OAK in Las Vegas in 2009, is alleged in the DOJ complaint to have used roughly $1 billion in 1MDB funds for a personal shopping spree. This included the acquisition of a $31 million penthouse in Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, once occupied by Jay Z and Beyonce, and a $39 million Hollywood Hills mansion a few doors down from DiCaprio.

Low, who graduated from Wharton School of Business in 2005, in 2009 was brought into the inner circle of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak as an adviser on a precursor to the 1MDB wealth fund. Despite only earning the bit-part title of “Malaysian Official 1” in the Justice Department complaint, Razak is the key figure at the heart of the scandal. But it’s Razak’s stepson Riza Aziz who provides the link to both Low and DiCaprio. It was Low who introduced Aziz to Joey McFarland, previously Hilton’s party booker, and together they set up Red Granite Pictures. Red Granite eventually would surprise Hollywood insiders by landing the rights to DiCaprio’s passion project The Wolf of Wall Street. The DOJ complaint alleges, however, that the financing for the film came from a $238 million pot of money siphoned from the 1MDB fund. (Red Granite maintains it is cooperating with all inquiries; the company still has an office above DiCaprio’s own Appian Way in a Sunset Strip midrise opposite Soho House West Hollywood.)

The 1MDB saga has been Hollywood-tinged from the start. Tim Leissner, the Goldman Sachs banker who brokered the deal that set everything in motion, is Kimora Lee Simmons’ husband. (He since has left the firm.) Low was given a “special thanks” in the film’s credits and hailed as a “collaborator” in DiCaprio’s 2014 Golden Globes acceptance speech. The Malaysian returned the favor in grand fashion with splashy bromantic gifts — in one instance, according to the DOJ, he and the Red Granite execs brought DiCaprio along on an $11 million gambling bender in Las Vegas; in another, they reportedly laid out $600,000 to gift him Marlon Brando’s best actor Oscar statuette for On the Waterfront. (DiCaprio — who has a notable habit of buddying up with smooth dudes who end up in federal prison for money crimes, from late investment adviser Dana Giacchetto to art dealer Helly Nahmad — still was several prestige roles away from finally claiming his own.)

They also made donations to DiCaprio’s foundation. At the actor’s birthday party in 2013, Low and McFarland were among those who reportedly helped raise more than $3 million for the charity by buying marked-up bottles of champagne. Earlier that year, diverted 1MDB funds were alleged by the DOJ complaint to have been used by Low to purchase a pair of artworks (for a total of $1.1 million) by Ed Ruscha and Mark Ryden at a Christie’s auction benefiting the LDF (one of many buys during a spending spree that shook the art world). And at the glittering St. Tropez auction held in 2015, with the likes of David Geffen, Paul Allen, Tom Barrack and Harvey Weinstein in attendance, Low offered the LDF a sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein, 1982’s Brushstroke, valued at roughly $700,000. But Low wasn’t there to see it go under the hammer; instead, he is believed to have fled to Taiwan — which has no extradition treaty with the U.S. — as the net of international investigators began closing in.

According to the LDF, the July 20 gala raised more than $45 million in funds for global conservation efforts. Yet the organization would provide no documentation to THR to support these and other claims. Due to its unorthodox structure, the LDF is not obligated to disclose any specifics about its donations and repeatedly has been critiqued in recent years by Inside Philanthropy for its opacity as a prominent celebrity charity. (By comparison, the most recently available 990 IRS nonprofit filing from, for instance, Elton John’s AIDS Foundation, runs 101 pages to account for an entity handling just over $10 million in assets.)

The LDF did provide a statement from its recently hired CEO, Terry Tamminen. He contends that grants of more than $30 million already have been made so far this year and calls the LDF “an incredibly efficient, highly effective philanthropic organization that, through its relationship to the California Community Foundation, is supporting credible organizations that are carrying out some of the most important work on the planet.” In its own statement, the CCF’s senior counsel, Carol Bradford, explains that it “strives to preserve the wishes of our many donors, which can often include anonymity or privacy in their giving choices.”

The LDF wasn’t always a donor-advised fund. For its first decade, it was a small nonprofit run by DiCaprio’s mother, Irmelin, distributing $1.6 million in 2008, its final year before dissolving its status to join the CCF. (DiCaprio’s father, George, and noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, rounded out the board.)

DAFs increasingly have become preferred giving vehicles in the U.S., largely due to their immediate charitable tax deductions, negligible startup costs and the fact that they’re not subject to the same annual payout requirements as a private foundation. According to a 2015 report published by the National Philanthropic Trust, the number of accounts launched between 2010 and 2014 jumped 29 percent, bringing the total to 238,293. While the most prominent entrant during this period was Mark Zuckerberg’s $2.5 billion charitable effort in 2014, set up at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and greeted with public criticism over its structure, the NPT says the average account size is $300,000. In a fact sheet the LDF provided to THR, its decision to become a DAF is positioned as one of practicality and efficiency — that the well-regarded, century-old CCF (which manages nearly 1,600 charitable entities totaling $1.5 billion in assets) could assist with due diligence regarding grantees as well as expertly handle backend financial and administrative functions pertaining to donations processing. (The CCF also handles funds for a few other Hollywood figures, including Eva Longoria and, as it happens, Foxx.)

In general, DAFs’ rising popularity, which experts explain also is bolstered by the paucity of red tape in the sector, has brought skepticism. The IRS, according to its web page about the category, now is examining cases (though none are specifically named) of DAFs that “appear to be established for the purpose of generating questionable charitable deductions, and providing impermissible economic benefits to donors and their families (including tax-sheltered investment income for the donors) and management fees for promoters.” (THR has no evidence that the LDF is using the DAF structure in such a way.)

Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills was bought by a company called Wynton in January 2010, using funds traceable to Low’s bank account, which the DOJ says were misappropriated from the 1MDB development fund.

Philanthropy authorities say the LDF, with its possibly subsidized staff and lavish events — as well as, crucially, its international solicitation apparatus — is a relative anomaly among community foundation DAFs, which typically are far more simple: A donor provides his own money and then advises where it should be spent. “It’s unusual,” says Ann Skeet, a director at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, which examines ethics in businesses and nonprofits. Adds Ray Madoff, head of The Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good at Boston College Law School, “Typically, Leonardo DiCaprio would gift his own assets to his donor-advised fund rather than using it as a fundraising vehicle.”

That one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood — whom United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2014 designated as a U.N. Messenger of Peace, with a special focus on climate change — has been sainted by his professional and social circles for his globe-trotting do-gooding may have permitted him to operate with comparatively little scrutiny so far. Notes Daniel Borochoff, president of Chicago-based CharityWatch: “[DAFs’] structure allows them to shirk accountability. They aren’t obligated to tell you, as a donor, anything. [DiCaprio’s] able to fundraise with one because he’s such a huge international celebrity. If you were an unknown, it would be a lot harder because people would quickly start asking questions.”

Alex Ritman contributed to this report.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 August 2016, 7:31 pm and is filed under
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Was Leo DiCaprio’s ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Paid for With Stolen Money?

AMY ZIMMERMAN

The Daily Beast

08.18.16

The Oscar-winning actor’s charity and the production company behind Wolf of Wall Street have come under scrutiny for ties to a $3 billion embezzlement scandal.

When was the last time a celebrity scandal—not a body part—truly broke the internet? In the age of long lens paparazzi, 24/7 reality TV coverage and conscious uncoupling, we’ve been subsisting on cheap, disposable drama and scripted Bachelor breakups. Nobody thinks big anymore.

Surprisingly, the man to finally bring some old school Hollywood glamour back to the celebrity scandal game may be none other than the founder of the pussy posse himself, Leonardo DiCaprio. Yes, it’s come to this.

In 2016, DiCaprio stuck it to malicious memers everywhere when he finally won an Academy Award. Having put himself through the physical and emotional ringer—i.e., growing an unflattering beard—for his critically acclaimed role in The Revenant, DiCaprio has found himself reduced to a bit part in an ongoing international saga. For anyone who’s unaware of the still-breaking Malaysian money laundering scandal (coming soon to a court near you), DiCaprio boasts a minor role as “Hollywood Actor 1.” According to filings from the Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative’s “largest single action” ever, the Wolf of Wall Street star is inextricably linked to a set of alleged criminal masterminds.

It’s a story as old as time—Hollywood actor mistakenly bankrolls his movie about a financial criminal through stolen Malaysian money. 2013’s Wolf of Wall Street was a famously risky investment that almost didn’t make it to theaters. Luckily, financial aid arrived in the form of a mysterious production company called Red Granite Pictures, which contributed more than $100 million to DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s project. At the time, many joked that DiCaprio’s role as a Quaaludes-popping, philandering party boy was art imitating life, but nobody guessed that the entire crime film was vaguely criminal. Who knew that Wolf of Wall Street was so layered and nuanced?

As relayed by The Hollywood Reporter, investigators believe that much of Red Granite Pictures’ funding was diverted from production company 1MDB, which was set up seven years ago by the prime minister of Malaysia to spur local economic development. Allegedly, the company ciphered $155 million over 9,000 miles through a series of offshore shell companies. Red Granite Pictures was set up in 2010 by Riza Aziz, the Malaysian prime minister’s stepson, and Christopher McFarland, a Kentucky businessman. These two like-minded individuals were introduced through their mutual friend, a Malaysian party boy by the name of Jho Low. Low was a fixture on the celebrity club circuit, a position he cemented by sending 23 bottles of Cristal to Lindsay Lohan at 1OAK for her 23rd birthday. Naturally, this is where our blue-eyed “Hollywood Actor 1” enters the scene, summoned by the invocation of “Cristal,” “Lindsay Lohan,” and “1OAK.”

Among his roster of celebrity friends, which included Paris Hilton, Jamie Foxx, and Alicia Keys, Leonardo DiCaprio was Low’s No. 1 ride or die. Low and DiCaprio attended one another’s birthday parties; at Low’s 30th birthday bash in 2012, DiCaprio reportedly rapped onstage with Busta Rhymes. The drinking buddies also engaged in bromantic activities, like an $11 million gambling bender in Las Vegas. Low and the Red Granite Pictures principals even gifted DiCaprio with a $600,000 present: Marlon Brando’s Oscar from On the Waterfront. Because unlike these shady business dealings, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar’s thirst was scarily transparent. Of course, DiCaprio probably had no idea that all of this money probably came out of 1MDB, and that he has the pissed-off Malaysian populace to thank for his Academy Award.

DiCaprio thanked the Red Granite Pictures’ founders by name in his 2014 Golden Globes acceptance speech, hailing them as “collaborators.” Wolf of Wall Street went on to gross about $400 million, none of which contributed to Malaysian economic prosperity. Adding irony to injury, the R-rated film wasn’t even distributed in the Southeast Asian nation, which boasts strict morality laws.

But DiCaprio’s involvement gets even dicier. According to the DOJ, Low and McFarland diverted 1MDB funds to Leonardo DiCaprio’s philanthropic endeavors. Low even offered the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture to auction off for charity—unfortunately, Low wasn’t there to see if it sold for its $700,000 estimated value, having already fled to Taiwan in an attempt to elude international investigators. Because of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s status as a donor-advised fund (as opposed to a nonprofit), the foundation is not required to file public revenue disclosures. According to Inside Philanthropy, “It’s difficult to characterize the giving of the DiCaprio Foundation because its status…makes it impossible to look at its finances.” And CharityWatch’s Daniel Borochoff told The Hollywood Reporter, “[DiCaprio’s] able to fundraise with one because he’s such a huge international celebrity. If you were an unknown, it would be a lot harder because people would quickly start asking questions.”

Despite The Hollywood Reporter’s repeated efforts, DiCaprio and his charity have refused to answer questions regarding the foundation’s transparency and accountability. Despite the growing 1MDB scandal, the Foundation seems intent on business (sorry, charity) as usual. On the very same day that the Department of Justice filed their formal complaint regarding the over $3 billion scandal, DiCaprio threw his third annual LDF fundraiser at a vineyard in St. Tropez. The star-studded event featured billionaires, helicopters, whole sea bass, and all the other nouns you might use in a game of Leonardo DiCaprio Mad Libs. Bono, Lana Del Rey, and Mariah Carey were among the many Hollywood luminaries in attendance. Unfortunately for next year’s sea bass budget, charities are not off-limits in these kinds of asset-seizure cases.

This isn’t DiCaprio’s first brush with criminality by association. Stockbroker to the stars Dana Giacchetto counted the A-lister among his most valued clients—prior to his 2001 sentence for securities fraud. DiCaprio also palled around with Helly Nahmad, the infamous art dealer who served time for operating an illegal gambling business out of his Trump Tower lodgings. Despite DiCaprio’s close association with this new group of alleged conspirators, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be prosecuted for any wrongdoing. The actor, who earned over $25 million from The Wolf of Wall Street, has returned to his comfort zone: 24-year-old models and Tobey Maguire. Meanwhile, Red Granite Pictures is cooperating with inquiries, and is still functioning out of a Sunset Strip office right above DiCaprio’s own Appian Way. The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 August 2016, 7:51 pm and is filed under
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Why are there so many idiots in the Cabinet and UMNO?

After the statement by the Barisan Nasional  Strategic Communications Director and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of EPU, Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan, that “only an idiot doesn’t know who that person was” as there is no secret who is Malaysian Official 1 (MO1) mentioned in the US Department of Justice (DOJ) civil lawsuits as  everyone who has read the court documents or familiar with the issues would know who is the person being referred to, more and more Malaysians must be asking with every passing day why there are so many “idiots” in the Cabinet and UMNO.

Is the UMNO MP for Langkawi, Datuk Nawawi Ahmad an “idiot” for him to argue that “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” is the Yang di Pertuan Agong.

What would have happened if it was a leader from  the national Opposition, whether PKR, DAP, AMANAH or the yet-to-be-registered BERSATU who had postulated that “MO1” was the Yang di Pertuan Agong.

Former Langkawi Wanita Umno member Anina Saadudin has filed a police report against Nawawi asking for  police investigations to protect the royal institution.

Would the police investigate Nawawi and would the authorities accept his  poor excuse that he had not meant to imply that “MO1” was the Yang di Pertuan Agong?

If Nawawi’s excuse was valid, why then was the need to edit his Facebook posting?

The next personality under the “idiot” periscope is the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Paul Low, who pledged today that legal action against individuals named in the US DOJ lawsuits related to 1MDB if  it is proven that money was misappropriated from the state investment fund.

Was Low expecting applause of approval or screams (silent at the symposium but howling outside) of disbelief?

Would action be taken against people referred to in the DOJ lawsuits, who  though not named specifically but through codes like “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”, “1MDB OFFICER 1”, “1MDB OFFICER 2”, “1MDB OFFICER 3” whose identities are quite obvious from the various descriptions in the DOJ lawsuits and  “only an idiot does not know who they are”?

Does Paul Low know who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”, and if not, is he prepared to ask Cabinet colleague Abdul Rahman to enlighten him, or he is too shy to be identified  as an “idiot?

Paul Low’s speech at the symposium on governance jointly organised by the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG) is a laughing stock as it is proof that the Malaysian Government which he represents is not serious at all about issues of integrity and good governance when it could take such an irresponsible stance on the DOJ action.

As the Minister responsible for integrity and good governance, is Low prepared and able  to answer all questions relating to these issues arising from the DOJ lawsuits?

The Cabinet had maintained an eerie silence on the DOJ lawsuits after its fourth meeting yesterday after the DOJ filings a month ago on July 20 for forfeiture of over US$1 billion MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland from the US$3.5 billion stolen, misappropriated, embezzled or laundered from 1MDB and the people of Malaysia.

Is Low conscious and weighed down by the knowledge that under his watch, Malaysia has overnight been turned into a global kleptocracy, not only because the DOJ complaint is the single largest US and global kleptocracy action, but the shocking inability and impotence of the Malaysian Government to debunk and rebut the grave allegations of kleptocracy against the Malaysian government, especially the litany of “criminal conduct” as well as the embezzlement and money-laundering of billions of dollars stolen from 1MDB  meant for the country’s development?

Does Low agree with the President of Malaysian Bar, Steven Thiru that it is irresistible to conclude that Prime Minister Najib is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” and that the DOJ document contained many other “troubling disclosures”, including the allegation that in March 2013, US$681 million was transferred to a bank account belonging to ‘MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1′, and that this sum emanated from a 1MDB bond sale – contradicting statements by the authorities that the funds were a “personal donation” to the Prime Minister from the Saudi royal family, given to him without any consideration.

In addition, the court document also alleges that US$20 million and a further US$30 million traceable to 1MDB funds, were transferred to the same personal bank account owned by “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” in 2011 and 2012, respectively-  and that both tranfers had not been previously uncovered or disclosed by the Malaysian enforcement agencies?

In particular, can Low enlighten Malaysians as to the real relationship between Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Penang billionaire Jho Low, as to who was making use of whom in the 1MDB global scandal – Najib making use of Jho Low or Jho Low making use of Najib?

This is a question which is on the mind of every concerned Malaysian in the past two years, but despite the investigations by the various national enforcement and investigative agencies, including the high-powered Special Task Force on 1MDB (which was ignominously dissolved after the sacking of the then Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail who had chaired the Special Task Force and the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin), Police, Bank Negara, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee, Malaysians are no nearer to a truthful and satisfactory answer.

Will Low be able to enlighten Parliament on these issues of integrity and good governance when  it reconvenes on   October 17 for a 25-day budget meeting?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 18 August 2016, 1:59 pm and is filed under
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Key Figure in 1MDB Probe Is Arrested in Abu Dhabi

By BRADLEY HOPE

Wall Street Journal

Aug. 18, 2016

Investigators are looking into alleged fraud related to a Malaysian fund

Abu Dhabi authorities have arrested Khadem Al Qubaisi, who authorities say is a key figure in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud related to a Malaysian sovereign-wealth fund, according to people familiar with the matter.

The arrest last week was made in relation to an Abu Dhabi investigation into fraud and corruption, which includes Mr. Qubaisi’s alleged role in the 1Malaysia Development Bhd., known as 1MDB, affair, the people said. No charges have been filed against him.

Mr. Qubaisi was previously restricted from leaving the United Arab Emirates and had his assets in the country frozen, The Wall Street Journal reported in April.

A lawyer for Mr. Qubaisi declined to comment.

U.S. investigators are currently broadening their probe into Mr. Qubaisi’s dealings and funds they suspect he took control of through the alleged fraud, according to people familiar with the probe. The Justice Department filed civil lawsuits last month seeking to freeze about $100 million of real estate in the U.S. that he allegedly bought with money embezzled from 1MDB, a fund set up in 2009 to boost Malaysia’s economy.

In following what the Justice Department says is a $470 million money trail that stretches from Malaysia to Abu Dhabi to the British Virgin Islands, investigators now are looking for any connections to a company that vaulted to the top of the Las Vegas nightclub scene with two $100 million venues, the people said.

Investigators also are trying to determine if Mr. Qubaisi used funds originating from 1MDB to help finance the world’s fifth-biggest yacht, according to people familiar with the probe.

The July action by the Justice Department to seize more than $1 billion worth of assets allegedly purchased with money stolen from the fund is the government’s largest-ever attempted asset seizure for an international corruption case. Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said at the time that the inquiry was ongoing and that “the Malaysian people were defrauded on an enormous scale.”

The 1MDB fund has denied wrongdoing and said it would cooperate with any lawful investigation.

Mr. Qubaisi hasn’t commented on the allegations.

The company that runs the Las Vegas nightclubs is called Hakkasan Ltd., which is based in London and controlled by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy prime minister of U.A.E. and member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. Investigators sent a subpoena to Neil Moffitt, the company’s chief executive, earlier this year, the people familiar with the probe said.

There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against Hakkasan or its employees, the people said. The U.S. investigation is focused on Mr. Qubaisi’s actions, many of them taking place in offshore jurisdictions, the people said.

Mr. Qubaisi, 45 years old, was chairman of Hakkasan and a member of its board of directors. He resigned from the company on May 9, and a new board of directors, including former U.S. Sen. Norman Coleman, was named. He was removed last year from his job at the International Petroleum Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s $80 billion sovereign-wealth fund.

Mr. Qubaisi received some $470 million of money siphoned from 1MDB, according to the U.S. government complaint. Prosecutors identified several properties he allegedly purchased with that money, including a $51 million penthouse in New York’s Walker Tower and two mansions in Los Angeles worth a combined $46 million.

The remainder of those funds, more than $300 million, haven’t yet been accounted for.

Brandon Roos, Hakkasan’s vice president of legal affairs, said in a letter to the Journal that the company had conducted its own “internal review of funding documentation and we remain fully confident that Hakkasan received capital from a legitimate fund in the Middle East” that isn’t connected to entities involved in the 1MDB affair. He said that the Justice Department had confirmed Hakkasan is “not the subject or target of their 1MDB investigation.”

In a separate letter provided by a lawyer for Hakkasan to the Journal, the lawyer said Hakkasan’s absence from the government’s civil suits was “clear evidence that Hakkasan, in the judgment of the Department of Justice, has not been the beneficiary of or a conduit for the laundering of monies illicitly obtained by Mr. Qubaisi and his confederates.”

Founded as a high-end Cantonese restaurant in London in 2001, Hakkasan expanded into nightclubs and now has venues in the Middle East, India, China and the U.S. Sheikh Mansour’s investment company in Abu Dhabi, Tasameem Real Estate LLC, bought it in 2008 and Mr. Qubaisi soon after became Hakkasan’s chairman. Mr. Qubaisi also was previously a director of Tasameem.

Starting in 2013, the company began to expand in Las Vegas, especially in nightclubs. It gained attention for signing up blockbuster DJs, including Calvin Harris and Tiësto, on exclusive contracts rising to several hundred thousand dollars a night.

“They made a huge splash,” said Ryan Dahlstrom, president and founder of the Nightclub Hall of Fame that honors nightlife innovators. “They bought out all the big DJs and came at the industry with hundreds of millions of dollars…They cornered the market.”

Hakkasan spent some $107 million building the Omnia Nightclub at Caesars Palace, which is outfitted with a giant, moving chandelier covered in lights that flash in sequence. Some have compared it to a UFO hovering over the dance floor. It opened in 2015.

The U.S. government’s inquiries are related to financing the company received during or after 2012, when part of the alleged 1MDB fraud involving Mr. Qubaisi took place, according to people familiar with the probe. Hakkasan disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder loans from 2012 to 2016, according to public financial filings by the company in the U.K.

Much of these loans were reduced by Hakkasan’s issuance of a “non-share equity instrument” to an undisclosed third party, according to its latest filings covering up to June 30, 2015. No other details were given. Tasameem, Hakkasan’s controlling shareholder, is a diversified investment company that has received funds from a number of sources, according to people familiar with its finances.

U.S. investigators are also probing the financing of a mega yacht controlled by Sheikh Mansour called the Topaz, which at 482 feet is the world’s fifth largest, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Representatives of Sheikh Mansour didn’t respond to a request for comment.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 19 August 2016, 6:25 pm and is filed under
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Najib should walk the talk – prove he is  a patriot by defending himself as Prime Minister, the  government  and the nation from the DOJ allegations about the largest global embezzlement and kleptocracy in the 1MDB scandal

What a contrast!

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak blogging on the meaning of patriotism, that it is more than just raising the Jalur Gemilang, singing the national anthem or making a pledge to adhere to the Rukun Negara principles, but involving numerous levels in patriotism, like joining of hands between Malaysians to achieve a beneficial objective for the nation; genuine help extended to others in need and the effort to protect the nation’s harmony and sovereignty, even if it required sacrificing one’s life.

On the same morning, writing on his Facebook, Najib’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin  named Najib as the “rogue” codenamed as “MO1” in the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s single largest action in the United States  and the world  for forfeiture of over US$1 billion assets in United States, United Kingdom and  Switzerland because of US$3.5 billion embezzlement, misappropriation and money-laundering of 1MDB funds.

I do not see how Najib can continue to keep his silence after the damning DOJ indictment of litany of criminal conduct involving colossal theft of public funds and callous betrayal of public trust and the equaling damning Facebook posting by Muhyddin who wrote:

“I say with certainty that MO1 is Najib Abdul Razak. He is the rogue identified as such in the DOJ filings. As I am definitely right, I ask Umno members to reflect if this is the person they want as their party leader. I ask Malaysians is this the leader they want as prime minister to lead this country? We must end this abomination and restore truth and justice and I ask all Malaysians to unite in achieving this.”

Najib should walk the talk – prove he is a  patriot by defending himself as Prime Minister, his government  and the nation from the DOJ allegations about the largest global embezzlement and kleptocracy in the 1MDB scandal.

Barisan Nasional  Strategic Communications Director and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of EPU, Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan, said that “only an idiot doesn’t know who that person was” as there is no secret who is Malaysian Official 1 (MO1) mentioned in the US DOJ civil lawsuits.

Is Muhyiddin an “idiot” identifying the wrong person referred to in the DOJ filings?

If so, then the Prime Minister should state so, denying categorically that he is “MO1”.

Otherwise, Najib, by his own definition of patriotism,  should defend himself, his government and the Malaysian nation to the DOJ charges of the series of criminal conduct resulting in the DOJ civil lawsuits on the single largest  case of forfeiture of  kleptocarcy assets in the history of the United States and the world.

Let Najib explain, for instance,  to Malaysians and the world his real relationship with the Penang billionaire Jho Low, as to who was making use of whom in the 1MDB global scandal.

The 136-page US DOJ lawsuits  seems to indicate that Jho Low was the “mastermind” of the 1MDB global financial scandal, as  it would appear that Jho Low had a better bargain from the 1MDB scandal than Najib.

The DOJ complaint described  three phases of 1MDB embezzlement and kleptocracy – 1) the Good Star Phase  2) the Aabar/BVI Phase and 3) the Tanore Phase, alleging that  “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” embezzled US$731 million via 1MDB.  There is of a fourth phase, the SRC phase, which is not covered by DOJ action.

DOJ enumerated over US$1 billion from September 2009 to 2011  were siphoned off from 1MDB to Good Star which belonged to Jho Low under the first “Good Star” phase; in the second “Aabar/BVI phase” in 2012 approximately US$1.367 billion in 1MDB funds raised in two separate bond offerings were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low; and in the  third “Tanore phase” in 2013  more than US$1.26 billion in 1MDB funds raised in a third bond offering were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low.

With US$731 million going to “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”’s personal banking accounts, and even taking into consideration the US$238 million siphoned off to Red Granite Capital, an entity owned by Riza Shahriz, to purchase luxury real estate in the US and to fund his movie production company, Red Granite Pictures, more than two-thirds of the “misappropriated” US$3.5 billion 1MDB funds appeared to be at Jho Low’s disposal.

This raises the question who was  the main beneficiary of the 1MDB scandal – Najib or Jho Low.

Najib has a patriotic duty to speak up and break  his silence, ending the nonsensical,  meaningless and ludicrous stance reiterated yesterday  by two Ministers,  Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Pau Low and Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani, that the government will take legal action against  individuals named in the DOJ civil suits if they were found guilty of wrongdoing, completely ignoring the elephant in the room, “MO1” –  who is not named but  whose identity everybody seem to know except  for “idiots”!

                This entry was posted on Friday, 19 August 2016, 3:05 pm and is filed under
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1MDB global embezzlement and money-laundering scandal – more and more questions without a single answer so far!

The 1MDB global embezzlement and money-laundering scandal is a real  “wonder”  – turning Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy with more and more questions with unending international developments  every passing day but without a single answer so far!

The latest contributor to this “wonder” of a 1MDB global embezzlement and money-laundering scandal is the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar with his revelation that the Malaysian police have completed the first phase of their investigation into 1MDB, which is restricted to the five recommendations by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as ordered by the cabinet.

Last month, Khalid said police have recorded statements from 25 individuals into the PAC Report on 1MDB in the first phase of the investigations, and that the police would start the second phase – sending investigators overseas to obtain documents and record the testimonies of witnesses who are abroad.

Khalid said yesterday that the police are waiting for further orders from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) regarding the matter, and estimated the instructions to be issued in a week or two.

Khalid’s statement sent me  back to the PAC Report on 1MDB, as I never knew that the PAC had made five recommendations for police investigation, let alone the Cabinet decision to restrict police investigation to the alleged five PAC recommendations.

Re-reading the PAC Report on 1MDB has confirmed me that my memory had not failed me, that the PAC had never made five recommendations for police investigation.

The PAC Report only made one specific recommendation for police investigation, that 1MDB’s former Chief Executive Officer Datuk Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi must bear responsibility for the 1MDB management constraints and weaknesses and that he and others in the management should be investigated.

The five recommendations made by the PAC Report on 1MDB had nothing to with police investigation, but concerned the lessons that should be learnt from the 1MDB debacle and the actions that should be taken vis-a-vis 1MDB, viz:

(i) Principles of governance – 1MDB should adopt principles of good governance like the guide issued by the Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance Through the Green Book: Enhancing Board Effectiveness And Blue Book: Intensifying Performance Management Practices.

(ii) Avoid excessive debt – The use of excessive debt in the capital structure should not be allowed at all, especially when the cash flow is insufficient.

(iii) The Board of Directors should practice strict control – The board failed to carry out responsibilities and take care of the interests of the company and shareholders. They also did not take any proactive measures in monitoring the management’s activities and cash flow. More intensive regulations required of the board of directors, including the price of asset purchases and costs of liabilities.

(iv) Abolish the Advisory Board – The Advisory Board should be abolished, together with Article 117 in Memorandum and Articles of Association. All references to the Prime Minister should be changed to the Minister of Finance.

(v) Transfer Subsidiary companies – Subsidiaries and assets held by 1MDB such as TRX, Bandar Malaysia, Tanah Air Itam, Tanah Pulau Indah should be transferred to the MOF, supervised and managed properly.

Have the Cabinet and IGP misunderstood the PAC Report on 1MDB as to cause the Cabinet to restrict police investigation to five non-existing recommendations to the police?

In any event, many questions are spawned by these circumstances, including:

1.	Why is there need for “first phase”, “second phase” (and other “phases”) of police investigation into PAC proposal for probe as to whether 1MDB’s former CEO Shahrol Azral had committed criminal offences, when all the evidence and documentation are  given  not only in the PAC Report, but in the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB (although not appended to PAC Report) and most recently, in  the 136-page US Department of Justice (DOJ) single largest kleptocracy asset forfeiture action arising from US$3.5 billion stolen, embezzled, misappropriated or money-laundered from 1MDB funds?

2.	Why more than four months have elapsed and there are still no outcome of police investigation  into Shahrol Azral as specifically proposed by PAC?

3.	When did the Cabinet issue the order to restrict police investigation into the PAC Report on 1MDB to the so-called “five recommendations” of the PAC Report on 1MDB, is such Cabinet directive valid and lawful, or in the words of Tony Pua (DAP National Publicity Secretary and PAC member), “tantamounts to an obstruction of justice”?

4.	Is it proper for IGP Khalid to head the police investigation team into the PAC Report on 1MDB, when he is the remaining member of the Special Task Force on 1MDB formed in March 2015, which had comprised three other Tan Sris, namely Tan Sri Gani Patai (then Attorney-General) as Chairman, Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed (then Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief commissioner) and Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz (then Bank Negara Governor) but which was dissolved immediately after the high-level government purges by the Prime Minister in July last year?

5.	Are the Police using the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB as a basis of investigation especially as the Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang said in May this year that his Report on 1MDB is a sufficient basis for investigation and he stands ready to assist authorities in their investigations?

6.	Why is the Police unwilling  to make use of the information in the DOJ forfeiture suit revealing a series of criminal conduct resulting in some US$3.5 billion theft, misappropriation and  money-laundering of 1MDB assets and funds in its current investigation?

7.	Will the police investigate as to who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” in the DOJ filings?”

8.	Will the police investigate the  real relationship between “MO1” and  the Penang billionaire Jho Low, as to who was making use of whom in the 1MDB global scandal?  The DOJ filings described  three phases of 1MDB embezzlement and kleptocracy – 1) the Good Star Phase  2) the Aabar/BVI Phase and 3) the Tanore Phase, alleging that  “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” embezzled US$731 million via 1MDB.  DOJ enumerated over US$1 billion from September 2009 to 2011  were siphoned off from 1MDB to Good Star which belonged to Jho Low under the first “Good Star” phase; in the second “Aabar/BVI phase” in 2012 approximately US$1.367 billion in 1MDB funds raised in two separate bond offerings were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low; and in the  third “Tanore phase” in 2013  more than US$1.26 billion in 1MDB funds raised in a third bond offering were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low.  Who was the main beneficiary of the 1MDB scandal – “MO1” or Jho Low?

Malaysians want answers to the teeming questions about the 1MDB global embezzlement and money-laundering scandal  which had overnight converted Malaysia into a global kleptocracy but it would appear that more questions would only be piling up before any answer would be forthcoming.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 20 August 2016, 3:46 pm and is filed under
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Leonardo DiCaprio Backs Out of Hillary Clinton Fundraiser

by Gary Baum

The Hollywood Reporter

8/20/2016

The actor-activist says he won’t host the event at his L.A. home due to a scheduling conflict and Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have stepped in as hosts. The Clinton campaign denies the decision is connected to questions DiCaprio and his foundation are facing over ties to a $3 billion embezzlement scheme.

Leonardo DiCaprio abruptly has dropped out of hosting a Tuesday fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at his Hollywood Hills home, sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter. The $33,400-per-guest event, part of a series of late-August fundraisers for Clinton in Los Angeles, now will be held at the nearby residence of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.

On Saturday, an unidentified source close to the event told People the reason he backed out was work-related – that his current project will keep him in New York until Wednesday. DiCaprio is taking his documentary The Turning Point to the Toronto Film Festival in September. He is not currently filming a movie as an actor.

But the move comes as DiCaprio, 41, has become linked in press reports to a $3 billion Malaysian embezzlement scandal. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an asset-seizure complaint in federal court pertaining to a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB. The fund allegedly backed Red Granite Pictures, the production company behind DiCaprio’s The Wolf of Wall Street. DiCaprio is mentioned only as “Hollywood Actor 1” in the complaint, but it suggests the actor’s eponymous foundation may have benefited from gifts made by Red Granite, its principal Riza Aziz and a key 1MDB figure named Jho Low. (THR published an extensive look at the foundation and its connection to 1MDB on Wednesday.)

Hillary and Bill Clinton’s own eponymous charitable foundation has been the subject of intense scrutiny during the campaign, particularly its connection to foreign money. The Clinton Foundation has said it would not accept foreign contributions if Hillary is elected president. One source with experience planning presidential fundraisers said it would be a “no brainer” to keep DiCaprio away from a Clinton event amid the 1MDB suit and press reports, but another said candidates tend to have a lower standard for vetting of celebrity fundraisers.

DiCaprio’s rep, Shawn Sachs, maintained the scheduling conflict forced the actor to bow out. Josh Schwerin, a spokesperson with the Clinton campaign, told THR any suggestion that the 1MDB scandal is connected to DiCaprio dropping out “is completely false. It’s not at all true.” Schwerin added: “If we could have had the event at his home, we would have loved to. He was gracious enough to find us a new host. We hope to do something with him in the future.”

Co-hosts at the Timberlake-Biel fundraiser are still expected to include DiCaprio’s friend Tobey Maguire and his manager Rick Yorn, along with Shonda Rhimes, Scooter Braun and ICM head Chris Silbermann.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 21 August 2016, 12:42 pm and is filed under
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Should the IGP and police be concerned as to who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”?

The police arrest and three-day remand of three student activists, Muhammad Luqman Nul Hakim Zul Razali, Luqman Hakim and Ashraff Nazrin, for promoting next week’s #TangkapMalaysian Official1 rally at Seri Iskandar in Perak yesterday is unwarranted, grave abuse of power and serious police failure to understand their real powers and duties.

The police should release the three student activists immediately, as there is no reason or justification to continue to  remand them.

In fact, what all policemen and women should seriously consider is whether they should obstruct or assist the #TangkapMalaysian Official1 campaign.

Should the Inspector-General of Police and the police be concerned as to who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” mentioned 36 times in the 136-page US Department of Justice (DOJ) US$1 billion assets forfeiture lawsuits arising from the embezzlement and money-laundering of US$3.5 billion 1MDB funds?

The question must be an unequivocal “Yes” if Malaysia believes in the  rule of law and upholds good governance principles of integrity and accountability.

In fact, the police should fully assist in the #TangkapMalaysian Official1 campaign if there is evidence that “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” is involved in the “criminal conduct” outlined in the 136-page DOJ filings of theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of 1MDB funds.

The initial reactions of the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar to the DOJ filing of US$1 billion 1MDB-linked assets forfeiture lawsuits  on July 20 were most disappointing, firstly with IGP’s declining to  comment claiming that it was a civil proceeding, that the Malaysian police were not consulted and he had not been informed, and four days later, reiterating that the Malaysian police will not take action unless the United States’ 1MDD civil lawsuits develop into a criminal case as the Malaysian police “only dealt with criminal matters”.

This police myopia is most shocking to say the least.  Was the Malaysian Inspector-General of Police unable to understand the strong language used by the United States officers, for instance,

(i)	when the US Attorney-General Loretta E. Lynch said that DOJ would not allow the  American financial system to be used as a conduit for corruption and that the DOJ action sought “to forfeit and recover funds that were intended to grow the Malaysian economy and support the Malaysian people. Instead, they were stolen, laundered through American financial institutions and used to enrich a few officials and their associates”; or

(ii)	when the US Assistant Attorney-General Leslie Caldwell  said the DOJ allegations is “a case where life imitated art” where “the associates of these corrupt 1MDB officials are alleged to have used some of the illicit proceeds of their fraud scheme to fund the production of The Wolf of Wall Street, a movie about a corrupt stockbroker who tried to hide his own illicit profits in a perceived foreign safe haven”? or

(iii)	When  U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker of the Central District of California Eileen Decker who spoke of the commitment to send “a message that we will not allow the United States to become a playground for the corrupt, a platform for money laundering or a place to hide and invest stolen riches”?  or

(iv)	When FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe  said the United States will not be a safe haven for assets stolen by corrupt foreign officials? or

(v)	the complaint proper in the DOJ lawsuits stating it is “a civil action in rem” to forfeit assets which are “a portion of the proceeds over US$3.5 billion misappropriated from 1MDB” (Paragraph 33) in an international conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1MDB, and setting out the series of “criminal conduct” of such global misappropriation and money-laundering?

How can a Malaysian police investigation into the  1MDB scandal be regarded as serious, thorough or comprehensive if it refuses to even take cognisance of the series of criminal conduct with regard to the  theft, misappropriation and money-laundering of 1MDB funds uncovered by the investigations of the various US authorities highlighted in the DOJ lawsuits?

In the reactions after the DOJ filings, Khalid said that the police will question two important personalities in the 1MDB scandal, the Penang-born tycoon Jho Low and Najib’s stepson Riza Aziz, before submitting papers to the Attorney-General.

As Khalid has said that the police have submitted its investigation papers to the Attorney-General, have the police succeeded in questioning Jho Low and Riza?

The 1MDB investigations by the Malaysian police and the United States authorities were initiated at almost the same time – in the first quarter of last year.

Can the Inspector-General of Police explain why the  United States investigation seemed to have made greater headway than the Malaysian police investigation, and why the Malaysian police investigation seemed to be trailing not only those in the United States, but also in other countries like Singapore, Switzerland and  Abu Dhabi?

Will Khalid as IGP demonstrate that he is the country No. 1 Policeman who will act without fear or favour to uphold the law, and is prepared to find out who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”, and will assist and not hamper the #TangkapMalaysian Official1 campaign?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 21 August 2016, 3:43 pm and is filed under
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Can IGP Khalid order the police probe on 1MDB to investigate the DOJ allegations of  criminal conduct of the multi-billion ringgit 1MDB theft, embezzlement and money-laundering or must he first  get “green light” from Cabinet or Prime Minister himself?

The recent revelation by the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar that the police have completed the first phase of their investigation into 1MDB, and that the police probe  is restricted to the five “non-existing” recommendations by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) as ordered by the cabinet, have reduced police investigation into 1MDB into a charade and a farce.

It raises many questions relating to the independence, impartiality, efficiency and professionalism of the Malaysian police, in particular whether the Malaysian police  could rank as one of the world’s top police forces in terms of efficiency and professionalism.

For instance, can IGP Khalid order the police probe on 1MDB to investigate the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s damning allegations of criminal conduct of the theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of multi-billion ringgit 1MDB funds or must he first get the “green light” from the Cabinet or the Prime Minister himself?

In the absence of such “greenlight” from the Cabinet or the Prime Minister himself, is the Malaysian police  forced  to resort to world-class play-acting pretending that the 136-page DOJ complaint of a litany of criminal conduct of theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of multi-billion ringgit of 1MDB funds simply does not exist – although some ten countries are independently investigating the global scandal of theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of multi-billion ringgit 1MDB funds?

Can Khalid enlighten Malaysians whether he had officially asked for such “green light” from the Cabinet or the Prime Minister for the Malaysian police probe into 1MDB to investigate the allegations of criminal conduct in  the DOJ filings, or whether he had never asked for such approval knowing that it would not be forthcoming, whether from the Cabinet or the Prime Minister himself?

The unwarranted police  arrest and three-day remand of three student activists, Muhammad Luqman Nul Hakim Zul Razali, Luqman Hakim and Ashraff Nazrin on Saturday for promoting #TangkapMalaysian Official1 rally at  UiTM in Seri Iskandar in Perak has precipitated the question as to what should be the Police position with regard to the personality code-named “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” mentioned 36 times in the 136-page DOJ US$1 billion assets forfeiture lawsuits arising from the embezzlement and money-laundering of US$3.5 billion 1MDB funds.

Should the Malaysian Police be concerned as to who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” and should the Police co-operate with the #TangkapMalaysian Official1 campaign?

If DOJ’s  damning allegations of criminal conduct against  “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” are true, then “MO1” is a top criminal in Malaysia.  How can the Malaysian Police be unconcerned and uninterested?

As pointed out by the Malaysian Bar  President, Steven Thiru, it is untenable to hold that the DOJ document does not show that money has been misappropriated from 1MDB as the  allegations of financial improprieties concerning 1MDB funds — described as having been “stolen, laundered through American financial institutions and used to enrich a few officials and their associates” — are referred to in no fewer than 193 paragraphs in the document.

Should’nt it be the responsibility of the Malaysian Police to find out who is “MO1”  and who is actually the “mastermind” of the global 1MDB financial scandal – whether “MO1” or Penang billionaire Jho Low?

The DOJ complaint described  three phases of 1MDB embezzlement and kleptocracy – 1) the Good Star Phase  2) the Aabar/BVI Phase and 3) the Tanore Phase, alleging that  “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” embezzled US$731 million via 1MDB.  There is of a fourth phase, the SRC phase, which is not covered by DOJ action.

DOJ enumerated that in the first “Good Star” phase, over US$1 billion from September 2009 to 2011  were siphoned off from 1MDB to Good Star which belonged to Jho Low; in the second “Aabar/BVI phase” in 2012 approximately US$1.367 billion in 1MDB funds raised in two separate bond offerings were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low; and in the  third “Tanore phase” in 2013  more than US$1.26 billion in 1MDB funds raised in a third bond offering were “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” to bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore controlled by Jho Low.

Out of the some US$3.6 billion 1MDB funds misappropriated in these three phases, US$731 million went to “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1”’s personal banking accounts.

In refusing to launch a police investigation which could rebut these damning allegations, is the Malaysian Police accepting that there is a prima facie case for the DOJ allegations of criminal conduct in the theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of 1MDB funds, and the pre-eminent role played by “MO1” and Jho Low in such criminal conduct?

The  Barisan Nasional  Strategic Communications Director and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of EPU, Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan, has said that “only an idiot doesn’t know who that person was” as there is no secret who is Malaysian Official 1 (MO1) mentioned in the DOJ civil lawsuits.

Did the police interrogate Abdul Rahman Dahlan as to the identity of “MO1”?

Is the UMNO MP for Langkawi, Datuk Nawawi Ahmad an “idiot of idiots” to suggest that “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” is the Yang di Pertuan Agong?

This is one case where police inaction would speak volumes!

                This entry was posted on Monday, 22 August 2016, 1:58 pm and is filed under
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The Hyenas, Vultures and Maggots of 1MDB

M. Bakri Musa

www.bakrimusa.com

23rd August 2016

1MDB is not yet a bloated carcass (it is bloated only with debt) and already the hyenas, vultures and maggots are feasting with glee. In the wild, hyenas and vultures wait till their prey is dead, and maggots, rotting. Not these human hyenas, vultures and maggots.

            Scavengers are vital in the ecosystem; they cleanse the environment of dead and decomposing bodies. In contrast, these human hyenas, vultures and maggots feasting on 1MDB are part of the rubbish. Perverse as it may seem, they have an exalted opinion of themselves. They view what they are doing–defending “Malaysian Official 1” who is related to one of the hyenas Reza Aziz–as honorable.

            This 1MDB mess is humungous; it will burden Malaysians for generations. That is a grim and undeniable fact.

            Other facts, also undeniable, include these. One, 1MDB’s debt in excess of RM42 billion, and growing fast, exceeds the current budgetary allocation for education. No other entity, private or public, then or now could come even close. Those loans are ultimately the responsibility of taxpayers as well as those who do not pay tax. Those non-taxpayers, meaning the poor, are impacted because funds meant for them would be diverted to servicing those debts.

            Two, 1MDB has gone through as many accounting firms as Britney Spears with boyfriends.  Its latest, Deloitte, has resigned, but not before making a most unusual declaration. That is, the US Department of Justice’s June 20, 2016 asset forfeiture lawsuit contained information that, if known at the time of the 2013 and 2014 audits “would have impacted the financial statements and affected the audit reports.”

            Along the same vein, the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB which the government had promised to make public is now under the Official Secrets Act. Those reports have always been public. Why keep this one secret?

            Three, 1MDB has gone through as many chief executives in as many years, not the sign of a well-managed company. Four, drive by the site of the proposed Tun Razak Exchange, 1MDB’s signature development. It is empty. Last, 1MDB has yet to generate a sen of profit despite being in existence since 2009.

            Meanwhile Switzerland has forced the sale of the bank involved with 1MDB and imposed an unusual and tough stipulation. Its new owner must not employ any of the existing senior managers of the sold bank. Singapore summarily closed the local branch of that bank. Its head now faces criminal charges. He was denied bail while awaiting trial, reflecting the gravity of the alleged crime. Singapore admitted to being lax in monitoring the bank’s activities with respect to 1MDB. Singapore also froze the assets of Jho Low, Najib’s financial confidant and key 1MDB player, an unprecedented as well as severe action.

            There are other facts. The Attorney-General and Bank Negara have closed their investigations with no negative findings. Then there are the American DOJ’s asset forfeiture lawsuits and the class-action suit of Husam and Chang.

            In America anyone can file a lawsuit. Thus you may dismiss the American lawsuits but not the actions of the Swiss and Singaporean authorities. As for the Attorney-General and Bank Negara Governor exonerating 1MDB, I let readers give that its proper weightage and relevance. Nonetheless that would still not explain 1MDB’s huge debts, changes in management and auditing firms, empty TRX lot, and the Auditor-General Report being kept secret.

            For those who believe that Najib is God’s gift to Malaysians, you can’t argue with them. It would also be blasphemous to dispute Allah’s choice. For the rest of us, we need a more rational explanation, one that does not assault credibility or insult intelligence.

            Back to the hyenas, they are now uncharacteristically quiet, their former flamboyance gone. Perhaps they are enjoying their morsels while they can, in their penthouses of Manhattan, mansions of Beverly Hills, and luxury yachts cruising the South China Sea. One would expect that having benefited handsomely from 1MDB they would harbor some gratitude to defend their benefactor.

            The vast majority of Najib’s supporters are simple, unsophisticated Malay villagers still under the grip of feudalism. To them it is a simplistic “my leader, my race, my country, right or wrong!” Their loyalty to leaders is intense and unquestioning, up to a point. Betray that, and you pay the price. Datuk Onn was a hero for stopping Malayan Union, and Tunku Abdul Rahman for bringing merdeka. When they fell out of step with their followers, their drop from hero to villain was precipitous and merciless.

            Najib is nowhere near the caliber of those two giants. We must remind him and his ardent supporters of that.

            Those villagers aside, only those vultures and maggots remain Najib’s supporters. The hyenas should be, but for reasons best known to themselves have chosen to remain silent. That leaves the vultures to be his noisiest and ugliest cheerleaders. Unlike the hyenas with their bounties in the millions, those vultures are satisfied with a promotion or two and a federal award (second or third class) thrown in. Satisfied because stripped of their new appointments, they would earn but a mere fraction back at their old law practices or whatever they did before prostituting themselves to Najib.

            The maggots are there as long as there is a decaying carcass.  A few ringgit tossed their way to fill the tanks of their used motorbikes, and they are happy parading their red shirts or polluting the social media with their inane comments. Once the carrion is gone, so will they.

            Some support Najib out of inertia, buttressed by the havoc of regime change in Iraq and Libya as well as the performance of the opposition. Others reflect the forbearance of Malaysians. Najib, they rationalize, won the last election albeit without the majority of the popular votes. Nonetheless that victory was reaffirmed by the recent state elections in Sarawak as well as the two by-elections in Peninsula Malaysia.

            That is a dicey defense. Winning elections is no license to steal or be corrupt. Nixon won a landslide in 1972, yet that did not stop his impeachment and subsequent resignation in disgrace for covering up the Watergate break-in.

            A few would argue that Najib’s shenanigans are no different from Mahathir’s many opaque UMNO proxy companies plus London Tin, Bank Bumiputra, and Forex debacles. To them 1MDB is merely a different crocodile, albeit much more menacing, but from the same fetid swamp. Malaysia will never progress with that attitude.

            Then there is the reflected glory argument. Reza Aziz, Malaysian Official 1’s stepson, is one of the producers of the Academy Award-winning The Wolf of Wall Street. Most would miss the irony as the film is banned in Malaysia. Nonetheless Malays in particular should celebrate that achievement.

            Malaysians would have, and proudly too, had the film not been tainted. Indeed, the Academy publicly demanded that Reza Aziz’s name be officially deleted. It is like winning at the Olympics, and later disqualified for doping. Instead of glory, shame.

            Another aspect of Najib’s support is crude anti-American rage triggered by the DOJ’s lawsuit. That was seen as interference as well as double standards. America too is blighted with corruption, they sniff. True. As South Korean Tongsun Park and Indonesian James Riady, as well as former Attorney-General Mitchell and President’s Counsel John Dean found out, the corrupt do get caught, convicted, and jailed. That’s the lesson Malaysians should draw from America.

            As for American interference, if Najib and other corrupt Third World leaders do not want that, then next time accept only Zimbabwean dollars and use a bank in Uzbekistan. Buy properties in Bali or Cancun, not Manhattan or Beverly Hills, and bet at casinos in Macau not Las Vegas. There are no shortages of hyenas, vultures and maggots in those countries to clean up your mess.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 23 August 2016, 8:36 am and is filed under
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Who is the “higher power” behind the revival of the story of a national conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister in July last year?

A tantalizing story has come alive after subsiding for a year – was there a national conspiracy to topple Datuk Seri Najib Razak as Prime Minister in July last year?

Probably even more relevant questions, why and who was the “higher power” behind the revival of the story of a national conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister after the passage of a year?

Those who thought the revival of the year-old story of a national conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister would be a quick shot-gun affair, which would be disposed in a matter of a week or so, have been proved wrong – as it has  proved to have a longer span of  life.

It all started when the UMNO Youth vice-chief Khairul Azwan Harun lodged a report on  26th July against three Tan Sris, former Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail, former Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar and the former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed for top-level conspiracy to topple the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

The police recorded Khairul’s statement three days later on 29th July and on 2nd  August, the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar announced that the police will not investigate Khairul’s statement alleging a high-level conspiracy by the three Tan Sris to topple the Prime Minister as Khairul’s report was based on assumptions without any proof to substantiate his allegations and therefore did not warrant further investigations.

All well and good, which bespeak of a highly competent and efficient police force, except that Khairul contemptuously declared that he stood by his police report and insisted  that he has “evidence” to back up his police report of a high-level conspiracy against the three Tan Sris to topple the Prime Minister.

Khairul said his report has led to a “Mexican standoff” or a deadlock describing a confrontation between two or more parties in which none of the opponents has the advantage to proceed without being exposed to danger.

It was quite a humiliating experience for the top policeman in the country, made worse by Khairul re-opening the subject on August 19 at the opening of the Teluk Kemang UMNO wings divisional meeting in Port Dickson.

Azwan said when he lodged the police report on July 26, former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad was gathering a group of international media in Jakarta, Indonesia with the intention of attacking Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

He said he heard that on the same day, former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed, former Bank Negara governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz and former attorney-general Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail were supposed to be present at a special press conference where they were expected to speak about the report made by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

Khairul said: “The press conference was to be recorded and the clip forwarded to Mahathir in Jakarta. He was planning to share it with the rest of the international media who came for the interview session,”

As such, Azwan said his police report thwarted this plan which was aimed at bringing down Najib and his police report served its purpose and was a “success”.

Had the Police investigated into Khairul’s  allegations and interviewed Mahathir as well as the three Tan Sris?

Khalid had said that the police will not investigate the matter as Khairul had admitted that it was based on hearsay when questioned by the police.

Why then has Khairul resurrected his story of a conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister?

Although Najib and the UMNO  Youth leader Khairy Jamaluddin had publicly said that the UMNO Youth deputy chief had not acted on behalf of the party when lodging the police report, it is obvious that Khairul would not have lodged such a serious police report,  and boasted of a “Mexican standoff” to rub the nose of the Inspector-General of Police, if he had not the patronage of a “higher power” in Malaysian politics.

Who is this “higher power” in Malaysian politics?

Although former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir stressed that there was no truth to the story of a “national conspiracy” to topple Najib, he added to the mystery with his cryptic  remark that the three “Tan Sri” top officials accused of conspiring to topple Najib as Prime Minister were “betrayed” by one among them, as “Otherwise, Najib would face action by now”.

Was there a national conspiracy involving the three Tan Sris to topple Najib as Prime Minister in July last year, before Najib launched his high-level government purges, involving the sacking of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Attorney-General?

Or was there a national conspiracy to prevent the top officials from carrying out their duties under the law?

As I said in my speech at a DAP Forum in Petaling Jaya on 13th August last year, on the very same day  that Gani Patail was summarily sacked as Attorney-General and Muhyiddin Yassin sacked as Deputy Prime Minister, (July 28, 2015), a website appeared which accused top officers in government, especially key officers in the Special Task Force on 1MDB, of involvement in an international conspiracy to topple the elected government of Malaysia.

The first posting of this new website entitled “Ops Lalang 2015: Special Branch leads investigation into conspirators” named 13 people on a “list of conspirators to be investigated under Section 124 of the penal code which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison”.

I have  just checked and found this website is still available on the Internet, indicative that those responsible for putting up this website about a national conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister have,  like Khairul, powerful patronage who need not worry about the law or  top government officers!

Will Malaysians ever know whether there was a national conspiracy in July last year, and what was the object of the conspiracy – to topple Najib as the Prime Minister of Malaysia or to subvert the legal process and the rule of law  – and whether the revival of the story of a national conspiracy to topple Najib as Prime Minister is to distract national and international attention from the question: Who is “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” mentioned 36 times in the US Department of Justice filing for US$1 billion forfeiture of assets resulting from embezzlement, misappropriation and money-laundering of US$3.5 billion 1MDB funds?

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 23 August 2016, 1:54 pm and is filed under
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Was Anis’  “Whole world knows we’ve been robbed, why are we still relaxed?” cry the subject of Cabinet meeting today?

Was #TangkapMO1 spokesperson, Anis Syafiqah Md Yusof’s cry “Whole world knows we’ve been robbed, why are we still relaxed” the subject of the Cabinet meeting today – the fifth Cabinet meeting since the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filings on July 20 for US$1 billion forfeiture of assets as a result of theft, embezzlement, misappropriation and money-laundering of US$3.5 billion 1MDB funds?

Anis had asked the police why they were not doing anything when it was clear that money was stolen from Malaysians – including students  and the police –  and why the police were not focusing on the robber instead of on Malaysians who want to see justice was done?

This cry that must be answered not only by the Inspector-General of Police as head of the police, but by all heads of national enforcement and investigative agencies responsible for upholding the rule of law, whether the Attorney-General, the Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Bank Negara Governor, the Auditor-General but also by the Cabinet and the Prime Minister.

Malaysians and the world are shocked that 35  days after  the unprecedented DOJ filing of the world’s single biggest lawsuit on multi-billion ringgit theft, embezzlement, misappropriation and money-laundering involving the Malaysian national sovereign wealth fund, which turned Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy, the Malaysian government had continued to adopt an indifferent and nonchalant stance as if the integrity and reputation of the Malaysian government and nation are of no consequence at all.

Hence, Anis’ cry, which is the cry of all patriotic Malaysians: ““Whole world knows we’ve been robbed, why are we still relaxed”!

Anyone who reads the 136-page DOJ lawsuit on its “civil action in rem to forfeit assets involved in and traceable to an international conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1MDB” will know that 1MDB was not the passive victim of the international conspiracy but an active participant of the conspiracy to “fraudulently divert billions of dollars from 1MDB through various means, including by defrauding foreign banks and by sending foreign wire communications in furtherance of the scheme, and thereafter, to launder the proceeds of that criminal conduct, including in and through U.S. financial institutions” by “multiple individuals, including public officials and their associates” over a four-year period between 2009 and 2013.

As Paragraph 6 of the DOJ filing stated:  “The funds diverted from 1MDB were used for the personal benefit of the co-conspirators and their relatives and associates, including to purchase luxury real estate in the United States, pay gambling expenses at Las Vegas casinos, acquire more than $200 million in artwork, invest in a major New York real estate development project, and fund the production of major Hollywood films. 1MDB maintained no interest in these assets and saw no returns on these investments.”

As the “public officials” responsible for the management of 1MDB were directly implicated  as “co-conspirators” in the multi-billion ringgit theft, embezzlement, misappropriation and money-laundering of the funds from the national sovereign wealth fund, how can the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the principal officers of all the national enforcement and investigative institutions adopt a hands-off, indifferent and nonchalant attitude to the  DOJ action in the past 35 days?

The DOJ filing described three phases of 1MDB embezzlement and kleptocracy – 1) the Good Star Phase; 2) the Aabar/BVI Phase and 3) the Tanore Phase, alleging that “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” embezzled US$731 million via 1MDB.

In the first “Good Star” phase, over US$1 billion from September 2009 to 2011 were siphoned off from 1MDB to Good Star which belonged to Jho Low.

Paragraph 8 of the DOJ filing states:

“Between 2009 and 2011, under the pretence of investing in a joint venture between 1MDB and PetroSaudi International, a private Saudi oil extraction company, officials of 1MDB and others arranged for the fraudulent transfer of more than $1 billion from 1MDB to a Swiss bank account held in the name of Good Star Limited. Officials at 1MDB caused this diversion of funds by, among other things, providing false information to banks about the ownership of the Good Star Account.  Contrary to representations made by 1MDB officials, the Good Star Account was beneficially owned not by PetroSaudi or the joint venture, but by LOW Taek Jho, a Malaysian national who had no formal position with 1MDB but was involved in its creation.”

Isn’t  this “Good Star” Phase 1 of the theft, embezzlement  and money-laundering of the multi-billion ringgit 1MDF funds in the DOJ filing basically tally with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Report on 1MDB?

On the “Aabar/BVI” second phase on the misappropriation and money-laundering of US$1.367 billion 1MDB funds,  the Second Finance Minister Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani said Putrajaya was “very confident” that 1MDB would win the arbitration case filed by Abu-Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC).

Regardless of the outcome of the London arbitration case where IPIC is seeking US$6.5 billion from 1MDB, the DOJ filing on the  embezzlement of 1MDB funds  of over US$1 billion in the Good Star phase one and US$1.26 billion in the “Tanore” Third Phase remain intact.

As the DOJ filings describe 1MDB public officials  as  active “co-conspirators” in the multi-billion ringgit theft, embezzlement and money-laundering of 1MDB funds, the Malaysian Government, whether through the Prime Minister, the Cabinet or the national investigatory and enforcement institutions cannot be “relaxed” while the “whole world knows we’ve been robbed”.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 24 August 2016, 2:50 pm and is filed under
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