To summarize their article, WSJ makes the following claims :
- More than USD1 billion was deposited in various transactions into Najib's accounts
- Much of the money can be traced back to funds from 1MDB - specifically from a USD3.5 billion bonds jointly-guaranteed by IPIC and 1MDB.
- About USD1.4 billion of collateral and USD1 billion in options termination fees - totaling USD2.4 billion were never received by IPIC or subsidiary company Aabar.
- These payments by 1MDB to Aabar was supposedly deposited into a similarly named company in the British Virgin Islands called Aabar Investments PJS Ltd with no relationship with the actual IPIC subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS
- The firm with a name similar to Aabar’s was set up in 2012, global investigators believe, by Aabar’s chief executive at the time, Mohammed Badawy Al Husseiny, and by Khadem Al Qubaisi, then managing director of IPIC and chairman of Aabar.
- The majority of the USD1 billion including the famous USD681m (famous RM2.6b) funds came from this USD2.4billion and then somehow Najib returned most of the money.
Those are the six claims.that WSJ made.
Thus I decided to look at IPIC's actual financial statements which stated the following:in note 22:
Okay, what the above part meant was that IPIC confirmed that they guaranteed the USD3.5 billion bonds and that they stood to benefit from options over the power plant.
All fine and good.
The next part says this:
This part says that sometime in the year 2014, Aabar has cancelled the options for a fixed price and passed it back to 1MDB. Thus Aabar or IPIC have no more such options.
Following that, the next part is really about IPIC agreeing to take up the entire USD3.5 billion bonds and pay USD1 billion cash upfront to 1MDB (which it did) in return for swapping certain financial assets.
And even more incredibly, is this part.
Despite supposedly not getting paid USD2.4 billion, IPIC paid USD1 billion upfront to 1MDB AND also paid USD103 million in interest for the bonds!
Incredible.
Incredible.
And so, what happened to the two persons who "misused" Aabar's name to divert USD2.4 billion in the account - namely Aabar’s chief executive at the time, Mohammed Badawy Al Husseiny, and by Khadem Al Qubaisi, then managing director of IPIC and chairman of Aabar?
Well, this was apparently their punishment according to WSJ.
Well, this was apparently their punishment according to WSJ.
"Abu Dhabi’s president removed Mr. Al Qubaisi last year. Soon after, IPIC’s new management removed Mr. Al Husseiny. In both cases, no reason was given."
Okay. This means that if you believe WSJ's 6 points stories above you will have to believe the following:
- IPIC guarantees both USD3.5 billions in bonds without any collateral except for some options over power plants - meaning no USD1.4b collateral was received.
- It then sells back their options to the power-plants and cancles them although they never received the USD1 billion payment
- On top of not receiving USD2.4 billion due to them from 1MDB, it goes ahead to pay an additional USD1 billion in cash to 1MDB!
- futher to that, IPIC pays another USD113 million in interest payments for the USD3.5 billion on behalf of 1MDB.
And to cap it all off, the two persons who allegedly "diverted" USD2.4 billion of IPIC's money are neither investigated, charged nor went to jail and simply ended up working directly with the crown prince in another job?
Are we to believe this is the case? The two guys who so happens to be the Chairman and the CEO "stole" USD2.4 billions and when "found out" were simply slowly removed and put into other jobs? No punishment, no investigations, no jail,. Nothing?
WSJ expects us to believe this without questioning?
OH WOW!! IPIC and Abu Dhabi government must be super-generous or astonishingly forgiving!
Would you believe that?
And these guys manage USD60 billion of funds - they know what they are doing.
And these guys manage USD60 billion of funds - they know what they are doing.
In fact, IPIC never issued a statement saying that they lost USD2.4 billion and the London Stock Exchange never queried them whether they have indeed lost USD2.4 billion - despite Tony Pua writing to the London stock exchange to ask them to do so.
So, how did WSJ get this info that USD2.4 billion have gone missing and ended up in another account?
These are their sources: "said the people familiar with the probes".
These are their sources: "said the people familiar with the probes".
No wonder 1MDB came out with a statement today saying "WSJ lost all semblance of balanced reporting/"
I agree with 1MDB when they said that.
Let me give you further proof.
WSJ ended their article today with this:
Let me give you further proof.
WSJ ended their article today with this:
"A person familiar with 1MDB’s dealings also said the deposit didn’t come from Saudi Arabia. A Saudi official said in January the kingdom’s ministries of finance and foreign affairs had no knowledge of such a donation to Mr. Najib."
Yes. According to The Wall Street Journal, an anonymous Saudi official of undetermined rank said in January that they have no knowledge thus it must be true!
But somehow, WSJ forgot to quote a statement just 3 weeks ago and featured in the New York Times by the Saudi Arabia foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir himself. who confirmed that the money into Najib's accounts came from Saudi Arabia and was quoted to say this:
Further on the subject of credible sources. your continued attacks on Najib which cited foreign investigators also failed to cite that the office of the Swiss AG spokesman Andre Marty had told the Nikkei Asian Review "In the ongoing criminal proceeding of the OAG, Mr Najib Razak is not one of the public official under accusation,"
And WSJ also forgot to mention that MACC also went to meet and interview the donor in Saudi Arabia and has in its possession the bank transfer documents including 4 letters from the donor lodged with the banks during the transfer.
Incredibly the WSJ chooses to quote from an unidentified Saudi source of undetermined rank but refuses to actually quote a named Saudi Minister or a named Swiss AG spokesperson?
Why are you not telling your readers about that infinitely more credible source? What are you trying to hide or what perception are you trying to create for your readers?
Also, a month back the UK Government owned BBC's foremost expert on the war on terror and Middle East security correspondent, Frank Gardner OBE says that his highly placed sources tell him that the RM2.6b was authorized at the very top of the then Saudi Arabia royalty and that such funding is normal.
Why aren't you telling your readers about that too in the interest of credible and ethical reporting?
But somehow, WSJ forgot to quote a statement just 3 weeks ago and featured in the New York Times by the Saudi Arabia foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir himself. who confirmed that the money into Najib's accounts came from Saudi Arabia and was quoted to say this:
"In Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that he accepted the (Malaysian) attorney general’s opinion that there had been no wrongdoing, but he also said that he did not think that the money had come from the Saudi government or that it was a political donation.
Further on the subject of credible sources. your continued attacks on Najib which cited foreign investigators also failed to cite that the office of the Swiss AG spokesman Andre Marty had told the Nikkei Asian Review "In the ongoing criminal proceeding of the OAG, Mr Najib Razak is not one of the public official under accusation,"
And WSJ also forgot to mention that MACC also went to meet and interview the donor in Saudi Arabia and has in its possession the bank transfer documents including 4 letters from the donor lodged with the banks during the transfer.
“The MACC knew of the details of the donor through a document taken from the bank and it was found that four letters were sent to the bank when the large sum of money was deposited into the account of the Prime Minister.”
Incredibly the WSJ chooses to quote from an unidentified Saudi source of undetermined rank but refuses to actually quote a named Saudi Minister or a named Swiss AG spokesperson?
Also, a month back the UK Government owned BBC's foremost expert on the war on terror and Middle East security correspondent, Frank Gardner OBE says that his highly placed sources tell him that the RM2.6b was authorized at the very top of the then Saudi Arabia royalty and that such funding is normal.
Why aren't you telling your readers about that too in the interest of credible and ethical reporting?
That is "ethical and credible" reporting by WSJ for sure.
For quite some time now, I have noticed the New York Post (not New York Times)and the Wall Street Journal have been playing tag-team to attack 1MDB and Najib with "exclusives".
And I still remember that it was the UK's Sunday Times that co-broke the Justo email leaks with Sarawak Report back in February 2015.
It does not escape my attention that all three NY Post, WSJ and the UK Sunday Times are all owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
When you resort to such sloppy reporting such as this using very non-credible anonymous sources and refuses to quote a credible full Saudi foreign Minister as a source, please don't blame me for suspecting a hidden agenda.
My suspicions were further reinforced earlier when WSJ hosted a Questions-and-Answers session on 1MDB where I asked 10 very basic questions but the answers from WSJ were decidedly not very convincing.
My suspicions were further reinforced earlier when WSJ hosted a Questions-and-Answers session on 1MDB where I asked 10 very basic questions but the answers from WSJ were decidedly not very convincing.
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PS. For whatever reasons, Najib has yet to sue the WSJ but I believe Najib will decide to sue when he can.
I think he may be getting approval from the Saudi counterparts first as he probably does not want to unilaterally reveal all these foreign countries details in court when challenged.
But we will not know unless Najib's lawyers give us the reasons
For me, I would wait for Swiss, HK or Singapore to complete their investigations first.
If and when cleared by those foreign countries, suing WSJ would be very much easier and there is thus no need to reveal too much details since other countries agencies have already done the investigations and can then submit to the court as evidence that WSJ is wrong.
PS. For whatever reasons, Najib has yet to sue the WSJ but I believe Najib will decide to sue when he can.
I think he may be getting approval from the Saudi counterparts first as he probably does not want to unilaterally reveal all these foreign countries details in court when challenged.
But we will not know unless Najib's lawyers give us the reasons
For me, I would wait for Swiss, HK or Singapore to complete their investigations first.
If and when cleared by those foreign countries, suing WSJ would be very much easier and there is thus no need to reveal too much details since other countries agencies have already done the investigations and can then submit to the court as evidence that WSJ is wrong.
And if and when these three foreign investigators fully clears Najib and 1MDB, whether Najib actually proceeds to sue WSJ is already a moot point - as by that time, WSJ's reputation and credibility on this 1MDB issue would already be destroyed.
Hopefully the results of the respective countries investigation can come out before GE14. At least Najib can sue those responsible for RM 2.6 billion, hehe.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I very doubt Singapore would gladly comply. They rather see a certain Chinese chauvinistic party hold the Government's balls & purse-strings than Malay-UMNO right now.