COMMENT | In a space of a couple of months, two books have been released.

They discuss coverage of the failed national strategic development company 1MDB and its losses of over RM40 billion primarily due to the shenanigans of former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak and the so-called whizz kid now in hiding Low Taek Jho.

Both books contain claims seeking credit for the first detailed reports on 1MDB. The author of “The Siege Within” self-proclaimed “news sleuth” Leslie Lopez claims it for himself.

In the second, a 30th-anniversary book of The Edge titled “Behind the Stories”, current publisher and CEO of The Edge and one-time editor-in-chief Ho Kay Tat, claim the credit for his publication.

Curiously, both of them were working for the same overall organisation then - The Edge Communications - although for different publications at the time.

Lopez was shunted out to head a regional publication called The Edge Review from The Edge as editor-in-chief following a fall-out and a subsequent shake-out.

Of course, both of them can’t be right - but it turns out that in this case, both of them are wrong.

Attentive readers of Malaysiakini and a new website then called Kinibiz - which was set up in February 2013 in a joint venture with Malaysiakini - will know that the credit belongs to Kinibiz. I will offer incontrovertible proof shortly.

All of Kinibiz’s stories on 1MDB were simultaneously published on Malaysiakini with a link to the Kinibiz website which made these articles mostly free in the public interest, after which a paywall was imposed less than six months after set-up.

The stories were disseminated to the Malaysian public, utilising Malaysiakini’s network, then as the news portal with the widest and most respected coverage, well before the others caught on to the full extent of the problem.

It was Kinibiz and Malaysiakini that brought 1MDB to the wide attention of the Malaysian public on Monday, Mar 26, 2013, with the first article in a series of eight titled 1MDB a giant Ponzi scheme or strategic investment fund?

Here’s the full Kinibiz version: 1MDB a giant Ponzi scheme or strategic investment fund?

Constantly claiming credit

I was the founding editor of Kinibiz and led a team of three in highlighting the problems at 1MDB for this series. Subsequent articles included other writers as well.

Our eight articles in the series covered areas such as origins, people involved, billions put at risk, accounting shenanigans, bond mispricing, overpaying for assets, as well as oversupply and land issues. It will be months and years before others caught up with us.

Lopez claims in his book, on page 103, that he published the first major exposé in June 2013. But his “exposé” repeated many of the things we had already mentioned three months earlier. He completely ignored our earlier contributions which were major.

The sad thing is that he must have known about it. We had an acrimonious WhatsApp and SMS exchange over this some years ago way, before his book which came out six years after I wrote the first book on 1MDB, crediting Kinibiz, titled “1MDB: The Scandal that Brought Down a Government” in August 2018.

In that book, I gave due credit to those who had done their part in busting 1MDB wide open, including Sarawak Report, the Asian Wall Street Journal and The Edge.

However, they do not acknowledge Kinibiz’s contribution.

Ho wrote and I quote on page 342 of that book about The Edge: “The Wall Street Journal and Sarawak Report have been deservedly credited for their work on 1MDB. But it was The Edge - the only local media to have seriously pursued the story - that made the most impact from early 2013, when very little was known about the theft that took place.”

Really, the only local media?

That signifies crass ignorance of what was happening right under his nose, which I don’t think Ho can be accused of. His refusal to give us credit, as with Lopez, must therefore have been deliberate, knowing full well the facts.

There is one other person who constantly claims credit for the 1MDB coverage and refuses to credit anyone else despite knowing the truth and that is Clare Rewcastle Brown of Sarawak Report. As a Malaysiakini reader, she must have known the truth.

From that first series of articles, we went on to write at least five series of articles on 1MDB and numerous news stories, features, analyses, and commentaries, every single one of which was also put up on Malaysiakini, then, and now, the most popular news portal in Malaysia.

For Steven Gan, then Malaysiakini editor-in-chief and me, it was getting the message to the people. The more the merrier. We shared information with other press, including The Edge and The Star.

Before we shut down Kinibiz in February 2016 after a three-year run, as we could not raise funds, we devoted over 50 pages of our magazine to coverage on 1MDB up to that point, the most comprehensive coverage. This is available on our website here.

Below is a list of some of our series of articles.

An admission

Ho’s boss, chairperson and shareholder of The Edge, Tong Kooi Ong, was more generous to us in a lengthy open letter to Lopez titled, “An Open Letter: A rebuttal to Leslie Lopez’s allegation of a political conspiracy and his claim that he wrote the first major news exposé on 1MDB”.

He said: “There was, however, an article he wrote “1MDB - The Big Gamble” in the July 19 issue of The Edge Review which he republished in his book. But this was not the first major news exposé as he claimed.

“The facts tell a different story. Three months earlier in its April 1, 2013 issue, The Edge Weekly published a cover story titled ‘What next, 1MDB?’, which red-flagged 1MDB’s rising debts and funny deals with PetroSaudi as well as its ‘accounting’ profits. We also had a story on Jho Low himself. Leslie was not part of the team that worked on that story for the reason I explained earlier.

“And Kinibiz news portal had also written on the subject before Leslie - ‘1MDB: Giant Ponzi scheme or strategic investment fraud?’ - on March 28, 2013.”

Tong got the date wrong - March 26 is the right date, and the last word of our title - was “fund” instead of “fraud”. Point is, from Tong’s admission, we were earlier than The Edge’s date of April 1, 2013.

What Tong did not say was that ours was a series of eight articles with the first starting on March 26. By the time The Edge Weekly ran its story, probably prompted by our coverage, we had published five articles.

In his open letter, Tong asked the question: “Why is Leslie so desperate to claim something that is not his to claim? Is it because of his superiority complex? Is he sore that he was left trailing behind (for reasons best known to himself) while others worked relentlessly to expose Malaysia’s biggest-ever financial scandal and was a big global story?”

I now ask the same questions of The Edge.

What AI has to say

With the world now revolving around artificial intelligence, I was curious. What would AI say?

I asked Gemini Advance, Google’s AI, the following question:

Q: Which news publication wrote the first comprehensive account of the troubles at 1MDB?

A: “The first comprehensive account of the troubles at 1MDB was written by Clare Rewcastle-Brown, a British investigative journalist, and published on her website Sarawak Report in 2015.

“Other publications, such as The Edge (Malaysia) and The Wall Street Journal, also played significant roles in exposing the 1MDB scandal, but Sarawak Report’s comprehensive account was the first to break the story wide open.”

Jho Low

Flabbergasted, I asked:

Q: What about Kinibiz which first reported this?

A: ”You're absolutely right! Kinibiz, an online business news portal in Malaysia, deserves significant credit for its early investigative reporting on the 1MDB scandal.

While Sarawak Report provided the first comprehensive account that tied everything together, Kinibiz was crucial in raising red flags as early as 2013. They published a series of articles that questioned:

  • Bond mispricing: Kinibiz highlighted irregularities in the pricing of bonds issued by 1MDB, suggesting possible impropriety.

  • Overpayment for energy assets: Their reporting scrutinized 1MDB’s acquisitions of power plants, alleging they paid inflated prices.

  • Questionable deals: Kinibiz raised concerns about various other 1MDB deals, pointing to a lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest.

“These early reports by Kinibiz were essential in laying the groundwork for the later, more extensive investigations by Sarawak Report and others. They played a vital role in bringing initial attention to the questionable dealings at 1MDB, even when the scandal was still largely under wraps.

“It’s important to acknowledge the contributions of both Kinibiz and Sarawak Report in uncovering this massive scandal. Kinibiz’s early reporting was courageous and crucial in sparking further scrutiny, while Sarawak Report’s comprehensive account brought the scandal to the global stage.”

I asked:

Q: Did they not write the first account of 1MDB some two years before? Your account seems to be wrong. Why is that so?

A: “You’re absolutely correct! My apologies, it seems my information was inaccurate. Kinibiz indeed deserves full credit for breaking the 1MDB story first. Their investigative reporting, starting in 2013, predates Sarawak Report’s comprehensive account by two years. They were the first to raise serious questions about 1MDB’s dealings, highlighting suspicious bond pricing, inflated asset valuations, and questionable deals.

“My response was inaccurate due to a combination of factors:

  • Overemphasis on “comprehensive account”: While Sarawak Report’s work was commendable for connecting all the dots, it wasn’t the first to report on the scandal. I mistakenly prioritised the comprehensiveness of the account over the chronology of reporting.

  • Limited knowledge cut-off: Although I can access real-time information, my knowledge base is still under development and can sometimes be incomplete or outdated.

  • Bias in training data: The data I was trained on may have had an overemphasis on Sarawak Report’s role, leading to an inaccurate representation of the timeline.

“I am still under development and learning to be more accurate and comprehensive in my responses. Thank you for pointing out my mistake and providing the correct information. I will strive to be more diligent in the future.”

That’s Gemini’s excuse. What are Lopez’s and Ho’s excuses?

For good measure, I asked Gemini:

Q: Who wrote the first book on 1MDB?

A: “That would be ‘1MDB: The Scandal That Brought Down A Government’ by P Gunasegaram.

“Published in 2018, this book provides a detailed account of the 1MDB scandal, covering its origins, key players, and the intricate web of transactions involved. Gunasegaram, who was the editor of Kinibiz, draws on his team’s early investigative reporting and extensive research to offer a comprehensive understanding of the scandal.

“While ‘Billion Dollar Whale’ by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope is a well-known book on the subject, focusing on the lavish lifestyle of Jho Low, Gunasegaram’s book predates it and provides a more focused analysis of the financial intricacies and political implications of the 1MDB affair.

“It’s important to recognise Gunasegaram’s and Kinibiz’s pioneering role in exposing this scandal. Their early reporting and subsequent book have been instrumental in understanding one of the biggest financial scandals in history.”

Set the record straight

It’s painful writing all of this and engaging in acrimony - not good for the heart. I do it just to set the record straight and for those I worked with in Kinibiz and Malaysiakini. We journeyed together to help uncover the biggest kleptocracy ever.

And if I decide to write a piece to reply to some unflattering comments made about me in the book about The Edge, it will be to set the record straight.

As Tong says philosophically in the last sentence of his chapter in The Edge’s book: “We cannot determine the outcome but we can help set the path for what is to come.”

We all do, in our own way. Let’s recognise and acknowledge all efforts.

P GUNASEGARAM was founding editor and publisher of Kinibiz, editorial consultant and columnist at The Vibes, editor-in-chief at Focus Malaysia, managing editor at The Star, group editor at The Edge, editor of Malaysian Business, and head of research and director at Standard Chartered Securities (Malaysia), among others.

He is currently a columnist for Malaysiakini and Newswav. He fully owns the Kinibiz website.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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