Dear Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak,

You are reported as saying that 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) will recover its losses over time and that their auditors, being reputable international firms, would not have signed off unqualified accounts if billions were missing as alleged.

Let me take the points separately:

Nobody is asking if 1MDB will make fistfuls of profit over time; they most likely will given the goodies they have been gifted by you.

Only an exceptional cretin could possibly snatch losses from the yawning profits coming IMDB way.

What is being asked is where the borrowed money went as the known investments don’t support the billions borrowed.

We really don’t need the auditor-general or anyone other than 1MDB Directors to tell us that, as they should know.

Let us next get to the reputable, international, audit firms and their unqualified opinions..

Most recently, the partners of a Big Four firm in India, PwC , were jailed seven years for colluding in presenting fictitious accounts for a spectacular failure of publicly-listed Satyam Group.

You would also recall  other spectacular omissions by Big Four auditors including Enron and World Com.

In Malaysia, these same international auditors signed off clean reports for Transmile, Xian Leng, Kenmark, etc, etc (of course, being Malaysian, none of them has been indicted to date).

The point is, an unqualified audit report provides no airtight assurance.

The minimum requirement for confidence in accounts is arithmetical accuracy.

That is clearly lacking in 1MDB, as even a schoolboy can tell.

So Mr PM cum finance minister, can you show us the arithmetic instead of beating around the bush? Please.