MP SPEAKS Malaysians owe the Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar a debt of eternal gratitude, for he has resolved a mystery that has been vexing thinking Malaysians for a week – the allegations of about 1MDB “tampered email” which surfaced after the arrest of Swiss national and former PetroSaudi International (PSI) IT executive, Xavier Andre Justo, at a house in Koh Samui, Thailand, on June 22.
Type in “1MDB tampered email” in Google search and there will be scores of news reports about the allegations about “tampered email” associated with the 1MDB scandal – all a week-old vintage after Justo’s arrest.
For months and years since the surfacing of the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, nobody had ever raised the issue of “tampered email”.
Even after the shocking expose, four months ago, when the whistleblower website Sarawak Report in its Feb 28 article “Heist of the Century” announced that, together with the London Sunday Times , they have completed an in-depth investigation into “thousands of documents and email” relating to the transactions of 1MDB, including its initial joint venture with the little-known oil company PetroSaudi International from 2009, nobody had breathed a word about “tampered email”.
Even the police report lodged in the United Kingdom at the London Police’s National Fraud and Cyber Crime Report Centre by PSI on March 1 was not about “tampered email” but about confidential email and servers that had been hacked into and the contents made public.
But why this issue only after arrest of Justo?
Why did the issue of “tampered email” burst into the public domain and only after the arrest of Justo, but only in Malaysia and not elsewhere in the world? And not even in Thailand where Justo was arrested for blackmail – with one cabinet minister after another assuming that it is Gospel truth and threatening action against the media and all and sundry who spoke up on the 1MDB scandal?
Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi even volunteered to “extradite” to Thailand the “several Malaysians” allegedly implicated by Justo for having asked him to manipulate the leaked information - as if this was revealed during his interrogation by Thai police – when Thai police had never mentioned “tampered email” or indicated they want any Malaysian extradited!
I would have thought that Zahid should be asking the Thai police to “extradite” Justo to Malaysia if Justo ( photo ) had committed any crime under the country’s jurisdiction, instead of offering to extradite Malaysians to Thailand.
Mystery deepens when the Inspector-General of Police, Khalid Abu Bakar, said Malaysian police also want to question Justo.
What has this to do with Malaysian police?
If Justo is arrested in Thailand by Thai police for alleged blackmail of his former company, what has this got to do with the Malaysian police?
Or are out police finding opportunities to question Justo on alleged “tampered emails” which the Thai police are not interested in at all, so as to justify all the recent ministerial hullaballoo over 1MDB “tampered email”?
In any event, the IQ of Malaysia’s ministers do not seem to be high enough for them to understand that there could be no blackmail unless the email referred to are true and genuine, as there could be no blackmail if the email have been “tampered” with or doctored - and any such “blackmail” could be simply foiled by denying their truth or veracity.
All these mysteries were resolved when Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi, in a moment of exceptional candour, admitted that the government has no evidence of any PSI “tampered email” in connection with the 1MDB scandal.
Wan Junaidi ( photo ) said the government came to the conclusion that Justo tampered with the email and documents relating to 1MDB based on "logical assumption".
"It's very simple, the person arrested was Xavier and the documents seem to be from him.
"So, we cannot assume anything else than he had tampered with the documents.
"Everything we said here and do were based on logical assumption, on how the things could have happened,” Wan Junaidi said.
No need for facts or evidence, or even collaboration from the Thai police about the outcome of their interrogation of Justo!
All that the Malaysian ministers need to do is to make the “logical assumption” from thin air that there have been email that have been “tampered” with.
Thank God that Wan Junaidi and the ministers, whose “logical assumptions” allow them to discover “tampered emails” from thin air, are not the running the police force - or there would be utter chaos in Malaysia when the administration of justice is no more based on facts and evidence, but upon “logical assumptions” of low IQ Malaysians.
The whistleblower website Sarawak Report has demanded that Protection Group International (PGI) confirm if it was quoted accurately by Malaysia's press, in particular New Straits Times , with regard to “tampered email” allegations.
PGI has responded by saying that it cannot say whether or not it made these statements to the NST without getting permission from PetroSaudi International, which itself is under several investigations regarding the disappearance of millions of ringgit from 1MDB.
Sarawak Report questions how the Malaysian government is relying on alleged statements from PGI when the firm is not prepared to confirm whether or not it made the statements without permission from this interested party.
I urge the prime minister and his cabinet ministers to respond in a calm, collected and responsible manner to the many developments and exposes relating to the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal.
It is already bad enough to have the nation’s worst financial scandal, without the ministers repeatedly shaming the country with foolish and stupid responses, landing the prime minister and his ministers with eggs all over their faces.
LIM KIT SIANG is DAP Parliamentary Leader and MP for Gelang Patah.
