The exposé on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's allegedly lavish spendings by The Wall Street Journal 's (WSJ) yesterday are absent in many of today's local dailies.

Instead, The Star , Utusan Malaysia , New Straits Times , and Berita Harian opted to publish only rebuttals to the WSJ article from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and 1MDB.

These are carried on Pages 16, 8, 7, and 4 of the respective publications today.

The two Malay language dailies front-paged reports on a former Youth and Sports Ministry officer being charged with lodging RM38.471 million in false claims.

The Star carried a report on the goods and services tax (GST) on its front-page instead, while the New Straits Times highlighted Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem's announcement on the state legislative assembly's dissolution on April 11.

However, the four major Chinese langauge dailies gave extensive coverage to both the WSJ's allegations and the rebuttals from 1MDB and PMO.

One of them, China Press , even devoted a small portion of its front page to highlight CIMB Bank chairperson Nazir Abdul Razak's admission to receiving US$7 million from his brother Najib.

The front-page sidebar invites readers to turn to Page 4 for more details, where there is a full broadsheet page devoted to coverage of the allegations and rebuttals.

Meanwhile, the business daily Nanyang Siang Pau devoted three pages of its eight-page 'Prime News' pullout section on the allegations and rebuttals on these issues.

The other two major Chinese dailies, Sin Chew Daily and Oriental Daily , carried the reports on Page 4 and Page 8 respectively.

This is not the first time over the past month that attacks against Najib over the 1MDB and donation scandals have gone unreported on the mainstream press.

The People's Congress on March 27 condemning Najib was similarly snubbed by many of the major newspapers.

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's lawsuit seeking over RM2.6 billion in damages from Najib for alleged breach of his fiduciary duty and misfeasance in public office was similarly ignored .

In the WSJ report yesterday, it was alleged that Najib spent a total of US$15 million on holidays, shopping and jewellery in the United States, Malaysia, Italy and elsewhere. The expenses took place between 2011 and 2014.

Some of the money also supposedly went to Nazir , who purportedly admitted to paying it out in cash in accordance with Najib's instructions in the latter's capacity as Umno president, until the account was closed with zero balance.

The prime minister's press secretary, Tengku Sharifuddin Tengku Ahmad, chided that the WSJ has finally admitted that some of Najib's money came from Saudi Arabia, but did not address claims that most of the money also came from 1MDB.

1MDB has reiterated that it did not pay any money into Najib's personal bank accounts.