MP SPEAKS What has Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak or the Prime Minister’s Office got to say on The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) correction to say that the US$3 billion bond fund raised by Goldman Sachs went to BSI Bank in Switzerland and not Singapore, and part of it eventually landed in Najib’s personal bank accounts?
The WSJ has issued a correction, stating that the US$3 billion bond fund Goldman Sachs raised for 1MDB went to BSI Bank in Switzerland and not Singapore as initially reported.
In its correction, the WSJ said its article earlier had “incorrectly stated the money was sent to 1MDB’s account at the private bank’s Singapore branch".
The prime minister’s aide Tengku Shariffuddin Tengku Ahmad was quite gung-ho on Wednesday when he responded immediately after the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s denial that 1MDB’s bond funds were transferred into banks in the city state, but why has the prime minister’s huge entourage of special aides and assistants been so conspicuously silent about the WSJ correction?
The WSJ stood by the allegation that part of the US$3 billion sent to Switzerland (and not Singapore) ended up in offshore accounts that eventually landed in Najib's personal bank accounts.
It was the WSJ which in July last year revealed that US$681 million (then RM2.6 billion) entered Najib's personal bank accounts from an offshore entity called Tanore Finance - which had been proven right and true.
Since then, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in March this year revealed that the total sum entering Najib's personal bank accounts from multiple sources totalled not just US$681 million but amounted to over US$1 billion (RM4.2 billion).
Najib had first denied the WSJ allegation of RM2.6 billion deposited into his private banking accounts but subsequently admitted the RM2.6 billion was deposited into his personal bank accounts, but the money was never for his own benefit.
But Najib or the PMO had as yet to comment whether a total of RM4.2 billion had been deposited into his personal accounts.
The ABC's 45-minute Four Corners’ documentary 'State of Fear: Murder and Money in Malaysia' in March helped many Malaysians to realise that there were actually three separate tranches of deposits into Najib’s personal banking accounts at AmBank, pre-RM2.6 billion donations, the RM2.6 billion donations itself and post-RM2.6 billion donations, namely:
(i) Some US$300 million from 2011 to March 2013;
(ii) Two transactions in March 2013 totalling US$681 million (the often-reported RM2.6 billion political donation) - bringing the total deposited into Najib’s accounts to US$1.03 billion (RM4.14 billion) by April 10, 2013, just over a month prior to the 13th general election; and
(iii) Deposits of £50 million (then RM285 million) as well as “a series of cash deposits” in June 2014 and after.
Can Malaysians expect the prime minister to come fair and sincere about the twin mega financial scandals, whether the total amounts deposited into his personal banking accounts totalled RM4.2 billion, and most important of all, have an audit of the persons who had benefited from the RM4.2 billion “donation” scandal, the banks which had the deposit of the RM4.2 billion as well as the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal.
LIM KIT SIANG is the DAP Parliamentary Leader and the MP for Gelang Patah.
