Operation Photo-Op Moved With Utmost Stealth!

14 September 2017 12 comments
Unlike the US visit to the White House, Najib’s team managed to keep his UK leg of Operation Photo-Op strictly under wraps, in order to avoid the inevitable advance press criticism had it been known about.

The visit to Downing Street had been made, the key photos taken and Malaysia’s scandal-tainted PM whisked back to the airport with military precision all before any pesky journalists had been alerted!

All so that Najib could have the prized pics splashed all over Malaysian media, together with the single message that he has been trying to spin throughout the trip, which is that he cannot have been identified as a crook by the US Department of Justice after all, because of course these democratic leaders would never have welcomed him if that was true.

Indeed, to take the matter further, his PR writers are now claiming ‘proof’ that the whole 1MDB affair – pink diamonds, yachts, Hollywood movies, Vegas casinos, masterpieces, mansions and all the rest – is just cooked up lies, concocted by foreign spies and conspirators in league with the FBI.

Too bad that this ludicrous narrative, which ignores mounds of evidence, has coincided with the latest news to be issued from the United States Federal Court as Najib headed mid-air from the US to UK.

Judge Dale Fischer, who has been presiding over the civil case to sequestrate assets procured with money stolen from 1MDB in the California Central Court, gave his response to the US prosecutors’ application to freeze that case, to enable them to get on with their central criminal enquiries.

The judge has readily granted the application, meaning that all the seized assets will go into the deep freeze for as long as it takes for the investigators to complete their higly complex global criminal investigations into 1MDB officials and various named individuals, includnig Najib’s step-son Riza Aziz and alleged accomplice Jho Low.

The way the evidence already looks Najib himself is more likely to eventually find his name added to this list as a key orchestrator and beneficiary of the plot to steal billions from Malaysia’s public coffers and then launder the money through the United States.

Judge Fischer fully supported the request to withold any further informaiton that might enable the criminals to cover their tracks or intimidate witnesses and granted an indefinate stay of the case, meaning there is no question of the US ditching the 1MDB case any time soon:

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So much for 1MDB being a cooked up story and so much for all the Malaysian spin that has attempted to suggest the stay on the civil case meant the FBI were dropping their enquiries.

Arrived by 5pm for a meeting that appears to have been no longer than the chat with Donald Trump
Arrived by 5pm for a meeting that appears to have been no longer than the chat with Donald Trump

It leaves PM Theresa May as exposed at President Trump for having played along with Najib’s blatant attempt to misrepresent the facts to his own electorate through Operation Photo-Op.

Who were the high paid lobbyists for this stage of the operation?  Perhaps it was merely Najib’s tame and reliable government connected business contacts linked to the Battersea Power Staion Project, who fixed this meet and greet. Huge sums have already been ‘exported’ into that from the Employee Provident Fund.  Such interests still owe Najib big.

On the other hand, it may emerge that lobbyists have once more smoothed the way and made a packet in the process.

In which case were fighter jets again the lure to bring Mrs May to the other side of the cosy fireplace?  For years Najib has led various European nations a merry dance pretending that he is about to choose from whom to buy a fleet of brand new aircraft. In truth he can’t afford a second hand, twin propeller bi-plane at the moment, but if he has conned Trump he will be buying 58 Boeings, why not keep May on the hook over fighter aircraft too?

Ought she be chastised more for being immoral of more for being stupid will be the question for Malaysians to consider, because one thing that is becoming pretty clear is that Operation Photo-Op is pulling the wool over nobody’s eyes back home, even though that is where its targeted.

Where Did The Real Saudi Money Go? Commentary

15 September 2017 39 comments


The billions stolen from 1MDB have tended to over-shadow other very substantial sums of money that DID go into Najib’s personal account from Saudi Arabia.

These secret payments undoubtedly formed the basis for Najib’s decision to label all his incomings as a ‘Saudi Royal donation’, trading off the discomfort and likely silence of a country, which has been accused of funnelling large tranches of its oil wealth into developing client nations and promoting its particular brand of extremist ideology across the Muslim world.

Secret US$80,000,000 was paid to Najib
It was the ABC Four Corners programme which gained access to a full insight of Najib’s so-called ‘Mr’ Account at AmBank, back in March last year.  What they found were not only the payments from Jho Low companies like Tanore Finance (BVI) and Blackstone Asia (BVI) amounting to a billion dollars, but also substantial receipts from the Saudi Arabian Finance Ministry.

Two whopping payments in 2011 came to US$80 million:
Four Corner's findings on Najib's account
ABC Four Corner’s findings on Najib’s account

Given this enormous and undisclosed bung by the Government of Saudi Arabia into the private account of Malaysia’s Prime Minister, it is perhaps not surprising that when confronted by Malaysian cameras (with Anifa Aman, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, at his shoulder) the embarrassed Saudi Foreign Minister mumbled a willingness to accept Najib’s stories about a ‘Saudi Royal donor’, something he had earlier denied, before declaring the “matter closed”.

So, leaving the billion dollars from 1MDB aside, what did the PM spend this particular US$80 million from Saudi Arabia on?  Surely, no one believes that Saudi Arabia’s Finance Ministry was handing Najib so much undisclosed cash without a specific purpose?

Spreading Saudi’s Sectarian Agenda?
It is widely acknowledged that Saudi has been building up its influence throughout the Muslim world by dispensing secretive sums to develop supportive infrastructures within client states – using oil money to expand their specific brand of religious authoritarianism.

What used to be regarded as an isolated and extremst fringe of the Muslim world, the Wahabist sect, is now spreading its tentacles far and wide thanks to these millions poured into religious training, teaching jobs and tarfiz schools, where the converted promote the ideas taught at Saudi universities and places of learning.

This Saudi agenda and the support of rigorous rote learning (considered brain-washing by most non-participants) has been frequently identified as a key source of the growing intolerance and extremism seen to be causing instability throughout the Muslim world.  Malaysia’s own firebrand PAS Islamic Party President, Hadi Awang, who is known for his desire to establish an Islamic State and Hudud law in Malaysia, was himself trained and educated over in Saudi Arabia.

Hadi is now recognised as having come far closer to Najib and UMNO, as Malaysian government support for religious schools has increased in recent years. So, was the further promotion of Saudi style Islamic teaching, the expansion of ‘independent’ religious schools and jobs for religious teachers the purpose of this secret budget provided for Najib Razak by the Saudi Finance Ministry?

If not, how was that whopping sum of money (the equivalent of RM335 million) spent?

Certainly, quite apart from any other possible fuding, Najib has started making large and unprecedented government donations to private religious institutions in recent years, despite growing concerns that they are poorly monitored. The Prime Minister, who loves to posture as a ‘moderate’ abroad, has also proved willing and enthusiastic towards welcoming the Islamic extremist agenda of a retreat from civil governance in favour of Hudud religious law – Saudi-style.

So, again, it is time to hear how did the secret US$80 million provided by this foreign power straight into Najib’s bank account get spent?  If the Prime Minister has been using the money to curry domestic politial favour with a segment of the population he wishes to bring over from the opposition to bolster BN, whilst at the same time permitting insiduous and secret influence mongering by a foreign power, Malaysians have a right to know.

If, to the contrary, the money went towards non-political causes, public education, care for the elderly, hospitals, orphanages, refugees or some such cause then this is the time to bring out the distribution details.

Najib’s own party, which has since Independence held its own policies and ideals, supposedly free from foreign agendas, also have a right to know how he spent this money, since party officials have long made clear they had no idea that Najib had been receiving all this undisclosed cash, until ABC Australia’s Four Corners programme told them so.

Operation Selangor?

• 18 September 2017
 
• 10 comments

Najib is plainly becoming desperate. The problem is money: his cash reserves are frozen abroad; the coffers of the GLCs have been denuded by earlier squandering; the ringgit is over 4 to the dollar compared to 3 to the dollar before 1MDB and Petronas is simply not delivering the previous levels of profits.

Najib Needs Notes For Votes

Najib needs money now for the upcoming election, which he plans to fight in the same way he always has. He wants first to throw a ‘feel-good’ wad of money at the nation in the form of some sort of ‘bonus payment’ (as if it was a personal gift from him) then to announce the election in the after-glow.

During that election he wants to be able to hand out more notes for votes on the understanding that if those bribed electors ‘cheat’ and vote for the opposition instead, the government will have ways of knowing and punishing them.

The nation may have rumbled him and everyone knows and despises the way he bribes folk with a portion of their own stolen money, but Najib plainy reckons that cash is cash and he can continue to get away with it. His problem is he just doesn’t have any more stolen cash to spend.

Rich Pickings In Royal Selangor

Which is why UMNO’s eyes appear to have greedily now focused on Selangor. This wealthy and well-managed opposition state has rejected the Najib approach to financial management (i.e. steal whatever public funds you can) and it continues to have large sums in its bank accounts.

This is public money, of course, which ought only ever be spent on things that have been agreed are for the public good – amenities, investments and also savings for the unpredictable future.  PKR’s Azmin Ali has presided over these coffers in the interests of the people of Selangor, who know they have benefitted from this stewardship and are more than likely to vote back an opposition state government at the coming election.

Political Coup That Flopped?

However, it has emerged this weekend that Najib had bought into a plan that amounted to a flagrant political heist that would have allowed him to lay his hands on all that cash – he was planning to snatch Selangor from under the noses of the chosen government in advance of that election, so that he could secure the keys to the coffers!

So much for his constant complaining about ‘conspiracies to unseat democratically elected governments’.

There in his mind’s eye must have glittered more diamonds for Rosie, with the election bought and paid for.  He could even have started putting in those orders for Trump’s promised Boeing jets!

The people of Selangor might have indeed voted back new opposition leaders at the next election, but those leaders would have found the bank accounts wiped clean.

That there was such a plan is compelling. On Sunday, Malaysia was placed on tenter-hooks by Najib’s sudden promise of a major public announcement to be held within hours at his party head-quarters, with all senior bigwigs summoned back to attend from across the country.

There was no doubt but this was planned as something big, the game-changer that Najib plainly yearns to sweep away his troubles. But, when the curtain was lifted on the event, out shuffled just one wizened has-been from the Selangor scene, discredited long ago after being caught with bags of cash entering Australia.

By coming back to UMNO the cash carrying and deceitful Mat Taib (he is said to have lied that he didn’t speak English to the Aussie police) was certainly returning to his true spiritual home after a long journey around various other parties. However, his crestfallen comrades could barely conceal their disappointment that he had failed in the end to bring the keys to Selangor with him, in the form of a mass defection which had apparently been promised.

The planned coup represents a classic Malaysian manoeuvre, although it would cause gasps and probably lynchings in any other genuine democratic country.  Eight PKR ‘frogs’ were believed by UMNO bosses to have agreed to be presumably rewarded to cross sides with Matt Taib and join the 12 UMNO state representatives.

These in the end never leapt.  However, together with the 13 PAS members, presumed also to be under instructions to switch by Najib’s new best friends in that party’s leadership, this would have given UMNO the majority it needs to get its hands back on the state and crucially the keys to the safes holding all the money.

With one daring move the Prime Minister, who seems to live from one throw of the dice to the next, had hoped to reverse his fortunes and grab control of this last well of money left after his years of disastrous mismanagement of Malaysia’s finances.

Wishful Thinking?

Whether any of the expectations of these plotters were genuinely realistic will eventually emerge.  If any of the planned frogs had really seriously toyed with the idea of leaping right before the election, they must have been only too painfully aware of the anger they would have faced from the voters who put them in power in the first place.

Would the likely consequences of such perfidy have been worth any rewards on offer?  A sensible person would think not, which was doubtless why only one figure, who had nothing to lose, in the end came shuffling out to face the flash bulbs yesterday afternoon, in one of the biggest anti-climaxes in Malaysian political history.

It leaves Najib, once again mortified and without the cash he had greedily being eyeing.  It also leaves PAS awkwardly exposed as a factor that UMNO clearly considers not as an opposition party (which PAS still claims to be) but as a fully fledged ally ready to join with them in BN coalitions as and when the need arises.

Doubtless the fishing will continue as Najib’s lawless henchmen work to secure the next election.  However, his targets are being wisely advised to continue to steer clear of a man who has plainly lost his touch!