Another MO1 lie to cover up the last one?
COMMENT | Najib Abdul Razak is getting deeper and deeper into the web of stories he has spun around the RM2.6 billion that he received in his private bank accounts in 2015.
In December 2015, he told three "safe" Malaysian journalists in an interview on TV3 that it was the donor who wanted the “donation” to be banked into his account. He also said the “donation” was made in a personal capacity.
Of course, the journalists didn’t ask him why the donor made such a strange – and dumb – request. Dumb because the request would merely draw unnecessary attention to Najib as prime minister receiving such a huge amount of money.
Even Najib’s own minister Ahmad Maslan remarked publicly that no prime minister would be that stupid to have such a huge amount deposited into his personal account. And that was Ahmad Maslan, mind you, the minister the public loved to laugh at!
Anyway, the point is, what Najib said at that interview with then Media Prima group managing editor of news and current affairs Mohd Ashraf Abdullah, then New Straits Times Press group managing editor Abdul Jalil Hamid and then Utusan Group editor-in-chief Abdul Aziz Ishak indicated that he knew who the donor was and that he had communicated with them.
He also told them, “The donors have been verified and found by the MACC and the commission has also obtained their statements.”
But on Friday, he told Al Jazeera something else. He said when the RM2.6 billion ended up in his bank accounts, he did not verify the source of it.
He said he assumed it was a “donation” connected to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah because the latter had given Najib assurance of his support.
Such a huge amount of money coming to a man in such a high office which could put him in a vulnerable situation – and he didn’t verify the source?
“The question is, when I received the funds, was I aware of the source of the money or whether the source of the money is in dispute as to who owns the fund? Certainly, in my capacity, I would not have access to banking knowledge,” he told the international news agency in an interview.
“Because whoever owns the fund is protected by the secrecy of the banking laws so when I received the funds, in all honesty, I thought it was a genuine donation and at that particular time, the knowledge that I had was based on a conversation with King Abdullah.”
So now he was changing his tune and equivocating about the money having come from the Middle East when he was so sure and adamant before that it came from there, and from the royal family, to boot!
The reason for this? The Saudi foreign minister Adel Ahmed al-Jubeir had come to Kuala Lumpur the same Friday and told our foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah that there was indeed no donation made to Najib by the Saudi king.
So, on Al Jazeera, on a programme that would be beamed across the world, Najib suddenly had to find a way out. And so he said he never verified where the RM2.6 billion came from. To save himself from acknowledging that the money was a “donation” from the Saudi king. Which most people had never believed in the first place.
Was Najib lying on Friday or was he lying in December 2015? Or was he lying both times...
COMMENT | Najib Razak is getting deeper and deeper into the web of stories he has spun around the RM2.6 billion that he received in his private bank accounts in 2015.
In December 2015, he told three "safe" Malaysian journalists in an interview on TV3 that it was the donor who wanted the “donation” to be banked into his account. He also said the “donation” was made in a personal capacity.
Of course, the journalists didn’t ask him why the donor made such a strange – and dumb – request. Dumb because the request would merely draw unnecessary attention to Najib as prime minister receiving such a huge amount of money.
Even Najib’s own minister Ahmad Maslan remarked publicly that no prime minister would be that stupid to have such a huge amount deposited into his personal account. And that was Ahmad Maslan, mind you, the minister the public loved to laugh at!
Anyway, the point is, what Najib said at that interview with then Media Prima group managing editor of news and current affairs Mohd Ashraf Abdullah, then New Straits Times Press group managing editor Abdul Jalil Hamid and then Utusan Group editor-in-chief Abdul Aziz Ishak indicated that he knew who the donor was and that he had communicated with them.
He also told them, “The donors have been verified and found by the MACC and the commission has also obtained their statements.”
But on Friday, he told Al Jazeera something else. He said when the RM2.6 billion ended up in his bank accounts, he did not verify the source of it.
He said he assumed it was a “donation” connected to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah because the latter had given Najib assurance of his support.
Such a huge amount of money coming to a man in such a high office which could put him in a vulnerable situation – and he didn’t verify the source?
“The question is, when I received the funds, was I aware of the source of the money or whether the source of the money is in dispute as to who owns the fund? Certainly, in my capacity, I would not have access to banking knowledge,” he told the international news agency in an interview.
“Because whoever owns the fund is protected by the secrecy of the banking laws so when I received the funds, in all honesty, I thought it was a genuine donation and at that particular time, the knowledge that I had was based on a conversation with King Abdullah.”
So now he was changing his tune and equivocating about the money having come from the Middle East when he was so sure and adamant before that it came from there, and from the royal family, to boot!
The reason for this? The Saudi foreign minister Adel Ahmed al-Jubeir (left in photo) had come to Kuala Lumpur the same Friday and told our foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah that there was indeed no donation made to Najib by the Saudi king.
So, on Al Jazeera, on a programme that would be beamed across the world, Najib suddenly had to find a way out. And so he said he never verified where the RM2.6 billion came from. To save himself from acknowledging that the money was a “donation” from the Saudi king. Which most people had never believed in the first place.
Was Najib lying on Friday or was he lying in December 2015? Or was he lying both times?
Why, only three months ago, in July, in an interview with Malaysiakini, he had insisted that the money was from the Saudi royal family.
“The genesis was when I met with King Abdullah. I asked him to support the (Malaysian) government because I thought their government has a record of supporting governments which are somewhat friendly with them,” Najib said.
“So what I requested was nothing unusual and he agreed to support and subsequently we received letters and then money was credited at about the time they had promised the donation.”
Money from Tanore
And then only last month, he posted on Facebook an admission – for the first time – that the source of the RM2.6 billion could have been Tanore Finance Corporation.
This coheres with the revelations of the United States’ Department of Justice (DOJ), which pointed out that US$681 million (equivalent then to RM2.6 billion) come from Tanore, which has been found to be a supposed shell company used to wire funds from 1MDB to accounts of selected beneficiaries, including Najib’s.
It is widely known by now that Tanore’s beneficial owner of record was Eric Tan Kim Loong, a proxy and trusted aide of Jho Low, the alleged mastermind behind the pilfering of funds from 1MDB.
Najib’s story, however, was that the Tanore money came from Prince Abdulaziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia who had written to him on March 1, 2013, saying that he would disburse US$800 million to him in stages for that year. But what Najib eventually received was US$681 million.
“In the letter, Prince Abdulaziz Al-Saud stated that the funds would be channelled either from his bank account or from his other sources, including Tanore,” Najib wrote in his Facebook post.
“According to the DOJ and WSJ (Wall Street Journal) claims, the money from Tanore was … from 1MDB. But Prince Abdulaziz Al-Saud has been representing King Abdullah for the transfer of funds to my account including in 2011 and 2012 when funds were sent from the accounts of the Ministry of Finance of Saudi Arabia and Prince Faisal bin Turkey bin Al-Saud.”
Now, if this story were true, why did he not maintain it in his interview with Al Jazeera? Why did he not also say on the air that the Tanore account belonged to Prince Abdulaziz?
It is rather transparent how Najib has been operating with his "explanations" of the RM2.6 billion over the last few years. And, fortunately, as Dr Mahathir Mohamad pointed out to him when the RM2.6 billion scandal was at its height, “Malaysians are not stupid” as not to see through the dissembling.
We don’t believe the money ever came from the Saudi king. We think Najib made that up. And on Friday, we could see that he was trying to get out of that story after what the Saudi foreign minister told our foreign minister. We are not stupid.
We also feel Najib should rethink his stories and get his facts right. That’s the best advice we can give him for his own sake. Otherwise, he might get tangled up in the web and not know what he should say when the real moment of reckoning comes.
KEE THUAN CHYE is the author of the upcoming book ‘The People’s Victory’, which will be released in mid-November.
