Jho Low had grabbed one of Rosmah’s pink Birkin bags and stuffed it full of her diamonds, before making-off back to Hong Kong, we could be pretty sure Interpol would have been instantly alerted.
If he then returned and hung around in KL – well he would surely be dead meat?

So, how can we explain the astonishing news that this chap has been sighted heading into KL over the weekend?

Sources have informed Sarawak Report that he even headed to the scene of the crime, which is the home of the PM and his wife.

By this we do not mean the scene of the make-believe diamond heist, but of the actual billion dollar plus 1MDB heist that has been making solid headlines for the past month and more.

Rosmah’s $200,000 Birkin Bag

The PM’s house is the scene of the crime, because we all now know that Najib Razak is the man in direct charge of 1MDB and the only shareholder and signatory on the fund’s investments.

In other words, Najib has sole, commanding responsibility for how the fund is managed and all the other executives are merely his functionaries, obeying orders.

We also know that Najib had privately entrusted Jho Low to be his informal delegate at the fund, managing much of 1MDB’s investment activity – because a huge body of documentation and emails show this to be the case.

Jho Low conducted this business through regular email and BBM contacts with 1MDB and PetroSaudi executives and he had also made frequent visits to Najib’s home to discuss 1MDB related matters.

We know all this because Sarawak Reports has released a good number of those communications and no one has formally denied their authenticity.

Yet, as all Malaysia also knows and again no one has dared to deny, USD$1.19 billion at least of 1MDB’s investment money was siphoned out of the fund directly into a company account controlled by Jho Low in Switzerland.

That account was the RBS Coutts, Zurich account of Good Star Limited, based in the Seychelles and Cayman Isands.

Beyond even all this, we further all know that between June 2011 and September 2013, USD$529 million was then transferred from this Coutts, Zurich account into an account that was beneficially owned by Jho Low at BSI Bank in Singapore, called Abu Dhabi-Kuwait-Malaysia Investment Corporation:

As revealed by SR last month – Singapore investigators have identified the transfers and notified the Malaysian authorities

This has all been revealed by Sarawak Report in the course of the last month, some time after the Malaysian authorities had also been widely notified of the fact.

So, surely, in the same way that Najib would have acted to avenge a theft against his wife, he would also have acted to demand satisfaction against Jho Low for stealing this huge sum of public money that he, the Prime Minister himself, was entrusted to invest on behalf of the Malaysian public?

Theft under false pretences

PetroSaudi Director Patrick Mahony

How 1MDB’s billions ended up in Jho Low’s accounts is now understood in forensic detail, thanks to numerous documents obtained and released by Sarawak Report, which nobody has seriously denied.
Indeed, a number of investigations have been launched, which have corroborated our findings and increased the official knowledge about exactly what happened.

What the world is now aware of is that in 2009 Najib Razak personally sanctioned a huge joint venture investment into a little known oil company called PetroSaudi, which was run by a young man with good connections with the then Saudi Royal Family, Tarek Obaid.

The entire transaction was organised and closely managed by Jho Low from behind the scenes.

Co-conspirator, PetroSaudi shareholder Tarek Obaid

For reasons that are hard to explain, the PM cum Finance Minister agreed to an arrangement as part of the deal that involved paying back a USD$700 million loan, purportedly owed by the joint venture partner to its own parent company.

This was a loan which had been raised just three days before the signing of the deal.
The $700 million was duly paid by 1MDB.

Except that the account this money was sent to had nothing to do with the supposed beneficiary PetroSaudi, rather it belonged to the company Good Star, which is controlled by Jho Low.

Since 1MDB under no circumstances had agreed to pay Jho Low this money and since the money had been declared as belonging to the joint venture, there is no question but that the vast sum had been utterly misappropriated.

We have pointed out that PetroSaudi made no complaint about its failure to receive this money which was supposedly owed, heavily suggesting that it was complicit in a deception at the very heart of this so-called Joint Venture.

Indeed PetroSaudi Director Patrick Mahony had written to Jho Low to say the company would be happy to “act as a front” for deals by him in return for their share in the investment of Malaysia’s development money.

False reporting

Sarawak Report has now obtained evidence that none of these shenanigans were ever reported to the authorities.

As we detailed last month, documents from the Malaysian regulatory authorities show that 1MDB had in fact declared to the Bank Negara Malaysia that the entire original $1 billion investment by 1MDB had gone into the joint venture.

That is to say, it had made no mention to the Malaysian banking regulators of its ‘repayment’ of any $700 million ‘loan’ at all – let alone that it went to the wrong company.

Only $300 million was actually transferred to the JV, the rest went to Good Star's Coutts, Zurich account (code names redacted).

Investigators have identified the discrepancy between where 1MDB told the regulators the money went and where it actually went! (code names redacted).

Further plundering of 1MDB by Jho Low

And of course there were other subsequent diversions of huge sums of money along similar lines.
Another USD$500 million was raised for PetroSaudi in 2010 under a so-called Muharabah loan agreement, of which USD$160 million went to the same Good Star account as before.

Beneficiary of the UBG buy out using 1MDB money – Taib and new wife

Out of the remaining $340 million that did initially go to PetroSaudi, our researches have shown that USD$260 million was sent on to Javace Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of the company PetroSaudi Seychelles, which used the money to buy out the Taib family’s UBG group.

We have shown that while PetroSaudi Seychelles deliberately shares an almost identical name to PetroSaudi International itself, it has nothing to do with the joint venture company.

PetroSaudi Seychelles was in fact another sister company of Good Star and was being managed by an outfit called Panama Investment Company, which like Good Star was controlled by Jho Low through his deputy Li Lin Seet.

Using 1MDB money to buy out UBG was very beneficial personally to Jho Low, of course, since he was heading up a major share in the company and was a member of the UBG Board.

Low had even placed a key executive from UBG, the Investment Manager Nik Faisal Arif Kamil, into pole position as the Investment Officer at 1MDB to manage the whole transaction.

The parties to this transaction coded their emails under the anonymous title Project Uganda, on instructions by Jho Low, specifically to avoid accusations of “insider trading”.

This is clearly because Jho Low realised that insider trading was exactly what was going on, at the expense of the public’s money.


"KINDLY DO NOT STATE any reference to persons, or people’s names in reply to e-mails due to sensitivities in UBG Bhd deal and “insider trading” issues, etc” – Jho Low institutes code name Project Uganda

All this outrageous deceit has been detailed by Sarawak Report in a number of articles over the past few weeks, which have in turn been corroborated by further information and other news reports by the Malaysian press.

None of it has been denied, save for a few details picked up and angrily refuted here and there, in such a way that it only further confirms that the substance of our reports has been correct.

The regulatory authorities at the Bank Negara Malaysia were told all the original 1 billion of 1MDB's money was being spent by the JV on investments that would bring 'direct foreign investment' into Malaysia. In fact $700 million went straight to Jho Low's company.

No mention of a $700 million loan repayment – these excerpts from the official reports show the regulatory authorities at the Bank Negara Malaysia were told all the original USD$1 billion of 1MDB’s money was being spent by the JV on investments that would bring ‘direct foreign investment’ into Malaysia. In fact the $700 million went straight to Jho Low’s company account at Good Star.

The investigations by Malaysia’s financial regulators make plain that 1MDB’s official applications to transfer these huge sums abroad were made on a very different basis to the actual purpose to which the money was put.

The bulk of this USD$500 million dollar ‘loan’ to PetroSaudi was in fact diverted to the UBG purchase and to Good Star LImited

On top of these two scandalous scams, Sarawak Report has also reported on a third major tranche of money that went to Good Star in 2011.

This was a USD$330 million transfer from 1MDB that we have reported went in four separate payments straight into the same Good Star account.

Yet, 1MDB had again told the regulators that the money was all for PetroSaudi’s 1MDB related investments.

The money did not go to 1MDB BVI, it went to Jho Low's Good Star and to the buy out of UBG.
Investigation document – The money did not go to 1MDB BVI, it went to Jho Low’s Good Star and to the buy out of UBG.

It is therefore patently clear there was a massive purloining of public funds and that the authorities were not informed about the true destination of the money.

This was clearly a criminal deception and certainly the major initial beneficiary appears to have been Jho Low.

So, we ask again, why has a warrant not been issued at the behest of an incensed Prime Minister, for whom after all Jho Low was acting as a fixer with regard to all these deals?

It is possible that Mr Low has some excuses to provide and that his subsequent orgy of multi-million dollar partying and purchases bore no relation to 1MDB’s money.

But, questioned he must be and under oath.
Yet nothing has been done to arrest Jho Low… to the extent that the miscreant was actually in KL and purportedly visiting the PM and his wife last weekend!

Cover up or worse?

The Prime Minister could hardly have remained unaware all these years that something was dreadfully wrong at 1MDB, given he was in charge of it and the sole shareholder and signatory for investments?

The fund is horrendously in debt to the tune of billions after all.

Critics have established that following the PetroSaudi debacle and a series of other similar showcase investments (all equally masterminded by Jho Low behind the scenes) at least USD$15 billion appears to have mysteriously vanished.

Not amused – Najib has tried to deflect his critic by accusing him of doing the same things...

Given that we know that the vast majority of the fund’s initial joint venture money simply disappeared into Jho Low’s Good Star account, it leaves valid questions about the disappearance of the rest of the money, as the former MP Dr Mahathir has been trenchantly pointing out.

Yet for several years the troubled fund has struggled to conceal this fact and the huge loses it has incurred.

Exasperated analysts have noted that the fund’s constantly belated accounts, for example, have been exceedingly opaque. No less than three sets of accountants have come and gone in the five year period.

One can only conclude therefore that the boss, the PM/FM has been struggling to cover up the major losses caused by the rash decisions or worse made at 1MDB.

After all the fund is billions in the red and struggling to head off its creditors – so he has to have known that the money has disappeared.

1MDB has been moving around spurious bits of paper ever since the Good Star heist, in an attempt to make out that it retrieved all the money it lost on the PetroSaudi deal.

However the truth is that it has not retrieved the money.
 
Finally Najib has admitted there is no cash in the bank.

In the face of overwhelming evidence and the decision by banks to withdraw their loans the Finance Ministry has now admitted there is no cash in the BSI Singapore account, where Najib had alleged the PetroSaudi joint venture money had ended up.

Remember, even as late as January of this year Najib was still attempting to paint a healthy picture of 1MDB, with a view to launching an IPO and persuading the public to invest their good money after the bad and bail out the empty fund.

To engage in such a cover up and series of deceptions is only to make a very bad situation even worse.

In the latest manoeuvre the PM even stooped so low as to attempt to get the Tabung Haji fund to buy out 1MDB land (given it for practically free by his own Finance Ministry) at a grotesquely inflated price.

This was plainly a disgusting attempt to steal from the faithful and public outcry caused the PM to retract from the deal.

Making tough decisions or just running away? PM Najib Razak

So why these desperate measures? Why not just arrest Jho Low instead?

Clearly, one reason is that the Prime Minister does not want to acknowledge his mistake in appointing Jho Low as a secret and unofficial back room operator on his behalf and his lies over later denying he had – or could it be something worse, was Najib complicit in the theft?

Are Rosmah’s diamonds 1MDB funded?

Either way the PM has evidently decided that he cannot openly admit to Jho Low’s crimes and expect to remain in power – about which he is absolutely right.

So, he has adopted the attitude that he can ignore 1MDB’s losses as long as he can find a way of paying it all back – out of the public purse of course.

Najib has been making the point that other funds have also lost money and the government has bailed them out and he tries to imply there is no difference in this case.

But, of course there is a difference.
If Jho Low had stolen Rosmah’s diamonds and her Birkin bag would Najib get away with telling her he would buy her a complete replacement and they could put a loan on the children to pay it all back at a later date?

He would not. So why should Malaysia put up with the bill for this enormous theft without seeking out the perpetrator and demanding satisfaction?

Jho Low has already made clear that he intends to lay blame where it belongs, if caught, which is on his “Big Boss”, the Prime Minister, who (he was the first to point out) has made all the decisions as 1MDB’s sold shareholder has signed off all the payments.

So, Malaysians can draw their own conclusions as to why he is still walking free in KL.