KUALA LUMPUR: Former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak may have known 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was a political slush fund but was possibly disengaged from its day-to-day processes.
In saying this, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) journalist Tom Wright remarked that he did not however believe Najib was
'blameless, by a long degree'.
In an interview with portal Coconuts.co, Wright who co-authored the book 'Billion Dollar Whale' with Bradley Hope said that he did not believe Najib was aware that fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, had allegedly siphoned billions from the 1MDB state fund.
Jho Low was left running the show, Wright said when asked about Najib and his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor’s knowledge on the fund and how much of blame for this can they be apportioned.
Based on their investigation, Wright said their initial understanding was that Low was Najib’s bag man, however as time went by, it became clear to them that the Penang-born businessman was the only person who had a '360 (degree) view of what was going on'.
“I don’t think Najib is blameless, by a long degree. I’m sure he knew it was a political slush fund, that they were getting hundreds of millions of dollars for Umno, and that his family was getting mansions and running film companies and all these kind of things, which he may have just seen as a benefit of being prime minister.
“Terribly corrupt. Not saying it’s not. But did Najib know that Jho Low had run the fund in a way that took out US$4.5 billion (RM18.6 billion), US$5 billion, maybe US$6 billion dollars? I don’t think so.
“I think he was disengaged from the day-to-day processes in a way that Jho Low was not. Jho Low was running the show,” Wright said.
He said Jho Low’s links to Najib caused him to become more emboldened to continue siphoning more money even though the 1MDB scandal had started to gain much attention in Malaysia.
“The most jaw-dropping of the spending to me was the fact that he bought the Equanimity yacht at a point when the media in Malaysia was already starting to raise questions about (financial) holes at the fund.
“Any sort of conservative, rationale thief would be filling the hole, right? But he doesn’t fill the hole, he gets a new loan from Deutsche Bank, and he uses part of it to buy that yacht,” he said, adding that Jho Low was using every opportunity he had to buy the next thing.
Wright said from his reporting on the 1MDB issue, it became apparent that Jho Low was the “puppet master” and that he was responsible in coordinating the transfer of US$681 million or RM2.6 billion based on the exchange rate when the issue was first exposed in 2015, into Najib’s bank account.
“I think when we got hold of WhatsApp messages between Jho Low and a number of people, including bankers at Malaysian banks, where he is clearly directing them to do this with money, do that with money, move money into the prime minister’s accounts, out of his accounts.
“You saw through those WhatsApp messages that he was the puppet master.. telling the bank that US$680 million would be arriving from overseas,” he said.
Wright remarked that Jho Low played a role in helping to negotiate several infrastructure deals in Malaysia involving Chinese state-owned companies.
He also said a person who was close to Jho Low had referred him as being “on the autism spectrum”.
“As we did more and more reporting, we got a lot of access to people who were with him at the very end. I’m not a medical expert, but one person who was close to him referred to him as being 'on the autism spectrum'.”
“Things like buying multiple pairs of shoes, not being able to focus, being on multiple devices, an insane ability to remember numbers down to decimal points. But yeah, in some ways he’s inscrutable,” he added.
Meanwhile, when asked how much of a role did the 1MDB case play in the outcome of the 14th General Election (GE14), Wright said it played a crucial role.