NEW YORK: Malaysia is arranging “private efforts” to bring back Jho Low from China.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad told a packed audience at the Council of Foreign Relations yesterday that this was because Malaysia has no extradition treaty with China.
“It is quite tricky for us to accuse China of hiding him, so we are trying to work out some ways of private efforts to get back Jho Low from China.”
Low has been described as the mastermind behind the 1MDB scandal.
Last Thursday, former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was slapped with 25 corruption charges involving about RM2.3 billion, allegedly taken from 1MDB.
He claimed trial to the charges. The authorities have claimed that more than 50 people had received money from 1MDB-linked accounts.
To a question on Low’s claim that he was a Chinese intelligence asset, Dr Mahathir said he did not think China shared the same view.
“I don’t think China has any respect for him at all.”
On why he thought China has not extradited Low back to Malaysia, Dr Mahathir said: “Well, maybe he’s a bargaining chip or something like that.”
To another question, Dr Mahathir said it was impossible to nab the perpetrators as the number involved was “so big”.
“The number of people involved in money laundering is so big that it is not possible to get at them all at this time. It has to be in stages.
“We go for the big ones first. And since we dedicate ourselves to the rule of law, this takes a longer time.
“We can’t just grab a person and throw him in jail, which what was done before, but now there is no such law.
“We want to provide proper evidence acceptable to the court. For that we need a lot of investigation and documents. Slowly, we will get at all the others.”
Dr Mahathir said Malaysia was working very closely with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Swiss Attorney General and other relevant parties in its probe.