The New York Times was also the same newspaper that published Tun Mahathir's interview back in June 2015 which slammed PM Najib, UMNO and the Malaysian Govt and was published on the same day that Foreign Minister Anifah Aman was supposed to attend and address the United Nations Security Council meeting. This lead to Anifah Aman writing an open letter to the New York Times and slamming Tun Mahathir for his indiscretion saying it is regrettable to sere Tun M undermining Malaysia in the foreign press.
Amazingly, today the UN Security Council is again in session - the first time since June. In fact, PM Najib is on the way to New York now for the UN's General Assembly and their 70th anniversary celebrations.
The timing.of the publication of this article is very suspicious and seems designed to embarrass PM Najib and Malaysia at the UN.
Why I came to this conclusion is based on the following points from today's New York Times article:
1) The persons investigated are Najib's step-son (Rosmah's natural son from her previous marriage) Riza Aziz and also his buddy Jho Low.
New York Times are saying that Najib is also investigated because presumably Reza is related by marriage to Najib while Jho Low is presumably also Najib's friend.
It is important to note that Najib is not personally being investigated himself for corruption as he has no known properties in the USA.
At this point, it is important to note that Jho Low has been listed companies in Malaysia since the year 2007 and 2008 - before Najib became Prime Minister and 1MDB was not even in existence. He was already wealthy then and also had access to serious Middle-Eastern money via his friendship and partnerships with the various royal families even then.
On the other hand, Riza has been producing movies since 2010,
And before this, Riza holds a BS degree in Government & Economics and an MS in Politics from the London School of Economics. He is also a registered authorized person with the UK Financial Services Authority and worked as an investment banker for many years in London.
As a producer, Riza is also in charge of getting investors for their movie projects. It does not mean he himself funded the entire project - that is not what a producer does. Riza had said that there are quite a list of investors who funded his film projects.
But Riza has indeed been successful in producing the Wolf of Wall Street, which grossed more than USD400 million in worldwide ticket and DVD sales - one of the top 200 most commercially successful films of all time and beat out films such as Superman Returns, Ice Age, Mad Max Fury Road, Batman Begins and many others.
Riza's next firm Dumb and Dumber II was also commercially successful and grossed USD170m in ticket sales.
It is clear that Riza has the means and the smarts to make money too and we should not begrudge him this as he is playing in the biggest game of all - Hollywood.
2) The property purchases in questions date back to Oct 2012. But somehow, the New York Times links this to the USD681m (the famous RM2.6b) deposited by a Middle-East campaign contributor to Najib's accounts - which was only deposited in March 2013 - a month before GE13..
Therefore, it is weird for New York Times to link this later deposit with the earlier purchase of apartments much earlier - unless you can hutang first (buku 555 style) when buying properties in the USA.
3) This property purchase was then exposed by the New York Times on February 8 this year around the time that Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to jail for sodomy. Amazingly, New York Times also took the trouble to translate their article on their website to Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia - presumably because there must be a large population of Malays staying in New York.
This is very strange because not a single other article in the New York Times have a Bahasa Malaysia version.
3) The investigations in the USA appears to have been started by Sarawak Report making a complaint in the USA in March 2015 where Sarawak Report seems to be accusing the USA authorities of not taking things seriously and letting these "criminals" like Jho Low and Najib run free and not taking any action.
Further complaints against Najib to the USA were also apparently made by selfie-fan and Tun Mahathir stalwart Khairuddin Abu Hassan and Tun Mahathir's ex-political secretary Matthias Chang.
Mathhias has revealed that both of them had been talking to the USA embassy and were schedueld to be in New York this week to meet with the FBI regarding 1MDB.
Both of them had gone all around the world lodging cases against Najib and 1MDB with Switzerland, France, England, Singapore and Hong Kong authorities.
When you lodge a case, by law the authorities there are obliged to open an investigation.
This was the same case when Sarawak Report played up the matter Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman being investigated by Hong Kong's famed ICAC related to the case of businessman Michael Chia who was caught in the year 2008 for carrying RM40mil of cash into Hong Kong.
Sarawak Report even came up with lots of documents and flow charts in their so-called expose of Musa Aman in their article titled ""Hold On Trust For Aman" - More Devastating Evidence From The ICAC Investigation!
With such "detailed" evidence and documents, anyone reading that Sarawak Report would have been convinced of Musa Aman's guilt and ICAC would have thrown Musa Aman in jail.
Instead, in December 2012, the ICAC wrote to Musa Aman that he that he was no longer under probe for corruption for a RM40 million donation to the state Umno chapter.
ICAC explained to Musa Aman that it had started the probe after receiving a complaint against him, saying that this was required by Hong Kong’s laws on corruption.
But the agency said that upon completing investigations and filing a report with its Operations Review Committee (ORC), both the committee and the ICAC Commissioner had agreed not to take further investigative action “on the basis of the facts now known”.
The letter, which bore the ICAC’s letterhead, was signed off by principal investigator Tso Wai-Yan and was addressed solely to Musa at his office in Kota Kinabalu.
It took ICAC all of 4 years to clear Musa Aman but Sarawak Report and the now-dead Pakatan Rakyat played this Musa Aman corruption issue for years and frequently cited he is now under ICAC investigations and cannot escape due to overwhelming evidence - hence Musa will be going to jail soon.
But yet today, Musa Aman has been cleared by both ICAC and MACC and still remains Chief Minister of Sabah today.
Similarly, the pro-opposition NGO SUARAM filed a complaint on the Scorpene case to the French courts in the year 2010 which compelled the French authorities to start an inquiry.
In fact, in May 2012, SUARAM proudly announced that the French courts will be asking Najib to appear for questioning in the French Courts and that France will soon issue an Interpol Red Notice to arrest Najib if he refuses to attend.
Three years later, and 5 years after the initial report to France was lodged by SUARAM, we are still waiting for the France court to supposedly haul Najib in for questioning which they said was imminent.
In fact, this investigation actually worked against Pakatan and Suaram as it was determined by the French courts that Najib, Razak Baginda and Altantuya was never in France at the same time and that Altantuya was never hired as a translator as all meetings were held in English.
Even today's New York Times article admitted that the Federal Grand Jury investigations into Najib was at the very preliminary stage and will likely take many years to complete.
It appears that it has now become a favorite tactic by those with vested interest against the government to lodge report against our country's leaders overseas since by law, those countries have to act on any complaints and start investigations.
These investigations take years but during this period, they can continue to feed the frenzy and play up this issue -both with locally and overseas.
It makes for very good headlines - especially in the foreign press - which the opposition would then play up the issue saying it is an international embarrassment and that the evidence is so overwhelming that even the foreign governments have to investigate and that our leaders will be caught and jailed overseas if they travel abroad.
The opposition fails to reveal, however, that it was they who made those complaints overseas which prompted the investigations to start and hence all the fancy and damaging overseas headlines - all designed to cause harm and damage the credibility of Malaysia and our leaders.
Foreign governments don't simply start investigations on another govt or country unless an official complaint was lodged by someone else.
But these people don't care. They are not interested to find out the truth but merely interested in toppling others. Malaysia's reputation and credibility is not their concern.
Also, Tun Mahathir is also wrong for suggesting that Najib is afraid to go overseas now as he may be arrested. In fact, as we speak, Najib is overseas in UK for some meetings and will then travel to the USA for the UN celebrations in a few days.
Tun Mahathir is naughty for saying this as he forgot about the immunity granted to heads of states and also the fact that any investigations overseas will take years.
As we write, Khairuddin Abu Hassan is still in jail for a week under remand and is now under police questioning.
Khairuddin with Tun Mahathir take center-stage at the Nothing2lose forum in June 2015
Perhaps soon we will find out who ordered and funded him and Matthias Chang to travel all around the world to lodge reports against Najib and linked him up with all the foreign press for his interviews.
Eight months ago, Khairuddin was still a bankrupt and his penthouse apartment got auctioned off in January 2015. But strangely, months later after Khairuddin started attacking 1MDB, he managed to pay off all his debts and even went all around the world lodging police reports - Switzerland, France, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and the aborted USA trip.
It seems that these people have no problems inviting foreign interference into Malaysia's own investigations and our sovereignty as long as they and their political masters' objective is met.
Bankruptcy search confirming that Khairuddin has been bankrupt since May 2014
Auction of Khairuddin's house in Jan 2015
This will be an interesting story - depending on who or what Khairuddin Abu Hassan reveals under questioning by PDRM in this one week jail period.
As for Najib, if those famous authorities from USA, HK, Switzerland, Singapore, France and UK clears him from these RM2.6b and 1MDB allegations years later, then no one should question him on these anymore.
But it would be years later. By then, I am sure Najib's enemies will come out with newer allegations and continue the same practise of filing reports overseas and working with foreign media in order to embarrass and pressure him.
They have done it before, they are doing it now and they will do it again in future coz its cheap, easy and you get a few years worth of political bullets to use to attack your opponent.
Whether it is fair or not is an entirely different matter.
Written by LSS and sourced from HERE
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