Kee Thuan Chye's opinion piece about Arul Kanda is seemingly prescient for back in 2016: Will it be checkmate for Arul Kanda?
An excerpt here:
What was it that Arul allegedly lied about?
In February 2015, he said in an interview with the Singapore Business Times that 1MDB had redeemed US$1.103 billion from its offshore account in the Cayman Islands and parked it in a Singapore-based branch of Swiss bank BSI Bank.
“The cash is in our accounts … I can assure you … I have seen the statements,” he attested. Note his confident tone.
But it turned out there was no cash. In May, the Government admitted that the redeemed US$1.103 billion was actually in the form of “units”.
In June, 1MDB laughably sought to get Arul off the hook by stating that he “never said he ‘saw the cash’” and that he was “on the record as saying he had ‘seen the statements’.”
That was stupid. Anybody could see that Arul and 1MDB were trying to twist words. After all, he also was on record saying “the cash is in our accounts”, so how could he wriggle out of that?
Anyway, in October, Sarawak Report published on its website minutes of a 1MDB board meeting that took place in January 2015 at which Arul gave “detailed assurances to board members that there was indeed cash in the so-called Brazen Sky company account at BSI Bank”.
This cash-but-no-cash episode is very telling of what Arul’s mission amounts to. Even more telling is the refusal of 1MDB under Arul’s watch to provide details of the company’s foreign banking transactions to the PAC and the Auditor-General. Such information is crucial in determining, for example, whether a US$700 million transfer made by 1MDB to an account belonging to Good Star Ltd was legitimate.
More significant than that are the billions of dollars of unexplained payments – totalling at least US$3.51 billion – made to Aabar Investments PJS Limited registered in the British Virgin Islands.
According to the PAC report, 1MDB has not clarified whether this company was linked to the Abu Dhabi-registered Aabar Investments PJS that is a subsidiary of International Petroleum Investment Corp (IPIC), which actually declared to the London Stock Exchange this month that the Virgin Islands Aabar “was not an entity” within IPIC or Aabar Investments PJS.
If the Virgin Islands Aabar is not a company that 1MDB had legitimate business dealings with, then it is incumbent on Arul to provide the essential information to set the record straight.
Why hasn’t he done it? Why did he not furnish the PAC with the required foreign banking information? What is he trying to hide?
We now know what he was trying to hide.
Today we have made the connection to Goldman Sachs, and the ridiculously poor business practices they had with dubiously corrupted leaders in Asia.
Most recently, Malaysia is seeking US$7.5bil in reparations from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. I hardly think this is enough considering we were defrauded since 2013 and the funds, well-invested, would have greatly enriched our nation.
It annoys me that a greedy fool like Najib was allowed to remain in position for so long before finally getting removed. Even today, he still has ardent supporters who claim that he is being framed "for political reasons".
It also makes sense that Attorney General Tommy Thomas, when confronted about reports of him filing a suit in New York claiming US$5.1 billion from Goldman, said that those reports were “premature”; simply because it wasn't the full sum that they were claiming at all.
I don't agree with everything that Pakatan Harapan stands for, but when it comes to the 1MDB case, I am glad that they are on the ball.
Related: Malaysia seeks $7.5bn damages from Goldman over 1MDB scandal
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