MALAYSIA MEDIA: NAJIB'S PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNTS LINKED TO MISSING 1MDB FUNDS

A sensational report by a Malaysian news media outlet, Sarawak Report, has accused Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak of suspiciously transferring funds from the Malaysian state investment company, 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), into his own personal banking accounts. Even more shockingly, some of these suspicious transactions may have been facilitated by banking institutions based in Singapore!

Excerpts of the Sarawak Report article here:

SRC paid RM42 million to Najib Razak’s private accounts

The money taken from SRC International is a particularly shocking revelation, because this was money lent by the public pension fund KWAP and never accounted for.

SRC International Sdn Bhd was set up under the auspices of 1MDB in July 2011 and it is headed by none other than Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, a close friend of Jho Low, who was brought over to 1MDB from Sarawak’s UBG as the fund’s chief investment officer.

In 2010 Nik Kamil was the ‘link man’ between UBG, 1MDB and PetroSaudi for channelling US$260 million of 1MDB money into the purchase of UBG from Jho Low and the then Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.

He was then transferred to become CEO of 1MDB’s new subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.

SRC International courted immediate controversy in 2011 by borrowing RM4 billion from Malaysia’s public retirement fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP).

Over subsequent years 1MDB’s political critics have pressed the government to understand where that money went and have repeatedly complained at the lack of information provided by the company’s statements and accounts.

Most recently the Prime Minister, who had eventually taken SRC under the direct control of his own Ministry of Finance, announced in March that much of the money had been invested in a Mongolian company Gobi Coal & Energy.

However, documents now in the hands of Malaysian prosecutors, show that just the previous month (February 10th 2015) SRC International had transferred RM10 million into the account number 2112022011880 of “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak” at AmPrivate Bank in Kuala Lumpur.

Likewise, on December 26th 2014, two earlier transactions had seen the transfer of another RM27 million and RM5 million from SRC International Sdn Bhd into AmPrivate Banking account number 2112022011906, which also belongs to “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak”.

The money trail from SRC International to Najib has been clearly detailed by investigators and is also in the possession of the international financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

Sarawak Report has acquired copies of the documentation relating to the case, which corroborate that out of a total of RM50 million transferred from of SRC in these transactions RM42 million went straight into the Prime Minister’s own accounts.

The findings present a clear flow of money from SRC International’s AmBank Islamic account number 2112022010650 through two separate Malaysian companies into two of Najib’s own personal accounts at the AmBank Group’s private arm.

During the intervening period was the GE13 election campaign, where the issue of vote buying featured heavily. It therefore seems inevitable that questions will now be asked whether the Prime Minister was using this transfer of money as a personal ‘election fund’?

Indeed UMNO candidates have confided that Najib handed them multi million personal cheques, signed by the Prime Minister himself, in order to cover election expenses.

Also at issue is whether the banks involved ever alerted regulators to the possibility of a suspicious transaction, according to money laundering regulations?

The wire transfer documents show that these multi-million dollar transfers were handled through New York by the American Wells Fargo Bank, International Branch.

The revelations will inevitably prompt calls for the regulators in Singapore, Switzerland and now the United States to examine the activities of a Swiss private bank based in Singapore through the US in paying such a sum into the private account of a politically connected individual.

This new information, related to the on-going scandal of 1MDB and already being reported internationally, is likely to send shock waves through Malaysia’s banking and political circles.

Whatever the excuses (an of course there will be attempts at plenty) such vast transfers of money into a sitting Prime Minister’s private account cannot be ignored.

Neither can the unorthodox and irregular handling of public borrowings from an old age pension fund entrusted once again to the same Prime Minister cum Finance Minister, who allowed money from SRC to also pass into his personal accounts.

To view the full article, see source below.