KUALA LUMPUR — When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the RM2.6 billion (S$893.6 million) donation controversy has been “comprehensively put to rest”, the Internet promptly responded with memes ridiculing the attorney-general’s (A-G) decision to close the case.
From comedians to artists, local blogs to international news wires, many found it hard to believe that it was okay for a leader of a democratic country to accept billions of ringgit from an unidentified foreign funder.
Mr Najib urged Malaysians to “move on” from the issue but questions still abound despite the A-G’s findings that there was insufficient evidence to implicate Mr Najib.
The Malaysian Insider revisits what is known so far about the billions in his account, since July 2 last year when The Wall Street Journal first broke the news that RM2.6 billion was channelled into Mr Najib’s private bank accounts.
MONEY TRAIL A: US$681 MILLION BETWEEN MARCH 21-25, 2013
WSJ said it had obtained information from Malaysian investigators. It showed a flow chart with British Virgin Islands company called Tanore Finance transferring US$681 million into Mr Najib’s accounts in two tranches, through Falcon Private Bank in Singapore.
According to WSJ, Falcon Private Bank is a Swiss bank owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC), which in May last year injected US$1 billion (S$1.42 billion) into 1MDB to settle a syndicated loan from a consortium of banks.
In 2012, IPIC also issued guarantees for Mr Najib’s brainchild, state-owned investment firm 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) for the payment of interest and principal on bonds issued by the state investment firm.
MONEY TRAIL B: RM42 MILLION BETWEEN DECEMBER 2014, FEBRUARY 2015
A second chart showed that former 1MDB subsidiary, SRC International, transferred RM50 million to its subsidiary, Gandingan Mentari. SRC International is now wholly owned by the Finance Ministry, which Mr Najib also heads.
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