I shan’t use the term ‘debate’, one which very many people have been using to refer to the much-anticipated imagined event that is supposed to occur sometime between now and Armageddon.

Armageddon will happen about 4,500 million years from now when the sun gives up its ghost.

A debate is an event where two parties present their opposing viewpoints on a particular subject. The imagined event would not be it.

A live talk show isn’t quite an appropriate description for it, either. A talk show isn’t a one-off thing. While an interrogation it would certainly not be. I mean, the police and the army would interrogate. Not a very nice experience for the interrogated, I hear. You might even end up very dead. And die a very painful death, too.

So, I’ll use the generic, neutral phrase ‘face-off’.

I’ve described the hallucinatory face-off between Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli and 1MDB president Arul Kanda Kandasamy as ‘imagined’ because it will never happen.

Arul doesn’t have the guts to square off with Rafizi.

It’s one thing for him to face a TV interviewer from an Umno-controlled or Umno-compliant station and who has been coached to ask questions designed to elicit answers that their actual audience are meant to hear.

Or to face reporters whose knowledge of such accounting things as balance sheet is probably only slightly better than mine (which is practically zero) or who are afraid - or don’t know how - to ask probing questions.

It’s quite another to face a chartered accountant.

Especially one who has illustrated an extraordinary ability to ferret out such abnormalities as cows reared in condos and astronomical costs of extravagant, private engagement parties charged to the much-skint and leeched hoi-polloi.

And doubtless is able to recognise with complete ease the various types of ‘units’ other than items and measures smaller than tens.

But even if guts should develop and grow inside Arul’s abdominal cavity sometime around now, the senior shadow director of 1MDB and his army of scrimy, servile, self-serving serfs will not allow it.

I said ‘senior’ shadow director because there is one other. Sorry, my friend, no prize for guessing who they are.

They will not allow it because Arul will be punched with facts and figures into a corner and KO’d. He will not be able to provide answers without contradicting what he and his superiors have already publicly stated.

More holes than a fishing net

The whole problem with the issue at hand is that the stories which Arul and company have been weaving and presenting to us have more holes than a fishing net.

I remember one of the reasons given for paying for those Independent Power Producers at higher than their market worth was because they had to pay for and keep talents.

Oh, really? If those companies were full of talented people, how is it that they had incurred RM6 billion debts? Or is it RM8 billion now?

Or are those debts imagined ones? Have they been introduced merely to make up the total debts to RM42 billion/RM48 billion, when in actuality they have been squirrelled away in some people’s private bank accounts far across the seven seas?

We can also easily recall, among various other holey stories, the strange transformation of cash into shares and then into units.

Arul did say that cash was there. He did say that he saw the bank statement.

After that, Prime Minister-cum-Finance Minister Najib Adbul Razak said it was shares.

And then after that, Finance Minister II Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said it was units. “What are those units?” he was asked. “Oh, just units,” he said. You can remember that.

We are led to surmise that he could not explain what those thingies were because they did not exist.

And last we hear, Arul did say that he was mistaken because Husni Units were sold with - hmm! - cash payment deferred.

Why have I capitalised the ‘U’ in the ‘Units’ immediately above? Oh, because the ‘Units’ are special measures. They were allegedly cooked up by Husni. They are special measure, like the Astronomical Unit and the International Unit that we have, you know? The difference between those other Units and Husni’s is that the former exist and are always applied, whereas Husni’s doesn’t represent anything.

Anyway, all right. I sell you something now and you pay me later. So we can accept that, er, deferred payment bit.

But Arul is supposed to be the president of a strategic debt fund dealing not with mere hundreds but billions and he mistook Husni Units for cash? That’s a total Irish bull, all right.

He couldn’t read a bank statement correctly?

Poppycock!

So, they have been telling one lie after another to cover another. And they are bad at it. Exactly like they borrow money to cover one loan and then borrow again to cover what they have last borrowed. They are bad at it, too. So bad, in fact, that the holes are getting ever bigger and ever deeper.

Deceptions attract curses

I have commented before that things started with ill intention are cursed. I gave the entity Malaysia as an example.

Tunku Abdul Rahman deceived the peoples of the then British North Borneo (now Sabah) and Sarawak into agreeing to come together with Singaporeans and Malayans to form the confederation of Malaysia in telling them that their countries would be equal partners of the other two. He even agreed to the now notorious 18-Point/20-Point Agreements.

The promised equality never happened, the Agreements dishonoured in many parts.

And look at what has been happening to Malaysia. It is cursed.

The 1MDB-PetroSaudi International joint-venture (JV) was clearly conceived with ill intention, too.

The curse is evident in the absent cash metamorphosing into shares and then into Husni Units, which Arul and company cannot explain satisfactorily, convincingly, and has put them in a very tight spot.

And the US$1.83 billion of your money that the JV has gobbled up has sparked off yet other catastrophic financial failures.

More quickies

The JV was to be formalised in a very, very short 10 days. You are talking about a business venture initially capitalised at US$2.5 billion, not a roadside burger stall with an initial capital of RM250.

Why the hurry? This hurry business is seen again in getting Goldman Sachs to raise massive funds, and for which an inordinately massive commission was paid.

Could it be that some people were in a hurry to get part of that commission?

Three days before the agreement for the JV (after this referred to as the ‘JVA’) was signed, PetroSaudi International (PSI) was supposed to have lent US$700 million to 1MDB. The supposed loan was to be repaid one day after the agreement was signed.

Why the hurry again? Why would 1MDB need a loan? Was there, in fact, a loan extended to it?

The JVA was signed on Sept 28, 2009. It was nullified on March 31, 2010. That means the JV had a lifespan of only six months. Wow! Incredible.

You set up a US$2.5 billion-JV and you terminate it after a very, very short six months? Doesn't that mean that you never did intend for it to be a long-term thing but merely as a fast means to filch lots of lolly?

And here is more.

PSI is said to have entered into a farming agreement with the Omani-Canadian oil company Buried Hill on July 4, 2009. Buried Hill is said to hold the rights to the Serdar Field, offshore Turkmenistan. And PSI was supposed to inject its claimed rights to the field into the JV with 1MDB.

Oh, really?

But the agreement was nullified on Nov 24, 2009, that is, an inordinately short four months three weeks later.

The complexity of the oil business - and I am talking about exploration and production, or what the oilman calls upstream activities - is mind-boggling. It also involves hundreds and thousands of millions of US dollars.

To plan logistics for drilling offshore alone is enough to cause your hair to drop off.

If PSI had indeed negotiated with Buried Hill, it would have expended a lot of time, work and expenses. But it aborted the exercise a mere four months three weeks later?

Unbelievable.

And, of course, ownership of the Serdar Field has been disputed by Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan for donkey’s years. It still is. If you were an oilman, would you want to go into such a situation?

For more interesting detail, please see my comment in this Yoursay .

What makes the whole issue yet sound even more dubious is that termination of the supposed farming agreement happened a mere two months after the JVA (the agreement with 1MDB) was signed.

It all sounds very, very fishy, all right.

Then, of course, you have some of the major dramatis personae in the foul-smelling fishy fudge fleeing to other countries.

But Arul’s bosses don’t seem too excited about getting them located and dragged back by their scruff. Very telling, isn’t it?

So, no. The face-off between the fried, flour-coated squid and the sufferer of follicular disorder will not happen.