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'Who is the mastermind behind Lester Melanyi?'
Published:  Jul 21, 2015 1:38 PM
Updated: 7:00 AM

PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli has urged the authorities to uncover the "mastermind" behind Lester Melanyi's attempt to implicate several opposition leaders in the alleged forging of documents related to 1MDB.

This follows a fresh revelation of a glaring mistake in Lester's video "confession", in which a photograph of a person not at all linked with whistleblower website Sarawak Report was depicted as the site's "web designer".

Lester accused this person, whom he named as James Stewart Stephens, as being responsible for 90 percent of "forged" documents used by Sarawak Report to implicate 1MDB.

According to Malay Mail Online , the photograph produced by Lester in fact depicted one James Stewart, who works for the Abellio Greater Anglia railway line in the United Kingdom.

The company has dismissed claims that Stewart moonlighted as a forger.

In view of this, Rafizi ( photo ) said it was becoming increasingly clear that Lester's confession was false and motivated by financial gain, especially since he has admitted to receiving money to make the video confessions.

"I believe the authorities, including the police and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC, should investigate Lester to find out who is behind him and who paid Lester to spread false allegations as it interferes with investigations into the 1MDB scandal," Rafizi said in a statement today.

Rahman Dahlan should apologise

Furthermore, Rafizi said, cabinet minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who first highlighted Lester's claims, should apologise for peddling Lester's "confession" to the public.

"With today's revelation that claims of a graphic designer forging documents is a creation by Lester, Rahman should come forward to apologise to Malaysians for  spreading false and unverified news that has confused people over the 1MDB scandal," he said.

Lester's video confession was used by Rahman to discredit the integrity of Sarawak Report .

Rahman ( photo ) claimed that Lester used to work for the website.

Among other issues, Rahman said Lester had produced an admission by Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown that she had forged the documents.

Eventually, Rewcastle produced documents to show that Lester had quoted her out of context and that he had never worked with Sarawak Report , but instead had a brief stint with the website's sister organisation, Radio Free Sarawak .

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