The government has to provide answers to the controversies plaguing it to restore international market confidence, said Prime Minister Najib Razak’s brother.
CIMB group chairperson Nazir Razak said he believed the negative coverage of Malaysia in leading Western dailies was causing market sentiments abroad to lose confidence in the country.
“We have to change the current narrative about Malaysia with answers or legal suits; we can’t just ignore them,” he wrote on Instagram on the negative coverage.
He was commenting on Moody Corp’s comparison of official ratings of countries against grades implied by its credit-default swaps, which showed Malaysia among the six countries in the “ junk grade ” rating.
The “junk grade” is where the disparity between the official ratings and what credit activity implies is the largest, and shows Malaysia fifth lowest after Kazakhstan, Turkey, Bahrain and South Africa.
“This is worrying. The market is much more negative about Malaysia than the rating agencies (suggest), taking us into ’junk’ category way below our fundamentals,” wrote Nazir on Instagram.
“I suspect it’s due to so much negative coverage in The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ ), Financial Times ( FT ), New York Times ( NYT ) - all ‘capital’ people read at least one if not all of them,” he said.
WSJ , US’ leading financial daily, has been reporting on scandals linked to the debt-ridden Finance Ministry sovereign fund 1MDB, of which Najib is advisory committee chairperson.
Nazir commented several months ago that the 1MDB scandal was one of the reasons the ringgit had plummeted in value and continues to do so today with little sign of recovery.
Still no lawsuit
In its latest two exposes this month, WSJ reported discrepancies in two sums that 1MDB claimed had been paid to its Abu Dhabi partner International Petroleum Investment Corporation (IPIC).
Najib has to date not acted on his threat in July to sue WSJ over its first article alleging funds from 1MDB had been deposited into the prime minister’s personal accounts.
Some time after the article, it was finally admitted the reported RM2.6 billion was indeed banked into Najib’s accounts, but that the sum was an alleged “donation” from a wealthy Arab made to Umno.
An ex-Umno member has since filed a suit against Najib over the said donations.
Related reports
WSJ: IPIC didn't get US$1.4b collateral from 1MDB
WSJ: Another US$1b payment from 1MDB to IPIC missing
