As an effort to salvage Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s image, attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali should charge the SRC International Sdn Bhd officials who transferred funds into his personal bank accounts.
“Apandi should charge those involved in ‘clandestinely’ transferring RM42 million (plus another RM27 million) from SRC International to his (Najib’s) personal accounts and helping to pay his credit card spending.
“After all, it was Apandi himself who ‘revealed’ these facts to the press,” veteran newsman A Kadir Jasin said in his latest blog post today.
Kadir’s call comes after Apandi revealed at a press conference last week that Najib had “no knowledge” that funds from SRC International, a former 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) subsidiary, were transferred into his personal bank accounts.
The prime minister, Apandi had explained, was of the belief that the payments made by him came from the Saudi royal family's RM2.6 billion political donation.
The RM2.6 billion was transferred in 2013 whereas the RM42 million from SRC International was channelled into Najib’s accounts in late 2014 and early 2015.
Commenting further on Apandi’s decision to absolve the prime minister of all wrongdoings, Kadir pointed out that the attorney-general had only made things worse for Najib.
In saying so, he cited the indictment in France of the former Asian boss of weapons maker Thales, Bernard Baiocco, for allegedly paying kickbacks to Najib’s former aide Abdul Razak Baginda in relation to the purchase of Scorpene submarines.
Kadir also cited the statement from the office of the Swiss attorney-general, which said that US$4 billion might have been misappropriated from 1MDB and transferred to Swiss bank accounts.
'Not much credibility for Apandi's decision'
“Now foreign governments and their enforcement agencies are tightening the screws on Najib and companies and people linked to him and to 1MDB.
“It signals that they do not give much credibility to Apandi’s decision,” Kadir said.
As for the RM2.6 billion that was supposedly donated by the Saudi royal family, Kadir noted how there were geopolitical and diplomatic implications that had come out of this.
“Apart from decimating our credibility and national esteem abroad, these and other related scandals are affecting our geopolitical standing and stance.
“The claims by Najib’s supporters and the endorsement by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that the Saudi donation was to help Najib win the 2013 general election and to fight the Muslim Brotherhood are particularly disconcerting,” he said.
If these claims were true, then this proved that there was an involvement of a foreign entity in the country’s domestic affairs, through election funding as well as in the country’s clandestine involvement in fighting Muslim Brotherhood, Kadir added.
“Does the acceptance of the donation mean that Najib has clandestinely allowed a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process?
“Is it the policy of the Umno-led Barisan Nasional government to join Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the fight against the Brotherhood?” he queried.
