Critics Warned To Be Afraid Of The Return Of Najib – Shades of Altantuya?

The newly published book that seeks to exonerate Najib over 1MDB/SRC is written by his ex-communications manager, Roman Bose, who was himself handsomely paid from money stolen from 1MDB.

The book, reprehensibly published by Penguin (who have been avoiding questions), claims both that Najib was innocent (on the grounds this ‘wise finance expert’ was ‘duped’ into receiving the stolen money) but also that the sum that he ‘innocently stole’

was so little in the scheme of things that the fuss being made and his conviction is all ‘political’.

What Bose describes as a relatively ‘minuscule’ sum is the ‘mere RM42 million’ that Najib has so far been convicted of receiving into his own accounts from SRC’s local bank – “only about 0.22% of the US$4.5 billion (RM18.6 billion) that US prosecutors say was supposedly looted from 1MDB” as Bose seeks to put it.

The author is therefore selectively ignoring the other charges that are still being processed relating not only to 1MDB but also the lion’s share of the RM4 billion borrowed from KWAP by SRC.

As the Appeal Court judges have reminded, this was money that Najib himself bullied KWAP into lending, which the fund only finally agreed to do in return for a government guarantee that Najib personally pushed through the cabinet.

Najib then, as the sole decision maker at SRC, personally authorised for the bulk of this money to be instantly send abroad (despite the avowed remit of SRC to develop Malaysia’s own strategic resources).

Bose also appears to ignore that US$170 million (some RM800 million) of that exported SRC money, which had been sent to SRC’s Hong Kong bank account at Julius Baer in August 2011 later found its way back to Najib’s personal dollar account in AmBank KL three months later, November 2011. The exact same amount!

The money was transferred through Jho Low’s off-shore Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Ltd.

Does Bose argue that Najib did not notice the money that entered his account? Nor that it was the same sum he authorised SRC to send to Julius Baer?

Does Bose also argue that Najib must have assumed Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners was the company being used by Saudi Royal donors (although he has claimed the donation was made in 2013 not 2011)?

And does Bose also think that this sum, almost half of the vast RM2billion first tranche of money raised from the reluctant KWAP through a government guarantee was also a minisule sum of money compared to the rest of what was stolen from SRC?

Finally, does Penguin at last feel in a position to give a statement to journalists about its reasons and justifications in publishing this apologist propaganda book on behalf of a convicted Kleptocrat?

This given that the writer Roman Bose has sought fit within its pages not only to predict that Najib will return ‘in triumph’ to his former leadership of Malaysia, but to nakedly threaten critics whom he describes as Najib’s enemies to “feel afraid” in anticipation of that event?