The Swiss media reported earlier in the week that the RM400 million in 1MDB-linked funds that had been seized by Swiss financial authorities last November may be absorbed by the Swiss government because no one had approached them to claim the funds.
The biggest question for Dato’ Seri Najib Razak in particular, why haven’t the Malaysian Government taken any action to approach the Swiss Government to seek repatriation of the funds?
At the very least, has the Prime Minister attempted to seek clarification from the Swiss authorities to verify the authenticity of the findings that the RM400 millions were funds stolen from 1MDB?
The above questions are particularly pertinent given the on-going confiscation of assets deemed acquired with funds stolened or laundered from 1MDB.
For example, the Indonesian authorities had just seized the USD260 million luxury yacht Equanimity purchased by Jho Low using funds siphoned out of 1MDB yesterday. The yacht is among the assets amounting to USD1.7 billion that are being sought by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) through its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative in relation to 1MDB.
Are we going to let the United States keep the proceeds from the seizure of these assets worth nearly RM7 billion and not do anything about it?
Or is the Prime Minister so embarrassed by the fact that so much money has been stolen and laundered from 1MDB that he doesn’t dare to seek the repatriation of these funds? Did Dato’ Seri Najib ask his ‘good friend’ President Donald Trump that the funds be returned to 1MDB so that 1MDB can pay it’s RM40 billion of debt? Or was the Prime Minister so generous as to pledge those funds, like he did on behalf of EPF and Khazanah to invest those money to “revive” the United States economy?
As Malaysians continue to suffer because of the GST and other policies aimed at increasing government revenue, surely we are not going to allow billions of Ringgit taken from us to just lie idle abroad. That is money that could be used to build our hospitals, schools and improve our infrastructure.
It is imperative for Dato’ Seri Najib Razak must respond to these questions. The failure to do so means the BN Government is not interested in making any attempts to recover these billions of ringgit.
Let us state unequivocally here that unlike the BN Government, a new Pakatan Harapan government will make it a priority to recover these funds to ensure that the billions of ringgit are returned to the people of Malaysia.