Johor UMNO Deputy Chairman Nur Jazlan Mohamed had declared that he brought in former Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to campaign in Johor on behalf of MCA candidates because he is still popular and will leave it for voters to decide on whether Najib is guilty for the RM52 billion 1MDB scandal. Is Nur Jazlan and Najib going to deny that Najib has been convicted by both the High Court and the Court of Appeal with a jail sentence of 12 years and fines of RM210 million in relation to the 1MDB scandal and even pilloried by the Court of Appeal as a “national embarrassment”?
Najib continues to whitewash the truth and revise history by making the outrageous claim in Parliament on 2 March that not a single cent of the principal amount of the 1MDB debt has been paid using public funds and even claimed that the RM23 billion recovered from Goldman Sachs, the US Department of Justice, AmBank and various auditors are sufficient to repay the 1MDB debts. According to the Finance Ministry, RM19.14 billion has been recovered so far and placed in the asset recovery trust account, not RM23 billion as claimed by Najib.
The government has repaid RM13.3 billion of 1MDB’s debt so far, with RM38.81 billion still outstanding as of December 31 last year, according to the Finance Ministry. The amount paid would definitely include both the principal and interest. Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Aziz had labelled Najib’s claims as baseless in Parliament on 3 March when Tengku Zafrul disclosed that 1MDB’s current debts stood at RM38.5 billion, of which RM6.5 billion was in interest alone.
Both the current and previous Finance Minister has labelled Najib’s claims as baseless. How many more lies must Najib make to cover up his initial lie? DAP Damansara MP Tony Pua in his parliamentary motion on 3 March to refer Najib to the House Committee of Privileges for lying to Parliament has comprehensively debunked Najib’s false claims.
First, Tony proved that a total of RM8.8 billion was paid by Najib in 2017 and 2018 (before 2018 general elections) that included both the principal and interest for 1MDB debts. Najib indulged in mindless fantasy when he claimed that 1MDB helped Petronas save RM50 billion and ultimately caused Petronas reserves to increase from RM30 billion to RM176 billion. Najib continued his descent into factual insanity when he claimed that the Bandar Malaysia land bought by 1MDB was valued at RM140 billion when its professional valuation is actually less than 10% between RM9 to RM12 billion.
Najib even claimed that 1MDB subsidiary company sold land in Air Itam Penang for RM2.7 billion to record a profit of RM1.32 billion. Even though the land had been sold to a Cayman Islands-based Silk Road Southeast Asia Real Estate, nothing has been heard from them since. To-date neither the land title nor the shares of the company has been transferred to the buyer, making this a classic case of money-laundering.
March 12 will determine whether both Nur Jazlan and Najib succeed in hoodwinking the voters in Johor into believing that black can indeed become white and that corruption is no longer a decisive issue with Johor voters. Thus, allowing the BN government to abuse their powers and blame the failures and responsibility of mismanaging both the COVID-19 pandemic with more than 3.6 million cases and 33,000 deaths, as well as the economic recession on the rakyat by increasing taxes and compound fines for non-compliance with COVID-19 SOPs to RM10,000 for individuals and RM1 million for companies.