THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Asian Edition July 3rd 2015
Investigators Believe Money Flowed to Malaysian Leader Najib’s Accounts Amid 1MBD Probe
Prime Minister Najib’s bank accounts are scrutinized during investigation of investment fund 1MDB
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—Malaysian investigators scrutinizing a
controversial government investment fund have traced nearly $700 million
of deposits into what they believe are the personal bank accounts of
Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, according to documents from a government probe.
The
investigation documents mark the first time Mr. Najib has been directly
connected to the probes into state investment fund 1Malaysia
Development Bhd., or 1MDB.
Mr. Najib, who founded 1MDB and heads
its board of advisors, has been under growing political pressure over
the fund, which amassed $11 billion in debt it is struggling to repay.
The
government probe documents what investigators believe to be the
movement of cash among government agencies, banks and companies linked
to 1MDB before it ended up in Mr. Najib’s personal accounts. Documents
reviewed by The Wall Street Journal include bank transfer forms and flow
charts put together by government investigators that reflect their
understanding of the path of the cash.
The original source of the
money is unclear and the government investigation doesn’t detail what
happened to the money that went into Mr. Najib’s personal accounts.
“The
prime minister has not taken any funds for personal use,” said a
Malaysian government spokesman. “The prime minister’s political
opponents, unwilling to accept his record or the facts, continue to try
to undermine him with baseless smears and rumours for pure political
gain.”
ENLARGE
Mr. Najib has previously denied wrongdoing in relation to 1MDB and
has urged critics to wait for the conclusion of four official
investigations that are ongoing into 1MDB’s activities.
Investigators
have identified five separate deposits into Mr. Najib’s accounts that
came from two sources, according to the documents viewed by the Journal.
By
far the largest transactions were two deposits of $620 million and $61
million in March 2013, during a heated election campaign in Malaysia,
the documents show. The cash came from a company registered in the
British Virgin Islands via a Swiss bank owned by an Abu Dhabi state
fund. The fund, International Petroleum Investment Co., or IPIC, has
guaranteed billions of dollars of 1MDB’s bonds and in May injected $1
billion in capital into the fund to help meet looming debt repayments. A
spokeswoman for IPIC couldn’t be reached for comment. The British
Virgin Islands company, Tanore Finance Corp., couldn’t be reached.
Another
set of transfers, totaling 42 million ringgit ($11.1 million),
originated within the Malaysian government, according to the
investigation. Investigators believe the money came from an entity known
as SRC International Sdn. Bhd., an energy company that originally was
controlled by 1MDB but was transferred to the Finance Ministry in 2012.
Mr. Najib is also the finance minister.
The money moved through
another company owned by SRC International and then to a company that
works exclusively for 1MDB, and finally to Mr. Najib’s personal accounts
in three separate deposits, the government documents show.
Related
Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, a director of SRC International, declined
to comment. Mr. Kamil had power of attorney over Mr. Najib’s accounts,
according to documents that were part of the government investigation.
A
1MDB spokesman said, referring to the transfers into Mr. Najib’s
account: “1MDB is not aware of any such transactions, nor has it seen
any documents to this effect.” The spokesman cautioned that doctored
documents have been used in the past to discredit 1MDB and the
government.
For months, concerns about 1MDB’s debt and lack of
transparency have dominated political discussion in Malaysia, a close
ally of the U.S. and a counterweight to China in Southeast Asia.
When
he founded 1MDB in 2009, Mr. Najib promised it would kick-start new
industries and turn Kuala Lumpur into a global financial center.
Instead, the fund bought power plants overseas and invested in energy
joint ventures that failed to get off the ground. The fund this year has
rescheduled debt payments.
The Journal last month detailed how 1MDB had been used
to indirectly help Mr. Najib’s election campaign in 2013. The fund
appeared to overpay for a power plant from a Malaysian company. The
company then donated money to a Najib-linked charity that made
donations, including to local schools, which Mr. Najib was able to tout
as he campaigned.
“We only acquire assets when we are convinced
that they represent long-term value, and to suggest that any of our
acquisitions were driven by political considerations is simply false,”
1MDB said last month.
The four probes into 1MDB are being
conducted by the nation’s central bank, a parliamentary committee, the
auditor general and police. A spokeswoman for Bank Negara Malaysia, the
central bank, declined to comment. Malaysia’s police chief and a member
of the parliamentary committee also had no comment. The auditor general
said this week it had completed an interim report on 1MDB’s accounts and
would hand it to the parliament on July 9.
The prime minister is facing increasing pressure over 1MDB. The country’s longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who left office in 2003, publicly has urged Mr. Najib to resign.
This
week, Malaysia’s home minister threatened to withdraw publishing
licenses from a local media group, citing what he said were inaccurate
reports on 1MDB.
The $11.1 million of transfers to Mr. Najib’s
bank account occurred at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015,
according to the government investigation. Among the companies that
investigators say it passed through was Ihsan Perdana Sdn. Bhd., which
provides corporate social responsibility programs for 1MDB’s charitable
foundation, according to company registration documents. Attempts to
reach the managing director of Ihsan Perdana weren’t successful.
Documents
tied to the transfer said its purpose was for “CSR,” or corporate
social responsibility, programs. The Wall Street Journal examination of
the use of funds tied to 1MDB for Mr. Najib’s election campaign showed
that the money was slated to be used for corporate social responsibility
programs as well.
The government probe documents detail how
investigators believe SRC International transferred 40 million ringgit
on Dec. 24 last year to a wholly owned subsidiary. This company on the
same day wired the money to Ihsan Perdana, according to the documents.
Two days after receiving the money, Ihsan Perdana wired 27 million
ringgit and five million ringgit in two separate transfers to two
different bank accounts owned by Mr. Najib, the government documents
show.
In February, 10 million ringgit entered the prime
minister’s account, also from SRC International via Ihsan Perdana, the
documents show.
The remittance documents don’t name Mr. Najib as
the beneficiary but detail account numbers at a branch of AmIslamic Bank
Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. Two flow charts from the government investigation
name the owner of these accounts as “Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd
Razak,” the prime minister’s official name. A spokesman for AmIslamic
Bank declined to comment.
In another transaction, Tanore Finance,
the British Virgin Islands-based company, transferred $681 million in
two tranches to a different account at another Kuala Lumpur branch of
AmIslamic Bank. The government probe said the account was owned by Mr.
Najib, according to the documents.
The transfers came from an
account held by Tanore Finance at a Singapore branch of Falcon Private
Bank, a Swiss bank which is owned by IPIC, the Abu Dhabi fund, according
to the documents. A spokesman for Falcon Private Bank declined to
comment.
The $681 million was transferred to Mr. Najib’s accounts on March 21 and March 25, 2013, the government documents show.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com and Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com
In a shocking development it has been learnt that investigators have
traced billions of ringgit linked to the 1MDB money trail into Prime
Minister Najib Razak’s personal bank accounts.
Amongst a series of key transactions it has been identified that a total of RM42 million recently flowed from a controversial company linked to 1MDB, SRC International Sdn Bhd, into the PM’s own private accounts.
These personal accounts were held clearly under the name of “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak” at AmPrivate Banking in Kuala Lumpur.
Even more sensationally, a total of US$681,999,976 (RM2.6 billion) was separately wire transferred from the Singapore branch of the Swiss Falcon private bank owned by the Abu Dhabi fund Aabar into the Prime Minister’s private AmBank account in Kuala Lumpur, on March 2013, just in advance of the calling of the General Election.
Aabar has been connected to numerous financial transactions involving 1MDB.
The transfers from the fund’s wholly owned Falcon Bank into Najib’s AmPrivate Banking account took place just days after the signing of a so-called “strategic partnership” between Malaysia and Abu Dhabi on 12th March 2013.
This resulted in the issuing of a US$3 billion bond guaranteed by the the Malaysian Government as part of a “50 50 joint venture between 1MDB and Aabar” to develop the Tun Razak Exchange project.
However, there have been many queries since about what happened to the money; about the failure to develop the Tun Razak Exchange project and about why Aabar itself never contributed, as promised, to the so-called joint venture?
This stunning body of banking information has recently been received by a number of Malaysia’s top law enforcers, including the Attorney General.
It creates an extraordinary series of connections between 1MDB projects and the Prime Minister’s personal finances and it transforms the 1MDB investigation into a political crisis of the gravest magnitude in Malaysia.
SRC International Sdn Bhd was set up under the auspices of 1MDB in July 2011 and it is headed by none other than Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, a close friend of Jho Low, who was brought over to 1MDB from Sarawak’s UBG as the fund’s chief investment officer.
In 2010 Nik Kamil was the ‘link man’ between UBG, 1MDB and PetroSaudi for channelling US$260 million of 1MDB money into the purchase of UBG from Jho Low and the then Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.
He was then transferred to become CEO of 1MDB’s new subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.
SRC International courted immediate controversy in 2011 by borrowing RM4 billion from Malaysia’s public retirement fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP).
Over subsequent years 1MDB’s political critics have pressed the government to understand where that money went and have repeatedly complained at the lack of information provided by the company’s statements and accounts.
Most recently the Prime Minister, who had eventually taken SRC under the direct control of his own Ministry of Finance, announced in March that much of the money had been invested in a Mongolian company Gobi Coal & Energy.
However, documents now in the hands of Malaysian prosecutors, show that just the previous month (February 10th 2015) SRC International had transferred RM10 million into the account number 2112022011880 of “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak” at AmPrivate Bank in Kuala Lumpur.
Likewise, on December 26th 2014, two earlier transactions had seen
the transfer of another RM27 million and RM5 million from SRC
International Sdn Bhd into AmPrivate Banking account number
2112022011906, which also belongs to “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd
Razak”.
The money trail from SRC International to Najib has been clearly
detailed by investigators and is also in the possession of the
international financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
Sarawak Report has acquired copies of the documentation relating to the case, which corroborate that out of a total of RM50 million transferred from of SRC in these transactions RM42 million went straight into the Prime Minister’s own accounts.
The findings present a clear flow of money from SRC International’s AmBank Islamic account number 2112022010650 through two separate Malaysian companies into two of Najib’s own personal accounts at the AmBank Group’s private arm.
The transfers first passed from the 1MDB/ Ministry of Finance owned company, SRC International Sdn Bhd, whose Director and CEO is Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, to a second company Gandingun Mentari Sdn Bhd, of which Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil is also a Director and SRC is the major shareholder.
This account was also held at AmBank Islamic, account number 8881003806948.
Then the money was transferred on to another company Ihsan Perdana
Sdn, of whom the shareholders of a share capital of RM100,000 are one
Datuk Suboh Bin Mohd Yassin and again Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil.
The Ihsan Perdana account number 106180001108 is lodged with another
Malaysian bank, Affin Islamic Bank, of whom one of the Board members is
none other than Lodin Wok Kamaruddin, who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of 1MDB.
Two days after the first transaction initiated on Christmas Eve, the vast majority of this original RM40 million sum was passed on Boxing Day 2014, in two tranches, to two separate accounts belonging to Najib.
RM27 million went to his personal AmPrivate Banking account number 2112022011880 and RM5 million went to his personal AmPrivate Banking account number 2112022011906.
On this later occasion SRC International first paid out RM5 million on 5th February 2015 to the Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil controlled company Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd. Then the next day on 6th February a further RM5 million was transferred to the same account.
Each sum was immediately transferred within the same day to the same Ihsan Perdana account as before at Affin Islamic Bank.
Later, on 10th February, the entire combined sum of RM10 million was forwarded straight into one of the personal accounts at AmPrivate Banking used in the previous transactions – Account Number 2112022011906, registered in the name of “Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj And Razak”.
The transfer documents cite the purpose of the money as being for unspecified “CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] programmes”. Why such a programmes would ever be conducted through the private accounts of the Minister in charge of the public company out of borrowing from the state pension fund remains unclear.
Malaysian followers of the 1MDB scandal will note that familiar names
linked to 1MDB and Jho Low at the Abu Dhabi Aabar fund are closely
involved.
Falcon Bank, which sent these enormous sums in March 2013, is a Swiss Private Bank, formerly called AIG Private Bank, which was bought up by IPIC (of which Aabar is a subsidiary) in 2009.
The original Chairman of the Board of Falcon Bank was none other than Khadem al Qubasi, the Aabar Chairman and IPIC CEO, who was at the heart of a series of controversial deals with 1MDB and simultaneous private ventures with Jho Low.
Al Qubaisi was sacked from all his official posts in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, following a series of exposes in Sarawak Report about his dealings with 1MDB, his extravagant and unaccountable wealth and his flamboyant behaviour in nightclubs – as well as a mysterious payment of US$20 million into his private account by the company Good Star in 2012.
Good Star was controlled by the 1MDB connected businessman Jho Low and the company was the recipient of US$1.19 billion siphoned off from the PetroSaudi joint venture, according to investigations by Sarawak Report.
Al Qubaisi was succeeded as Falcon Chairman by his CEO at Aabar, Mohamed Badawy Al-Husseiny.
Both these men have been closely involved in all the various deals between Aabar and 1MDB and it was Badawy Al-Husseiny who was in the post as the Chairman of Falcon when the massive transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars were made to Najib’s account in March 2013.
Indeed Al-Husseiny remains on the Falcon Board to this day and also
remains in place as Chief Executive of Aabar, which is a subsidiary of
IPIC, which has just controversially bailed out 1MDB by agreeing to pay
its outstanding debts of US$1 billion and to indemnify its repayments on
a further $3.5 billion, in return for promised “assets” that have
remained unspecified on the London Stock Exchange.
Despite the promise by the Malaysian Government that it would not agree to guarantee further loans to 1MDB, the LSE announcement has made clear that the Prime Minister has indeed made just this commitment to IPIC in this published agreement.
Interestingly, it was none other than the same Mr Husseiny who, after
months of speculation, finally came forward to claim that it was he who
personally invested the US$100 million in the Hollywood Movie Wolf of Wall Street made by Red Granite Productions, which belongs to Najib Razak’s step-son Riza Aziz (son of Rosmah Mansor).
No one has been able to explain how a salaried official like Mr Husseiny could afford to make such a vast one off investment in the first major movie project of a son of a client.
On 21st March 2013 US$619,999,988 was paid out of account number 8550299001 at Singapore’s Falcon Private Bank, which is registered in the name of a BVI company named Tanore Finance Group.
This money was sent to yet another account registered in the name of “Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj And Razak” at AmPrivate Banking in Malaysia. The number of this account was 2112022009694.
The documentation also shows that a second payment was made four days
later on 25th March 2013, via the same transaction channels, of
US$60,999,988 into the same account belonging to Najib.
This account was closed, according to our information, on 30th August of that year.
During the intervening period was the GE13 election campaign, where the issue of vote buying featured heavily. It therefore seems inevitable that questions will now be asked whether the Prime Minister was using this transfer of money as a personal ‘election fund’?
Indeed UMNO candidates have confided that Najib handed them multi million personal cheques, signed by the Prime Minister himself, in order to cover election expenses.
The wire transfer documents show that these multi-million dollar transfers were handled through New York by the American Wells Fargo Bank, International Branch.
The revelations will inevitably prompt calls for the regulators in Singapore, Switzerland and now the United States to examine the activities of a Swiss private bank based in Singapore through the US in paying such a sum into the private account of a politically connected individual.
Malaysia’s own regulatory authorities, on the other hand, have been presumably paralysed by the notorious and long-standing refusal of the Attorney General, Abdul Gani Paital, to ever prosecute cases involving senior member of UMNO.
Another fascinating aspect of this investigation is the revealing of
the pivotal role of Jho Low’s known close side-kick Nik Faisal Ariff
Kamil in the close circle of operators around Najib Razak.
A letter from Nik to the branch manager of AmIslamic Bank in Jalan Raja Chulan, KL dated 20th January 2014 reveals his management of several of the bank accounts owned by Najib, including two involved in the SRC investigation.
Nik Kamil refers to three accounts, 211202201188-0/ 211202201189-8/211202201190-6, for which he reveals he has been appointed “Authorised Personnel” with the right to deposit cash.
Because he and the account holder (Najib Razak) have schedules involving “various international trips and meetings scheduled and other potential ad hoc requirements”, he explains to the branch manager that there will be occasions where he “may not be available to provide necessary transfer and remittance instructions to the Bank”.
He therefore wished to nominate a representative to “arrange for urgent cash deposits into the accounts where required for purposes of, inter-alia, clearances of urgent cheques against my instruction”.
This revelation shows that Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil is not only the Director of the 1MDB subsidiary SRC, but also the manager of private accounts owned by Najib Razak, which have received money from that company.
This new information, related to the on-going scandal of 1MDB and already being reported internationally, is likely to send shock waves through Malaysia’s banking and political circles.
Whatever the excuses (an of course there will be attempts at plenty) such vast transfers of money into a sitting Prime Minister’s private account cannot be ignored.
Neither can the unorthodox and irregular handling of public borrowings from an old age pension fund entrusted once again to the same Prime Minister cum Finance Minister, who allowed money from SRC to also pass into his personal accounts.
SENSATIONAL FINDINGS! - Prime Minister Najib Razak's Personal Accounts Linked To 1MDB Money Trail MALAYSIA EXCLUSIVE!
2 Jul 2015
Mohamed
Badawy al-Husseiny CEO of Aabar was also Chair of Falcon Bank at the
time of the multi-million dollar transactions into Najib’s account and
he remains a current Board Member at the Aabar/IPIC owned bank.
Amongst a series of key transactions it has been identified that a total of RM42 million recently flowed from a controversial company linked to 1MDB, SRC International Sdn Bhd, into the PM’s own private accounts.
These personal accounts were held clearly under the name of “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak” at AmPrivate Banking in Kuala Lumpur.
Even more sensationally, a total of US$681,999,976 (RM2.6 billion) was separately wire transferred from the Singapore branch of the Swiss Falcon private bank owned by the Abu Dhabi fund Aabar into the Prime Minister’s private AmBank account in Kuala Lumpur, on March 2013, just in advance of the calling of the General Election.
AG Abdul Gani Patail – the information is on his desk
Aabar has been connected to numerous financial transactions involving 1MDB.
The transfers from the fund’s wholly owned Falcon Bank into Najib’s AmPrivate Banking account took place just days after the signing of a so-called “strategic partnership” between Malaysia and Abu Dhabi on 12th March 2013.
This resulted in the issuing of a US$3 billion bond guaranteed by the the Malaysian Government as part of a “50 50 joint venture between 1MDB and Aabar” to develop the Tun Razak Exchange project.
However, there have been many queries since about what happened to the money; about the failure to develop the Tun Razak Exchange project and about why Aabar itself never contributed, as promised, to the so-called joint venture?
Posing
at the photo shoot to promote the “Strategic Partnership”just days
before the cash transfer from Falcon and three weeks before parliament
was dissolved, were the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak; the CEO of
1MDB (Shahrol Halmi); the Chairman of 1MDB (Lodin Wok Kamaruddin); the
Chairman of Falcon Bank and CEO of Aabar (Mohamed Badawy al-Husseiny)
and the Chairman of Aabar (Khaddem Al Qubassi).
This stunning body of banking information has recently been received by a number of Malaysia’s top law enforcers, including the Attorney General.
It creates an extraordinary series of connections between 1MDB projects and the Prime Minister’s personal finances and it transforms the 1MDB investigation into a political crisis of the gravest magnitude in Malaysia.
SRC paid RM42 million to Najib Razak’s private accounts
The money taken from SRC International is a particularly shocking revelation, because this was money lent by the public pension fund KWAP and never accounted for.SRC International Sdn Bhd was set up under the auspices of 1MDB in July 2011 and it is headed by none other than Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, a close friend of Jho Low, who was brought over to 1MDB from Sarawak’s UBG as the fund’s chief investment officer.
Najib’s personal bank accounts move centre stage in the hunt for 1MDB’s missing billions
In 2010 Nik Kamil was the ‘link man’ between UBG, 1MDB and PetroSaudi for channelling US$260 million of 1MDB money into the purchase of UBG from Jho Low and the then Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud.
He was then transferred to become CEO of 1MDB’s new subsidiary SRC International Sdn Bhd.
SRC International courted immediate controversy in 2011 by borrowing RM4 billion from Malaysia’s public retirement fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP).
Over subsequent years 1MDB’s political critics have pressed the government to understand where that money went and have repeatedly complained at the lack of information provided by the company’s statements and accounts.
Most recently the Prime Minister, who had eventually taken SRC under the direct control of his own Ministry of Finance, announced in March that much of the money had been invested in a Mongolian company Gobi Coal & Energy.
However, documents now in the hands of Malaysian prosecutors, show that just the previous month (February 10th 2015) SRC International had transferred RM10 million into the account number 2112022011880 of “Dato’Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj Abd Razak” at AmPrivate Bank in Kuala Lumpur.
Transfers this year in February from SRC into Najib’s personal account
Transfers last December from SRC into Najib’s personal accounts
Sarawak Report has acquired copies of the documentation relating to the case, which corroborate that out of a total of RM50 million transferred from of SRC in these transactions RM42 million went straight into the Prime Minister’s own accounts.
The findings present a clear flow of money from SRC International’s AmBank Islamic account number 2112022010650 through two separate Malaysian companies into two of Najib’s own personal accounts at the AmBank Group’s private arm.
The transfers first passed from the 1MDB/ Ministry of Finance owned company, SRC International Sdn Bhd, whose Director and CEO is Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, to a second company Gandingun Mentari Sdn Bhd, of which Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil is also a Director and SRC is the major shareholder.
This account was also held at AmBank Islamic, account number 8881003806948.
Key role of Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil at SRC and transfer company Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd
Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd was the second company in the trail with an account at Affin Bank.
Key link in the chain – Lodin Wok Kamaruddin is Chair of 1MDB and Board Member of Affin Bank
Two days after the first transaction initiated on Christmas Eve, the vast majority of this original RM40 million sum was passed on Boxing Day 2014, in two tranches, to two separate accounts belonging to Najib.
RM27 million went to his personal AmPrivate Banking account number 2112022011880 and RM5 million went to his personal AmPrivate Banking account number 2112022011906.
SRC International – February 2015 pay out
The investigation shows a second series of payments, which took place in February of this year, following the same pattern of transactions.On this later occasion SRC International first paid out RM5 million on 5th February 2015 to the Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil controlled company Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd. Then the next day on 6th February a further RM5 million was transferred to the same account.
Lodin and his team at Affin Islamic Bank
Each sum was immediately transferred within the same day to the same Ihsan Perdana account as before at Affin Islamic Bank.
Later, on 10th February, the entire combined sum of RM10 million was forwarded straight into one of the personal accounts at AmPrivate Banking used in the previous transactions – Account Number 2112022011906, registered in the name of “Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj And Razak”.
The transfer documents cite the purpose of the money as being for unspecified “CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] programmes”. Why such a programmes would ever be conducted through the private accounts of the Minister in charge of the public company out of borrowing from the state pension fund remains unclear.
Falcon Bank is a discreet bank promoted towards the super-wealthy. It is owned by Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Fund.
US$680,999,976 from Falcon Bank straight to Najib!
A further extraordinary transaction cited in this official investigation into 1MDB will attract the particular interest of international and US regulators, not only because of its shocking size, but also because it comprises a US dollar transaction through Wells Fargo Bank in New York.
Hundreds
of millions of dollars wired from a BVI company account at Falcon Bank
(Tanore Finance) to Najib’s personal AmPrivate Bank account days before
the calling of the 2013 General Election
Khadem al Qubaisi, ex-head of Falcon, Aabar and CEO of IPIC
Falcon Bank, which sent these enormous sums in March 2013, is a Swiss Private Bank, formerly called AIG Private Bank, which was bought up by IPIC (of which Aabar is a subsidiary) in 2009.
The original Chairman of the Board of Falcon Bank was none other than Khadem al Qubasi, the Aabar Chairman and IPIC CEO, who was at the heart of a series of controversial deals with 1MDB and simultaneous private ventures with Jho Low.
Al Qubaisi was sacked from all his official posts in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, following a series of exposes in Sarawak Report about his dealings with 1MDB, his extravagant and unaccountable wealth and his flamboyant behaviour in nightclubs – as well as a mysterious payment of US$20 million into his private account by the company Good Star in 2012.
Good Star was controlled by the 1MDB connected businessman Jho Low and the company was the recipient of US$1.19 billion siphoned off from the PetroSaudi joint venture, according to investigations by Sarawak Report.
Al Qubaisi was succeeded as Falcon Chairman by his CEO at Aabar, Mohamed Badawy Al-Husseiny.
Both these men have been closely involved in all the various deals between Aabar and 1MDB and it was Badawy Al-Husseiny who was in the post as the Chairman of Falcon when the massive transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars were made to Najib’s account in March 2013.
More deals involving Aabar’s Khadem al Qubaisi and Mohammed Al-Husseini – Aabar purchased a share of RHB bank in 2011
Despite the promise by the Malaysian Government that it would not agree to guarantee further loans to 1MDB, the LSE announcement has made clear that the Prime Minister has indeed made just this commitment to IPIC in this published agreement.
Close
connections – Riza Aziz and Jho Low at the launch of Wolf of Wall
Street – allegedly paid for by Aabar’s CEO and Falcon Bank’s Chairman
Al-Husseiny
No one has been able to explain how a salaried official like Mr Husseiny could afford to make such a vast one off investment in the first major movie project of a son of a client.
The detail on the transactions
The transfers made by Falcon Bank’s Singapore branch to Najib Razak’s personal account just days before the Prime Minister called the last election are eye-wateringly large.On 21st March 2013 US$619,999,988 was paid out of account number 8550299001 at Singapore’s Falcon Private Bank, which is registered in the name of a BVI company named Tanore Finance Group.
This money was sent to yet another account registered in the name of “Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Bin Hj And Razak” at AmPrivate Banking in Malaysia. The number of this account was 2112022009694.
Hundreds
of millions of dollars wired from a BVI company account at Falcon Bank
(Tanore Finance Corp) to Najib’s personal AmPrivate Banking account
This account was closed, according to our information, on 30th August of that year.
During the intervening period was the GE13 election campaign, where the issue of vote buying featured heavily. It therefore seems inevitable that questions will now be asked whether the Prime Minister was using this transfer of money as a personal ‘election fund’?
Indeed UMNO candidates have confided that Najib handed them multi million personal cheques, signed by the Prime Minister himself, in order to cover election expenses.
Suspicious transactions
Also at issue is whether the banks involved ever alerted regulators to the possibility of a suspicious transaction, according to money laundering regulations?The wire transfer documents show that these multi-million dollar transfers were handled through New York by the American Wells Fargo Bank, International Branch.
The revelations will inevitably prompt calls for the regulators in Singapore, Switzerland and now the United States to examine the activities of a Swiss private bank based in Singapore through the US in paying such a sum into the private account of a politically connected individual.
Malaysia’s own regulatory authorities, on the other hand, have been presumably paralysed by the notorious and long-standing refusal of the Attorney General, Abdul Gani Paital, to ever prosecute cases involving senior member of UMNO.
Role of Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil is revealed
Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil – key link between 1MDB, Najib and Jho Low
A letter from Nik to the branch manager of AmIslamic Bank in Jalan Raja Chulan, KL dated 20th January 2014 reveals his management of several of the bank accounts owned by Najib, including two involved in the SRC investigation.
Nik Kamil refers to three accounts, 211202201188-0/ 211202201189-8/211202201190-6, for which he reveals he has been appointed “Authorised Personnel” with the right to deposit cash.
Because he and the account holder (Najib Razak) have schedules involving “various international trips and meetings scheduled and other potential ad hoc requirements”, he explains to the branch manager that there will be occasions where he “may not be available to provide necessary transfer and remittance instructions to the Bank”.
He therefore wished to nominate a representative to “arrange for urgent cash deposits into the accounts where required for purposes of, inter-alia, clearances of urgent cheques against my instruction”.
This revelation shows that Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil is not only the Director of the 1MDB subsidiary SRC, but also the manager of private accounts owned by Najib Razak, which have received money from that company.
This new information, related to the on-going scandal of 1MDB and already being reported internationally, is likely to send shock waves through Malaysia’s banking and political circles.
Whatever the excuses (an of course there will be attempts at plenty) such vast transfers of money into a sitting Prime Minister’s private account cannot be ignored.
Neither can the unorthodox and irregular handling of public borrowings from an old age pension fund entrusted once again to the same Prime Minister cum Finance Minister, who allowed money from SRC to also pass into his personal accounts.
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