ARUL KANDA'S TALK ON 1MDB - LUCKY GARDEN BANGSAR, 7TH MAY 2018

By a guy who attended it (source FB)

To cut the long story short:

If you subscribe to the narrative given by Tony Pua or Rafizi Ramli, I have good news for you:

What Arul Kanda said tonight, neither disproves or debunks the narrative from Pakatan Harapan.

So are Tony Pua and Rafizi telling the truth? I don't know about that. But what was telling was the lack of effort from Arul to even convince the audience in Lucky Garden tonight not to believe the allegations thrown by PH leaders at 1MDB.

And to me, that was the biggest disappointment of the evening.

I came to the talk tonight with high hopes. Call me an idealist, call me a romantic. Time has thought me that there is always two sides to a story, and the only fair thing is to listen to both sides before coming to a judgment.

Arul Kanda has the reputation of an excellent debater. Even 20 years ago back when I was in MCKK, the legend of Arul Kanda the extraordinary debater from the Royal Military College filled the imaginations of wannabe debaters, along with the homegrown legend like Rafizi himself and also Saifuddin Abdullah from the Class of 1980 (now the Secretary General of Pakatan Harapan)

Tonight, his legend status preceded him. I wanted to be convinced. I wanted to me wowwed. I wanted to have that spark in my mind saying "Hey, this dude does make sense"

And i walked away from the talk. Disappointed.

There were 4 main things from tonight's event that sealed my judgment on 1MDB.

ONE - Arul Kanda went to great lengths to explain the reporting structure on 1MDB, and how NTR was not involved in any way in influencing the decision making within 1MDB.

The funny thing was, he placed the blame of all the bad decisions made within the company on the management and also of the Board of Directors, conveniently leaving out the roles played by its Board of Advisors of which Najib is the Chairman, and also the roles of the sole owner of 1MDB which are MOF Inc, which minister is also Najib himself.

Convenient Arul. But not smart.

TWO - He placed the blame squarely on the management and on the BOD for making all those bad decisions, calling those as 'business errors' and absolving himself from any blame.

Funny again, for a company supposedly managed by the brightest Malaysia had to offer, they were making massive decisions worth billions of dollars without consulting and without the approval of the Board. Even penny stock companies on Bursa Malaysia would know that this is wrong. How come the brightest in 1MDB had the temerity and audacity to act in that wrongful manner, which in normal companies will earn you a quick removal from the job?

Nope. No explanation from Arul. 

THREE - He stated and agreed with the findings of the PAC that the 1MDB business model was wrong which ultimately led the company into cashflow problems due to heavy borrowing and high debt repayments required.

Funny as well, since from day one of 1MDB it had that seemingly flawed business model in place. None of the brightest stood up, the BOD stayed silent, even more so Board of Advisers chaired by Najib.

It was never a viable venture to begin with. And for many years nobody voiced out against this business model, until it is already too late.

Thanks Arul for agreeing with this point. Which in hindsight is really dumb to have happened to a company transacting in of billions of dollars, mostly in debt.

FOUR - Arul skirted around the Auditor General's Report on 1MDB, which is still being kept hostage by the Official Secrets Act. "Download the PAC report" he said too many times tonight, never responding to calls to release the AG report.

Something you want to be kept hidden, Arul?

I walked away feeling disappointed. I didn't even wait for the Q&A to start.

The thing is, I somewhat felt pity for Arul. He was there with a mic in his hands and PowerPoint slides to back him up, but I got the feeling that he was just going through the motions, like the story has already been scripted. "Believe me if you want to, I don't care if you dont". And from his talk today, Arul was just there giving a talk - he didnt bother to convince, he didn't bother to connect with this audience to get them to see things from the way he sees it.

Which to me is very telling. 

I would wager a reason for this. For he himself does not believe in the bullshit that he is peddling. 

Apatah lagi rakyat Malaysia.

So I end with the same conclusion that I started with.

I was waiting to be convinced straight from the horse's mouth. If there was somebody who should be able to sell me the 'real' story of 1MDB, it should have been Arul Kanda Kandasamy, debater extraordinaire.

But that didn't happen.

Tony Pua and Rafizi Ramli can rest easy.

This Guy wants Out Too! Najib says "NO!".

Will it be checkmate for Arul Kanda?

Will it be checkmate for Arul Kanda? COMMENT | For his own sake, he should decide now to do the right thing.

 

By Kee Thuan Chye

 

 

Arul Kanda Kandasamy is not involved in any siphoning of funds from 1MDB to the wrong pockets. He was brought in to head the company long after the foul deeds had been done.

 

He was brought in to rationalise the company and bring it back in the black. “Rationalise” might even have been a nice word used for his job description – to mean cover up the dirt, if he found any.

 

Well, from the PAC (Public Accounts Committee) report and some of the things he has said publicly, it appears that he did find dirt and he did cover it up.

 

Many a time he has said the allegations against wrongdoing by 1MDB were unfounded and politically motivated.

 

On April 1, he told The Star: “The misunderstandings about 1MDB stem from the fact that what was a business problem became politicised and became a tool by the Opposition or those not aligned with the Government to topple a democratically elected prime minister and government.”

 

But now he has openly admitted that 1MDB might have been massively defrauded. More, he has also declared in an interview with The Edge Financial Weekly that “maybe there was collaboration from our side”.

 

Maybe? He was supposed to investigate and find out for sure. How could he say “maybe”? We are talking about billions of US dollars going astray, and he says “maybe”? Has he failed in his job?

 

Or has he succeeded exceedingly well by way of not exposing fraud when he discovered it? And is he still equivocating by saying “maybe” when he could actually mean “certainly”?

 

Hiding the fraud would of course make him an accessory after the fact. And when it comes to prosecuting the culprits, he should also be implicated.

 

MP Tony Pua, a member of the PAC and 1MDB’s closest observer, has called Arul a “liar”. The fact that Arul has not defended his honour by, say, suing Pua, suggests that the accusation is true.

 

What was it that Arul allegedly lied about?

 

In February 2015, he said in an interview with the Singapore Business Times that 1MDB had redeemed US$1.103 billion from its offshore account in the Cayman Islands and parked it in a Singapore-based branch of Swiss bank BSI Bank.

 

“The cash is in our accounts … I can assure you … I have seen the statements,” he attested. Note his confident tone.

 

But it turned out there was no cash. In May, the Government admitted that the redeemed US$1.103 billion was actually in the form of “units”.

 

In June, 1MDB laughably sought to get Arul off the hook by stating that he “never said he ‘saw the cash’” and that he was “on the record as saying he had ‘seen the statements’.”

 

That was stupid. Anybody could see that Arul and 1MDB were trying to twist words. After all, he also was on record saying “the cash is in our accounts”, so how could he wriggle out of that?

 

Anyway, in October, Sarawak Report published on its website minutes of a 1MDB board meeting that took place in January 2015 at which Arul gave “detailed assurances to board members that there was indeed cash in the so-called Brazen Sky company account at BSI Bank”.

 

This cash-but-no-cash episode is very telling of what Arul’s mission amounts to. Even more telling is the refusal of 1MDB under Arul’s watch to provide details of the company’s foreign banking transactions to the PAC and the Auditor-General. Such information is crucial in determining, for example, whether a US$700 million transfer made by 1MDB to an account belonging to Good Star Ltd was legitimate.

 

More significant than that are the billions of dollars of unexplained payments – totalling at least US$3.51 billion – made to Aabar Investments PJS Limited registered in the British Virgin Islands.

 

According to the PAC report, 1MDB has not clarified whether this company was linked to the Abu Dhabi-registered Aabar Investments PJS that is a subsidiary of International Petroleum Investment Corp (IPIC), which actually declared to the London Stock Exchange this month that the Virgin Islands Aabar “was not an entity” within IPIC or Aabar Investments PJS.

 

If the Virgin Islands Aabar is not a company that 1MDB had legitimate business dealings with, then it is incumbent on Arul to provide the essential information to set the record straight.

 

Why hasn’t he done it? Why did he not furnish the PAC with the  required foreign banking information? What is he trying to hide?

 

I could cite more instances of Arul’s seemingly dodgy behaviour in divulging information to the public and the authorities, but I think the main point is already clearly made.

 

As I said earlier, if he is hiding the truth, he is an accessory.

 

And now that he has acknowledged the possibility that there was fraud and that 1MDB itself might have participated in the fraud, something that he had been denying before, what is he going to do about it?

 

He was brought in to head 1MDB in January 2015 on a three-year contract. He still has time left. And although, as he told The Star on April 1, that his job was to turn 1MDB around and sort out its debt, and that “from my perspective, I’m done”, he should know that he’s now in a very vulnerable position.

 

Should he merely confine his stint at 1MDB to just the brief he was originally given when he now suspects that fraud has been committed? Isn’t in in the interest of 1MDB to get down to the bottom of the fraud?

 

In fact, since 1MDB is Government-owned, isn’t it in the interest of Malaysian taxpayers to know the truth? And since all Malaysians pay tax these days at least in the form of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), doesn’t this mean that all Malaysians have a stake in 1MDB and what it’s been doing (or misdoing)?

 

So, is Arul Kanda going to carry out his duty to all Malaysians or is he going to wash his hands of the matter? Is he going to care for the financial well-being of the country or uphold the interests of his master?

 

The answer to that has become more pressing this week in light of IPIC’s termination of the deal to slash US$3.5 billion of 1MDB’s debts that has led to 1MDB defaulting on its payment of US$50 million interest for bonds it issued.

 

This latest development has prompted Pua to warn that as a result of it, “Malaysians need to brace themselves for the bailout of the century of at least RM20 billion by the Malaysian government”.

 

If that should turn out to be true, the culprits that started this whole 1MDB mess must be held accountable. Arul’s head should also roll if he was not duly diligent in averting a disaster by coming clean with the company’s dirt.

 

On April 1, he said, “We don’t need any money from our shareholders to get us to 2039. There is no bailout of 1MDB.” What will he say in the weeks to come?

 

Well, it looks like Arul Kanda could soon be due for his comeuppance. For his own sake, he should decide now to do the right thing.

 

 

* Kee Thuan Chye is the author of the current bestsellers Unbelievably Stupid! and Unbelievably Stupid Too!

Arul Kanda on IPIC : "actually, we were in default since December"

• Edge Weekly

1MDB's US$1b default could trigger cross default on its other debts, says Arul

By Tan Choe Choe / theedgemarkets.com   | April 23, 2016 : 12:11 PM MYT   

Translated by Google Translator: 

Select Language​▼

KUALA LUMPUR: If troubled 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) defaults on its US$1 billion loan from Abu Dhabi's IPIC, that could trigger cross defaults on the fund's other debts, including some bonds, according to the fund's president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy.

Though 1MDB has declared just four days ago that it is free of all its bank and short-term debts, it still has a RM5 billion sukuk with a government guarantee, another RM2.4 billion Bandar Malaysia sukuk, a RM800 million loan from the Social Security Organisation or Socso in short, and in his words, "the one that everyone is worried about", a US$3 billion bond the fund issued in 2013 to fund the Tun Razak Exchange development.

In an exclusive interview with The Edge Malaysia, published in the weekly's cover story for the week of April 25-May 1, a clearly frustrated Arul told the publication's Executive Editor Kathy Fong and Associate Editor Jose Barrock what had derailed the asset for debt settlement with IPIC, which he thought was a done deal and the final piece of the jigsaw to rescue 1MDB from its massive debt woes -- and what could happen next now with IPIC's declaration of default against 1MDB.

The binding term sheet 1MDB signed with IPIC in June 2015 got the cash-strapped 1MDB then the US$1 billion it needed to settle some immediate obligations, including a US$975 million syndicated loan led by Deutsche Bank AG.

There is one crucial item on the term sheet, which is that 1MDB has to transfer the amount that IPIC paid, the cash plus the interests — US$1.15 billion — by Dec 31, 2015, according to Arul. As such, he said: "actually, we were in default since December". But he questioned why IPIC waited until now to make the announcement.

"It should have been made immediately after the default as it’s a large amount. Why wait until April to say you don’t own Aabar BVI?" 

As to the US$3.5 billion worth of payments that 1MDB made to Aabar BVI (Aabar Investments PJS Ltd), the company with the near identical name to IPIC's subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS, Arul said: "What we cannot discount is there could actually be fraud...a massive fraud...and maybe there was collaboration from our side".

He also spoke about wanting to quit 1MDB, and how the issues at the fund was not his and "not what I signed up for". "I'm very tired. I'm doing over and above what I had signed up to do."

Pick up a copy of The Edge Malaysia today from newsstands near you to find out what could have caused the IPIC-1MDB deal to turn sour, why 1MDB thinks that IPIC holds corporate responsibility too for the US$3.5 billion that was diverted into Aabar BVI for not calling foul earlier if it hadn't received the monies, and more.

Also, read about what the publication has to say about whether 1MDB was cheated or if it was a party to the fraud.

P/S: Don't forget — The Edge Malaysia can also be downloaded from Apple's Newsstand and Androids' Google Play.

Arul Kanda : My Work is Done!

When I read about Arul Kanda's "my job is done" remark....it made me think of that day on 1 May 2003 on board the USS Abraham Lincoln when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq....and thirteen years later, the US of A is still there trying to "accomplish" that same mission started by Bush!

My job is done here, says 1MDB chief

KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 ― Former investment banker Arul Kanda took a job in Malaysia last year and walked into the crossfire of the country’s biggest political crisis since Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak came to power in 2009. Now,…

themalaymailonline.com

Arul Kanda Kandasamy only has to answer to PAC at it's proceedings.........anything else is a non-starter!

1MDB debate still on, we’ll name Pua’s replacement tomorrow, says Saifuddin

Pakatan Harapan has identified another leader to replace DAP’s Tony Pua for a proposed debate with 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) president Arul Kanda Kandasamy, its secretariat chief Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said.  

He said that the newly-formed opposition pact will continue pursuing the debate even though RTM had retracted its offer to telecast the debate live following Pua's withdrawal.
"We have a single name in our mind, we will name the person tomorrow," he said during a press conference at Parliament today.

The name will be proposed to the presidential council tonight, Saifuddin said.
"It's okay if RTM is not hosting it. We can pursue it with other platforms," he said.

Earlier today, Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak said RTM would no longer offer a live telecast for the debate after Pua's withdrawal.

steadyaku47 comment:

Come on lah Pakatan Harapan...give it a rest!  

You are beginning to sound like a broken record.

 

Tony Pua has already made a fool of himself. If Pakatan Harapan and Tony Pua does not believe that PAC can conduct itself in a manner that is open and above board then do not have any part in it. Ask your people in PAC to resign and then by all means go challenge Arul or anybody else to debate you re 1MDB. 

You cannot have your cake and eat it too. 

Do not blame anyone else but Tony Pua for this debacle. Any idiot with half a brain can work out for themselves that Tony Pua should resign first from PAC if he wants to debate the President of 1MDB over matters that PAC is currently in the process of investigating. 

Cut your losses....zip your lips.....extricate....disentangle....claw your way out....cut and run....run away....do any of these things....just do it before your face hit the ground and you lose more credibility with the electorates that you can afford to lose.     

Right now 1MDB's president, Arul Kanda Kandasamy, only has to answer to PAC at it's proceedings.........anything else is a non-starter! Kapish?

Quickies : Arul Kanda on the Ascendancy!

cakap cakap...of Tony Pua and Arul Kanda

I don't know about you guys but I am NOT sitting at the edge of my seat all agog with anticipation and expectations of what will transpire out of this Tony Pua vs Arul Kanda one on one, face to face, mano e mano debate/discussion/confrontation (delete whichever you think is appropriate) over 1MDB.

For me Arul Kanda is already ahead!

Possibly his political masters may have given him the nod or had push him into it. Maybe his own pride told him that this was something he simply must do if he is to salvage some credibility and somehow reestablish some semblance of authority to what ever is still left of his position as 1MDB Group Executive Editor and President - but the momentum favors Tony Pua. Arul's acceptance of this challenge puts him up front in the line of fire from not only Tony Pua but also from all those raring to vent their disgust and contempt at Najib and 1MDB.

Public perception does not favor Arul Kanda and he is indeed the underdog. He knows this and to agree to put himself up for an inquisition takes courage/supreme confidence/or ignorance of what is out there (again, cross out what you think is not appropriate).

I would think that as a committee  member of  the Public Accounts Committee it is incumbent upon Tony Pua to maintain an even keel re issues that committee is debating. By debating with Arul, what stance Tony intends to take, will surely indicate to everyone his opinion on 1MDB  before PAC has complete its investigations. I do not think that that is proper - just as you would not want any member of a jury, to have any opinion of the innocent or guilt of anyone on trial before them until all the evidence has been heard. 

So the only conclusion I can draw as to why Tony Pua insists on staying in PAC and still debate Arul is that this is too good an opportunity to pass for political point scoring against Najib. ...and in all seriousness Tony never expected for Arul and his political masters to allow for the confrontation to happen.

It is still not a done deal...the fat lady still has not sung....but whatever happens now the one that will finally decide who wins or lose are not even attending the debate.....yes Sir...you and me will have to make that decision hopefully, after watching it live on RTM. 

Until then let us amuse ourselves with a list of what we want Tony Pua to ask Arul and send that list to Tony Pua. Let me start with a few:

• Did 1MDB really pay for the $24 million apartment in Manhattan?
• How do I score an invite at the next party Jho Low throws for Paris Hilton?   
• Is there anything wrong with 1MDB? No really...is there anything wrong?

Do I really want those questions to be answered by Arul? 

Not really....Nasi sudah jadi bubur.  

We thought Bank Bumiputra, Halim Saat and those Highway shenanigans, Privatization, the purchase of the Scorpene Submarine, NFC, PKFZ and a slew of other financial scams and scandals had cost our country already way too money! Not so...the Umno gravy train is still running full tilt! 

No money was ever recovered nor any attempt made to have monies taken for all those scams and swindles from our national coffers to benefit politicians and their cronies to be returned to our national coffers!  The crooks get to keep the money!

Do you think the billions already flowing out as a result of what has happened in 1MDB to persons known and unknown will ever flow back into our national coffers? Bloody unlikely! And in the end this attempt to find out where all the billions have gone will end not with a bang but with a whimper.  

And then is on to the next money gouging act Umno will conjure out in the not to distant future.....our DPM Zahid, his brother and other cronies are already hard at work at bringing in those over a million Banglas into Malaysia! 

The ingenuity of Umno to make billions for their political elites is really a thing of wonder and damm if 1MDB will slow them down!