MOTHER OF ALL BLACK HOLES: 1MDB and Malaysia's vanishing funds

Opening remarks by Master of Ceremonies:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the inaugural ceremony of the Malaysian IgNobel Awards.

Our lovely country Malaysia has been dreaming of a home-grown Nobel Prizewinner for so long. Committees have been mooted, Task Forces were tasked but so far, zero results. Very disappointing, I know.

We have so many top SPM and STPM scorers every year with strings of As but they all seemed to have disappeared with little trace. We have thousands of master’s theses and PhD dissertations as well.

Last year, we were so proud that 3 Malaysian academics made it to the Thomson Reuters World’s 3,200 Most Cited Researchers.

We hoped then that perhaps a brilliant scientist would emerge from the likes of UM, USM or UKM with revolutionary new insights “never before visualised” in the field of say, particle physics, molecular biology or astrophysics.

These are exciting times for astrophysics. Scientists are learning new things about the physics of black holes, for example.

Ladies and Gentlemen, do you wonder what black holes are? I see some guests looking mystified. Right, let me explain a little. A black hole is a region of space in which the matter is so compact that nothing can escape from it, not even light. Any light that passes into it is immediately absorbed and never comes out – it doesn’t get reflected away.

Thus we see Ladies and Gentlemen, the Nobel prizes for 2014 have already been awarded by the committee based at Stockholm. Despite our proud reputation of having World Class Universities as just recently announced by our second Minister of Education, I must tell you now that we do not have any ground-breaking research in hand. We are sadly, not in the running for any of the 2015 Nobel prizes. Our hopes of a Malaysian earning the Nobel Prize have ended somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, meaning they’ve disappeared without trace.

But there’s good news! A distinguished committee of citizens has now come forward to inaugurate the First Malaysian IgNobel Prize.

Now that the top echelon of Malaysian leaders, otherwise known as the cabinet, have asserted that they “found no wrongdoing committed” after briefings by well-known and trusted firms of international auditors, this proves without the slightest doubt that the daring audacity, scale of risky operations and sheer chutzpah of the enterprising young Malaysian financial scientists involved, has been amply rewarded after years of painstaking, patient fundamental research since 2008.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud and thrilled to announce tonight that the first winners of the inaugural 2015 Malaysian IgNobel Prize are that bold band of young Malaysian financial scientists – adventurers who conceived, created and executed the financial black hole otherwise known as 1 NDB!

Even today, after severe dynamic stress-testing by opposition politicians, envious bloggers and desperate international journalists, the original brilliant cutting-edge design has remained impervious to any scrutiny, and thus is a financial black hole of the highest order.

Our hearty congratulations!”

(Continuous applause punctuated with wolf-whistles)

Note:

1. This is a satirical work and all references to any actual person, alive or dead, are purely coincidental.

2. Definition of “Chutzpah” – of Yiddish origin

a. strong confidence in yourself so that you can say or do rude or shocking things without becoming ashamed or

b. unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity – TMI