1MDB: We’ll only arrest if wrongdoing found, IGP says

Joint task force between police and MACC presently identifying areas of focus.

KUALA LUMPUR: Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar today sought to justify why no arrests have been made in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal despite heightened public outcry over the debt-ridden sovereign company’s perceived mismanagement.

“In the case of commercial crime, we don’t arrest first and then investigate,” Khalid told reporters, according to the Malay Mail. “We investigate first, and if there is any wrongdoing then only we arrest and the task force will take action.”

He said that the police was working together with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission on the matter, adding that a special joint task force set for the purpose was presently scrutinising the areas of focus for the investigation.

His statement comes amidst suggestions by the Sarawak Report alleging that Jho Low was in the country last weekend and asking why he had not been arrested.

The whistleblower website has constantly linked Jho Low with transactions involving the 1MDB group and has attempted to suggest that various transactions which involved 1MDB funds ended up in the hands of companies which it said were linked to Low.

“[N]o one has dared to deny (that) USD$1.19 billion at least of 1MDB’s investment money was siphoned out of the fund directly into a company account controlled by Jho Low in Switzerland,” the Sarawak Report claimed in a post yesterday,

However, in a televised interview last night, Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah did actually issue a denial, claiming that the sum transferred by 1MDB’s PetroSaudi joint venture entity to Good Star Limited, which the Sarawak Report has repeatedly linked to Low, was USD700 million.

He also dismissed as irrelevant Low’s link with Good Star, claiming that the payment had been made at the request of PetroSaudi.

Sarawak Report has also previously sought to link the purported transfers of USD529 million which took place between June 2011 and September 2013 from Good Star to the Singapore bank accounts of other entities said to be linked to Jho Low at BSI Bank in Singapore.

The trans-boundary nature of these transactions raises the question as to whether these are offences for which criminal proceedings may be commenced in Malaysia in the first place.