Xavier Andre Justo appears before the media yesterday after being arrested for allegedly leaking information about PetroSaudi International. – Royal Thai Police pic, June 24, 2015.
The 49-year-old Xavier Andre Justo was arrested at a house on Koh Samui this Monday with computers, hard drives and other data storage devices, The Bangkok Post quoted police as saying.
Justo demanded 90 million baht (RM9.9 million) from the company in exchange for not disclosing confidential information to rival companies, said Police Colonel Akaradech Pimonsri, acting commander of the Crime Suppression Division.
He denied the allegations, police said.
Justo worked for PetroSaudi, but was paid an equivalent of 140 million baht (RM15 million)to leave the company after he was found to have "behaved against the company's rules and regulations", added Pol Col Akaradech.
The Saudi energy company is a partner in 1MDB, the Malaysian strategic investor which has racked up debts of RM42 billion, and is now being restructured into three companies as part of a rationalisation effort to get rid of its debts.
The Bangkok Post said Thai police believed Justo leaked information about PetroSaudi to a "UK-based news website" which the paper identified as the London-based Sarawak Report.
Citing Malaysian sources, the paper said the leaks and reports by the website was "part of a plot to discredit" Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is also finance minister and chairman of 1MDB's advisory board.
Among these reports mentioned was one on PetroSaudi's joint venture deal with 1MDB, initiated by businessman Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, in September 2009, soon after 1MDB was federalised.
In that deal, Low allegedly siphoned off US$700 million from the joint venture to a company he controlled.
The Bangkok Post noted that PetroSaudi had denied the report while 1MDB had denied links with Low. The Penang-born Low has also maintained that he did nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, Sarawak Report in an open letter to the Swiss Foreign Ministry on its website expressed concern about Justo's arrest and treatment in detention, but did not confirm or deny the claim made by Thai police that the Swiss national had been supplying information to its website.
"I strongly believe that this Swiss national is being made subject to revenge and harassment regarding a matter over which the Thai courts have no valid jurisdiction," Sarawak Report's editor Clare Rewcastle Brown wrote.
She said prior to this, she had already tried to present details of PetroSaudi's "fraudulent activities" with regards to 1MDB to Swiss prosecutors but was told then that the evidence furnished was not enough to proceed with enquiries.
Brown now claimed to have "some three million emails detailing this crime, in which PetroSaudi International was an engaged party" and urged the Swiss authorities to investigate the matter.
"PetroSaudi International have now effectively acknowledged that this material from their servers is authentic, by accusing this former employee of having stolen it," she wrote.
PetroSaudi in a statement last night said it was relieved with Justo's arrest and that the company had been "victims of a regrettable crime that has unfortunately been politicised in Malaysia".
"We are happy to finally set the record straight and we apologise to the Malaysian people for the harm that one of our unscrupulous ex-employees has caused to them," the statement said.
1MDB meanwhile is investigated by the Public Accounts Committee, the police and the anti-graft commission, the central bank and the auditor-general.
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