If The US Really Wants To Put Najib On Trial, There’s No Escape

Going by the number of people who rejoice at the news that a U.S. federal grand jury is examining allegations of corruption involving the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and people close to him, presumably his stepson Riza Aziz and partner-in-crime Jho Low; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how much the public despise their leader.

While it’s not easy to “invite” Najib to the United States to face trial, the same cannot be said about his stepson Riza Aziz and bag-carrier Jho Low. It’s unknown if Riza holds other citizenships besides Malaysian’s but Jho Low (real name Taek Jho Low) holds not one but two American passports. Although Jho Low is believed to be hiding in Taiwan, its still isn’t safe.

Although the Justice Department investigation is still in its early days, and it could take years to determine if any federal laws were broken, the damage to Najib Razak has already been done, internationally. In case Mr Najib hasn’t figured it out, the President of the United States is not the most powerful person. The US media can make or break their president.

According to the New York Times, both Riza Aziz and school pal Jho Low are being investigated on their US$150 million collection of luxury residential properties. The Swiss authorities had frozen several individuals’ bank accounts amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the frozen accounts belongs to Larry Low Hock Peng, Jho Low’s father.

The US DOJ is also investigating a US$681 million payment made to what is believed to be Mr. Najib’s personal bank account. Since the US$681 million payment was routed through Wells Fargo, an American bank, the DOJ has jurisdiction because the questionable payment used a United States financial system.

The scandal is being investigated under the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Initiative, which allows the US government to seize properties in the country. Naturally, Riza Aziz and Jho Low would be grilled by the US authorities as to the source of their funds. The present perception is Najib has siphoned money from 1MDB to fund his stepson’s luxury properties’ purchase.

Since neither Riza Aziz nor Jho Low enjoys any kind of diplomatic immunity, they would be easy meat for the DOJ. It’s likely that both individuals won’t expose Najib’s name and choose to spend some quiet years in US prison, if they ever found to have funded their shopping spree with money derived from corruption or money laundering activities.

As for Najib Razak, it’s not easy for golfing buddy President Obama to scratch his back. It would be too obvious if suddenly the DOJ drops all the investigations against Mr Najib. News media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and whatnot are not beholden to Obama. In fact, there’re thousands of newspapers in the US for Obama to control or for Najib to bribe.

If the US government wanted to, they can do another “invasion of Panama”on Najib Razak. They can fly their men from their Singapore military base into Najib’s bedroom, arrest him and fly him back to Singapore before transporting the pink lips to the United States. But this will be overkill and too extreme,unless there’re Americans being killed under his administration.

After he single-handedly sacked the Attorney General Gani Patail before an arrest warrant could be officially issued, PM Najib cannot be arrested in Malaysia. But can he be arrested once he stepped out of the country? The short answer is no because he enjoys diplomatic immunity. He can even openly rape and murder anybody he likes and still get away with it.

However, there’re many way to skin a pussy cat. It’s rare but the US government can deny Najib Razak a A-1 (diplomatic) visa as head of state.Without this visa, diplomatic immunity is not applicable to Najib anymore. But only President Obama can exercise his authority to deny a visa to Najib if he deems that would be detrimental to the American interest.

How about Interpol? Well, if Najib Razak is on Interpol’s Red List or Notice, the first thing that he will notice is the closure of his bank accounts in 188 member nations including China, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and whatnot. Essentially, that would mean he will not be able to access any money that he might have hidden in foreign financial institutions.

That’s why the Malaysian police, largely seen as the running dog of Najib administration, are super anxious to know if their boss would be slapped with an Interpol’s Red Notice. Even if the US grand jury has started its investigation, that doesn’t mean the FBI or DOJ must share their information with local police, knowing how the police serve their political master.

So, can Interpol arrests Najib Razak? Really, it depends on how much President Obama missed his golfing buddy (*kidding*). If the US really wants its toy, there’s no escape for Najib, Riza Aziz, Jho Low and other scumbags – diplomatic immunity or not. For all you know, Obama could be using the investigation to scare the shit out of Najib so that he obediently signs the 12-nation TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement.

If somehow Najib steps onto US soils, for example Hawaii, an Interpol special agent can conveniently arrests Najib without giving a damn to the prime minister’s diplomatic immunity. And he can’t do a shit about it because Interpol enjoy immunity from American law, thanks to Obama’s Executive Order 12425 which grants full diplomatic immunity to Interpol.

Among others, the Executive Order says the Interpol will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States. So, Najib better prays the allegations against him using US financial system in money laundering and corruption are not true.

That’s why I said it was really stupid for PM Najib to play racial card through his recently sponsored Red Shirts rally. Mahathir was actually hoping and praying for racial riots to happen because when it does, foreigners including Americans and Chinese could be slaughtered as part of collateral damage.

The more Americans get slaughtered the better and easier for the opposition and US government to justify that Najib Razak is the enemy of the United States. And with thousands of Chinese expatriates living in the city, whom are indistinguishable from the local ethnic-Chinese, it would be too late before Najib’s sponsored Malays realised they have chopped the wrong Chinese. -financetwitter