My role in The Siege Within, the political ‘whodunnit’ on 1MDB

 

From William de Cruz

A high-roller and a journalist walk into a restaurant. It’s not funny. It’s December 2009, the player is soon to become an international fugitive, wanted in the US and Malaysia for his role in 1MDB.

According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), it is the biggest financial scandal ever, billions have been laundered across US borders in a trail that engulfs banks, financial institutions and governments.

Though they have not met, the journalist recognises the player who has walked into Vineria, an Italian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.

It’s Low Taek Jho, who’s feted the likes of Paris Hilton and Australian actress Miranda Kerr, showering them with diamonds and at least one Porsche.

He has rubbed shoulders with sheikhs and sultans, and can call in a favour worth hundreds of millions as easily as you might summon an Uber outside of rush-hour.

Jho Low, as he is known, is dressed down, like the wealthy and well connected often do, in dark sweatpants and a Real Madrid soccer club jersey.

The journalist walks up to Low, offers a handshake in greeting and says: “Jho Low, my name is Leslie Lopez and it would be in your interest to talk to me.”

Leslie picked me as his editor for The Siege Within, and work began about three-and-a-half years ago. He had already decided to write his book. He knew his trajectory, the story he wanted to tell, what he wanted from an editor.

I understood my role, and we agreed there would be only one writing stipulation – no honorifics, including those often used by recipients of state or federal awards; the only exceptions being Malaysia’s sultans, the Agong and other monarchs. Otherwise, we chose to take it as it comes.

The Siege Within was written and edited on a shared and secure online platform. At my end, no one saw the contents of each chapter in his emails to me, less than a handful knew such a book was taking shape.

The flurry started. This was to be my first stab at being a book editor. The realisation washed over me like nothing else in my career. I was hooked, eager for the next chapter that had not arrived yesterday.

He gave me advance notice of work, I did my best to clear the days ahead, so I could respond with my edits as quickly as I could.

Long phone conversations between Petaling Jaya, where he lives, and Sydney, where I am, focussed on the nitty-gritty of writing, editing. Face-to-face in his Petaling Jaya home, it was another matter, and Leslie would often wrestle with the back-story, what had led him to the decision to write and why. And, after all, of course: “What would people say?”

He compared news reporting and analyses with writing a book. “Every time I submit a report for publication, I worry. Have I got it right? Everybody remembers a mistake and it’s my reputation as a journalist that’s on the line with each story.

“This is a whole book. Of course, I am worried. But I also know I just have to do it. Nobody else has all this, and I can’t take it with me.”

One of his biggest hurdles was pinning down the end, because there was so much to tell, and prisoner Najib Razak, the former prime minister (PM) who was jailed because of 1MDB, was firing up controversy after controversy through his legal team simultaneously as Leslie worked to finish his book.

He was unsure if the 2018 election results, which ousted Najib, was a fitting end. And Leslie would also not allow a prisoner’s antics to dictate The Siege Within.

As it turned out, when he had depicted a scene on the Subang airport tarmac, that was it. The Siege Within had been captured and framed.

Like many others in my home country, I have followed 1MDB closely, not least because the theft of billions had piqued the DoJ enough for it to embark on a large-scale, cross-border investigation, and that a state-controlled country like Malaysia had thrown a former PM into jail.

And yet, every chapter was a revelation to me, the book a motherlode of shocking details, much of it hidden in plain sight until this exposé.

Leslie’s encyclopaedic mastery of the details in his book was always the best confirmation of all when I spoke with him as editor to iron out in my head this fact, that allegation or these games.

It may be the case that the DoJ is pleased, now that the so-called mastermind, Low, is surrendering assets linked to an estimated US$4.5 billion chest of plunder he helped funnel into bank accounts of people who had no right to the said money.

Najib, who set up and led 1MDB as a sovereign fund, is serving jail-time.

Yes, his wife has returned boxes of luxury Hermes Birkin handbags, more than 400 watches, tiaras and loads of hard cash. Appropriate heads may be said to have rolled.

For the Malaysian journalist I worked with, however, “the dream that Malaysians were sold after Najib’s ouster was stolen again”.

And there it was, for me, Leslie’s motivation. It isn’t anti-Najib. It’s not pro-Anwar Ibrahim, twice jailed by the administrations of two former PMs, Najib being one, Dr Mahathir Mohamed the infamous other.

The Siege Within is simply pro-Malaysian. It is Leslie on a mission for Malaysia, borne on another dream lost.

At 61, after about 40 years of journalism, Leslie concluded the devils in the details he had kept to himself for more than a decade could only be weighed in the court of public opinion. “I have to put it out there,” he told me. “Let Malaysians decide and be the judge.”

His notebooks – he reportedly never leaves home without one in his back pocket – said there was so much more to the story; that Najib was also a pin-up, poster-prisoner whose real crime was going further than his predecessors; that Low was only one enabler among the people who had helped Najib amass his illegal fortune.

Caught in the spotlight of The Siege Within are powerful men and women in Malaysia.

The Siege Within is not about a fallen PM. Leslie’s book has widened the focus beyond Najib and his cohorts, exposing how 1MDB was weaponised by the political elite to bring down a PM and save Umno, the party he led until Malaysians voted him out six years ago. Having accomplished their mission, The Siege Within says, they launched a campaign to hide what really happened in ground zero of the scandal.

Leslie told me he was conflicted about publishing his book, not because of the trouble he might land himself in, but because “as far as everybody else is concerned, what more is there to say about 1MDB?”

“And I am loathe to be seen as full of self-importance.”

How did such huge amounts of money leave the country without red flags being raised? Media bigwigs, a blogger and billionaires are cast in a political whodunnit set in Malaysia that rings with unwavering authenticity.

It remains to be seen if The Siege Within renews official debate on 1MDB, long muddied by selective reporting and cover-ups by people in high places who were complicit in the scandal that robbed Malaysian taxpayers of billions.

Leslie himself has recently said, in an interview about the book in The Diplomat, that the current administration has to accept there is too much power concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office, and that the extent of such unchallenged control was what allowed Najib to commit and cover up the crime of 1MDB in the first place. Malaysia, he says, also has to look deep into public accountability by all its institutions.

Any and all of this may be a big ask in contemporary Malaysia. For now, the Malaysian on the street will likely say it’s enough that a book such as The Siege Within is out there, freely available, exposing as it does a series of shocking political scandals.

Leslie has served Malaysian public interest by writing this book. It was an honour to walk with him on his journey. - FMT

William de Cruz is a former journalist in Malaysia who now pursues music and writing in Sydney. He is an avid FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.