Malaysians owe the Deputy Home Minister, Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar a debt of eternal gratitude for he has resolved a mystery which had vexed thinking Malaysians for a week – the allegations of about 1MDB “tampered emails” which surfaced after the arrest of Swiss national and former PetroSaudi International (PSI) IT executive, Xavier Andre Justo at a house in Koh Samui, Thailand the previous Monday (June 22).
Type in “1MDB tampered email” in Google search and there will be scores of news report about the allegations about “tampered emails” associated with the 1MDB scandal – all a week-old vintage after Justo’s arrest.
For months and years since the surfacing of the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, nobody had ever raised the issue of “tampered emails”.
Even after shocking expose four months ago when the whistleblower website Sarawak Report in its article “Heist of the Century” of Feb. 28 announced that together with London Sunday Times, they have completed an in-depth investigation into “thousands of documents and emails” relating to the transactions by 1MDB, including its initial joint venture with the little-known oil company PetroSaudi International from 2009, nobody had breathed a word about “tampered emails”.
Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar
Even the police report lodged in the United Kingdom at the London Police’s National Fraud and Cyber Crime Report Centre by PSI on March 1 was not about “tampered emails” but about confidential emails and servers had been hacked into and the contents made public.
Why did the issue of “tampered emails” burst into the public domain and only after the arrest of Justo, but only in Malaysia but not elsewhere in the world and not even in Thailand where Justo was arrested for blackmail – with one Minister after another assuming that it is Gospel truth and threatening action against the media and all and sundry who spoke up on the 1MDB scandal?
The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi even volunteered to “extradite” to Thailand the “several Malaysians” allegedly implicated by Justo for having asked him to manipulate the leaked information as if this was revealed during his interrogation by Thai police – when Thai police had never mentioned “tampered emails” or indicated they want any Malaysian extradited!
I would have thought that Zahid should be asking the Thai police to “extradite” Justo to Malaysia if Justo had committed any crime under the country’s jurisdiction instead of offering to extradite Malaysians to Thailand.
Mystery deepens when the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said Malaysian police wants to question Justo.
If Justo is arrested in Thailand by Thai Police for alleged blackmail of his former company, what has this got to do with the Malaysian Police?
Or is the Police finding opportunities to question Justo on alleged “tampered emails” which the Thai police are not interested at all, so as to justify all the recent Ministerial hullaballoo over 1MDB “tampered emails”?
In any event, the IQ of Malaysia’s Ministers do not seem to be high enough for them to understand that there could be no blackmail unless the emails referred to are true and genuine, as there could be no blackmail if the emails had been “tampered” or doctored - and any such “blackmail” could be simply foiled by denying their truth or veracity.
All these mysteries were resolved when the Deputy Home Minister,
Wan Junaidi, in a moment of exceptional candour, admitted that the government has no evidence of any PSI “tampered email” in connection with the 1MDB scandal.
Wan Junaidi said the government came to the conclusion that Justo tampered with the emails and documents relating to 1MDB based on "logical assumption".
"It's very simple, the person arrested was Xavier and the documents seems to be from him.
"So, we cannot assume anything else than he had tampered with the documents.
"Everything we said here and do were based on logical assumption, on how the things could have happened.”
No need for facts or evidence, or even collaboration from the Thai Police about the outcome of their interrogation of Justo!
All that the Malaysian Ministers need to do is to make the “logical assumption” from thin air that there had been “tampered emails”.
Thank God Junaidi and the Ministers whose “logical assumptions” allow them to discover “tampered emails” from thin air are not the running the Police Force, or as there would be utter chaos in Malaysia when the administration of justice is no more based on facts and evidence, but “logical assumptions” of low IQ Malaysians.
The whistleblower website Sarawak has demanded that Protection Group International (PGI) confirm if they were quoted accurately by Malaysia's press, in particular New Straits Times, with regard to “tampered email” allegations.
PGI has responded by saying they cannot say whether or not they made these statements to the NST without getting permission from PetroSaudi International, who are themselves under several investigations regarding the disappearance of millions of ringgit from 1MDB.
Sarawak Report questions how is the Malaysian government to rely on alleged statements from PGI, when the firm is not prepared to confirm whether or not they made them without permission from this interested party.
I urge the Prime Minister and Malaysian Ministers to respond in a calm, collected and responsible manner to the many developments and exposes relating to the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, as it is bad enough to have the nations’ worst financial scandal without Cabinet Ministers repeatedly shaming the country with foolish and stupid responses, landing with the Prime Minister and the Ministers with eggs all over their faces.
Lim Kit Siang is DAP Adviser
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