The shopping sprees alleged by The Wall Street Journal appear to match the dates in reports on Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor’s 2014 holiday in southern Europe.
The holiday followed Najib’s two-day working visit to The Netherlands to offer condolences and discuss the next course of action with his Dutch counterpart two weeks after MH17 was shot down in Ukraine in 2014.
Asia Sentinel had then reported that Najib and Rosmah extended their trip for a pre-planned European holiday which included stops in Paris, Sardinia, Cannes, Rome and London.
This matched Instagram posts by their son Norashman Najib, showing him at a beach. He used the hashtag #sardinia in an Aug 7 post.
WSJ reported that Rosmah had allegedly used a credit card to splurge EUR750,000 (RM3.3 million) on luxury items at De Grisogono, a Swiss-owned jewellery store, in Porto Cervo, a tiny Sardinian resort.
The same credit card was used four months later for the alleged US$130,625 (RM508,000) Chanel shopping spree in Hawaii in December 2014 - two days before Najib’s golf game with US president Barack Obama in Honolulu.
Najib had then come under fire for being abroad when parts of the country were hit by massive floods. The prime minister eventually cut short his trip when the flood situation escalated and returned on Dec 27.
Najib took a commercial flight to Hong Kong, where he was picked up by the Royal Malaysian Air Force, but the official jet – with Rosmah believed to be on board - was tracked flying from Hawaii, stopping in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, New York, London, Dubai and Bangkok before returning to Kuala Lumpur.
The Prime Minister’s Office subsequently explained the official jet had technical issues, stressing that it had a five-day layover in Indianapolis for maintenance from Dec 26 to Dec 31.
On Dec 26, the official jet was spotted in Los Angeles – the same city Norashman said he was at on Dec 28.
“So glad to be back here in LA!” he said on Instagram, hashtag #hollywoodhills.
According to WSJ, Noorashman received US$70,000 (RM272,000) from an account purported belonging to his father on July 4, 2014.
The prime minister’s son had then posted on Instagram that month that he was volunteering for the Kechara soup kitchen for the urban destitute.
Another of the expenditure items mentioned by WSJ was prefaced by a happier occasion - the engagement ceremony of Najib’s daughter Nooryana Najwa at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
The ceremony was on June 17, 2011, and 11 days later, US$56,000 (RM218,000) was spent at Kuala Lumpur luxury car trader Signature Exotic Cars.
Australia’s ABC has earlier reported that US$395,782.40 (RM1.5 million) was spent at the hotel, but no date was provided. -Mkini
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