Kit Siang offers to help Najib clear his name over RM2.6b

Lim Kit Siang has offered to take over from Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's propaganda team to help put an end to what the latter claim is a lie that the RM2.6 billion originated from 1MDB.

This was in response to BN leaders insisting that Dr Mahathir Mahathir apologise to Najib after Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said the sum was a donation.

"It confirmed that Najib has a most dim-witted team of strategists, lacking nimbleness of wit and mind or the ability to improvise on-the-run, but continuing to expect Umno/BN ministers, leaders and MPs to follow a script which had already been discredited and should have been chucked into the garbage can.

"Najib may have among the world’s highest-paid professionals in his propaganda and psychological warfare team, but what could they produce when they are headed by loud-mouthed and low-IQ czars for strategic media communications?" said Lim in a statement.

The DAP leader said he was prepared to help Najib to nail such a "lie" once and for all if the prime minister can first prove to him that the RM2.6 billion was indeed not from 1MDB.

This would require the prime minister to dispel the narrative of the 1MDB and Abu Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) dispute.

In the dispute, 1MDB, instead of paying IPIC's subsidiary Aabar Investment PJS US$3.5 billion, sent the money to a phoney company bearing a similar name in the British Virgin Islands that was unrelated to the Abu Dhabi fund.

Part of this money was subsequently transferred to Tanore Finance Corporation, the same entity that deposited US$681 million (RM2.6 billion) into Najib's personal bank accounts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Surely, it should not be a herculean task for Najib to prove that the narrative about the payment of RM2.6 billion of 1MDB money from shell company Tanore Finance Corp or all in, more than RM4.2 billion deposited into his personal banking accounts were false and untrue," said Lim.

Najib has repeatedly denied abusing public funds for personal gains, and blamed such allegations on Mahathir and those conspiring to topple him from power. -Mkini