Tired Arul squeaks

COMMENT 1MDB president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy is tired. And he wants out.

One could almost feel sorry for the fellow.

Obviously, he was recruited to turn around a loss-making company. Losses in the tens of billions of US dollars, at that.

But it is clear that he has discovered that the losses were due not to acceptable, correctable business mistakes, but to possible frauds involving colossal sums having been perpetrated.

And the unkindest cut of all for him is that the possible frauds were enabled by parties inside 1MDB.

“... maybe there was collaboration from our side,” he said when touching on the US$3.51 billion paid to Aabar Investments PJS Ltd, the impersonator of IPIC’s Aabar Investments PJS, during an interview with The Edge Malaysia weekly just days ago.

Of course, that word ‘maybe' was used only to make it all sound less accusatory, to cover his back. We can ignore it.

And, of course, we guessed a long time ago that parties inside 1MDB must have played a part in causing the losses. But it is nice to hear confirmation, even if indirect, from him.

Add to the presence of internal co-conspirators the fact that his boss is - ahem! - so lost in some unknown universe as to be oblivious of millions appearing in his bank accounts but knows very well how to spend the money, and the need for him (Arul) to explain the extraordinary happenstances, he must now be a nervous wreck. It is a wonder that the remaining hair on his block hasn’t dropped off.

Only early last week he has had to declare that 1MDB was free of all its bank and short-term debts.

That was not true.

The truth is that besides what many of us already know, 1MDB is also saddled with a RM5 billion sukuk with a government guarantee, RM2.4 billion Bandar Malaysia sukuk, an RM800 million loan from the Social Security Organisation (Socso), and a US$3 billion bond issued in 2013 to fund the Tun Razak Exchange development. You could correct that ‘development' to ‘non-development'.

And the truth is that 1MDB has, in fact, defaulted on its first payment of US$1.15 billion to IPIC (Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company) which payment was to be made by Dec 31 last year.

Outpoint - 1MDB has defaulted since Dec 31, 2015.

But where is 1MDB going to get the money to meet its obligations?

Edra Energy is gone. Sold at a loss, although we were supposed to believe that the sale had generated a profit.

Most of Bandar Malaysia has been sold. You know that. That leaves the tracts of land at the TRX, Pulau Indah and Penang.

But any further sale of plots in the TRX land may finally cause the Malays to suddenly see the light, to stop being forgiving, and to run amok.

And I don’t think that that anti-hysteria kit developed by Universiti Malaysia Pahang would help. Why, even Professor Dr Nor Zuraida Zainal, the president of the Malaysian Psychiatric Association, advised against using it. Besides, it ain’t cheap.

The Pulau Indah land is so minuscule that proceeds from its sale won’t make even a small, shallow dent in the mass of debts.

The Penang land has problems that make a sale unlikely. Even if it does get sold, it is unlikely to fetch even more than RM2 billion. That’s only a fraction of what is owed.

Furthermore, the Public Accounts Committee has determined that some US$7 billion has disappeared.

Not a pretty financial picture

While Husni Units (named by me after Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah) do seem now to have floated away from the Caymans and dissipated in the ether. They cannot be recovered. But even if they can be, they are valueless.

Not a pretty financial picture you have there, is it?

The whole scenario is even uglier when you consider the following -

• Malaysia’s attorney-general, Apandi Ali, is not too excited to investigate and prosecute;
• The Public Accounts Committee chairperson, Hasan Arifin, is more interested to cari makan than to cari evidence;
• The auditor-general prefers to protect his report with the Official Secrets Act; and
• The central bank is, to put it nicely, powerless to do what is necessary.

As if all that is not enough, you have ministers like Salleh Said Keruak, Azalina Othman Said, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar, and Ali Rustam believing their fairy tales.

Like their boss, who is also Arul’s boss, they are suffering from a mental affliction termed in psychiatry as ‘bizarre delusion’.

Simply put, bizarre delusion is an affliction where the patient believes in something or some things that are simply implausible to entertain himself - and hope others will also be diverted from reality and be gratified.

You, ordinary Malaysians, have to get rid of all these people, or else you even won’t have any makan to cari, at all.

As for you, Arul Kanda Kandasamy, it is best that you quickly, quietly remove yourself to, and disappear in, the end of this earth, or else you might just find yourself sleeping permanently in a concrete-filled oil barrel - if you are not C4-ed, that is.

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ODIN TAJUE is a regular Malaysiakini commenter. -Mkini