Singapore’s main English daily, the government owned Straits Times, reported on Friday 28 April 2017:
According to senior financial and legal executives, the main hurdle was fund units amounting to US$2.43 billion (S$3.4 billion) held by two 1MDB subsidiaries, Brazen Sky and 1MDB Global Investments, that were guaranteed by IPIC subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS. Aabar had disputed the guarantee.
To overcome the hurdle, 1MDB agreed to waive its right to claim from Aabar the US$2.43 billion guarantee. In return, Abu Dhabi arranged for an undisclosed entity domiciled in the Seychelles to buy the units from 1MDB at the guaranteed value, to be settled by deferred payments from this month to October 2022, said a senior financial executive familiar with the matter.
The transaction highlighted above implies that IPIC is involved in a round robin transaction where it is in effect paying itself. Worse, the transaction will be booked at the guaranteed value , even after the guarantee is waived. This is clearly a sham transaction.
This new Straits Times revelation adds to the issues of illegality that taint the IPIC-1MDB settlement (see story below),and in fact shows IPIC itself to be directly involved in a new transaction in which the implication of money laundering is hard to avoid.
In addition , given IPIC’s reporting obligations to the London Stock Exchange and its own bondholders pursuant to its GMTN debt programme, the ST story shows IPIC to be guilty of concealing material information from the market.
The London Court Of International Arbitration (LCIA) is being asked to hand down a consent award that will encompass this and all the other transactions currently under investigation by the US Department Of Justice and the FBI, who the Malaysian Government has made no secret they expect will be defeated by the LCIA consent award.
The likelihood that the consent award will be denied to illegality gets ever more likely.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.