Spokesman Denies PM Took 1MDB Funds For Personal Use

Spokesman for prime minister responds to allegations appearing in WSJ that "almost US$700 million of 1MDB funds flowed into Najib’s personal accounts".

 

KUALA LUMPUR : A spokesman for Prime Minister Najib Razak has denied that the prime minister has taken funds said to have come through 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) for his personal use.

“The prime minister’s political opponents, unwilling to accept his record or the facts, continue to try to undermine him with baseless smears and rumours for pure political gain,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) quoted the spokesman as saying.

The response comes amidst suggestions that Malaysian investigators have traced deposits totalling nearly US$700 million to Najib’s personal bank accounts.

The report also claims that this was the first time that Najib has been directly connected to probes into 1MDB.

WSJ claims that the documents show that there were five separate deposits made from two sources.

“The largest transactions,” it claimed, “were two deposits of $620 million and $61 million in March 2013, during a heated election campaign in Malaysia.”

“The cash came from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) via a Swiss bank owned by an Abu Dhabi state fund,” the report read further.

It named the BVI company as Tanore Finance Corp.

The Abu Dhabi state fund referred to was identified as International Petroleum Investment Co. (IPIC), which injected US$1 billion in capital into 1MDB in May, allowing the latter company to meet looming debt repayments.

The original source of the money, however, remains unclear. Likewise, the investigations have not traced the use of the money after it entered Najib’s account, the report says.

“Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal include bank transfer forms and flow charts put together by government investigators that reflect their understanding of the path of the cash,” the WSJ report reads.

- PeneranganPemudaSEREMBAN -