Press reports from Malaysia show that an event with this pretentious title is being held in Kuala Lumpur. The World Bank, no less, is apparently represented at this Forum by its Senior Vice President, no less, one Dr. Paul Romer.

Admittedly Washington is a long way from Kuala Lumpur but the US Department of Justice Report on the 1MDB scandal and series of crimes was issued in the former. So one would expect that the World Bank would be aware of that scandal and the intimate involvement in it of the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

That, however, does not seem to have deterred the Bank from officially attending this forum nor Dr. Romer from public association with the criminal Najib Razak. It is beyond the possible that the World Bank is unaware of the position and yet it is officially represented, and at a very high level, at this “Forum”

Are the Malaysian public to take this as evidence that the World Bank takes no heed of the US Department of Justice? Or that World Bank funding can go to any criminal government that solicits it? Or that the Bank are living in another and nicer world?

While it is right and proper that the Bank should support development in the Third World how can it be right to support, even by association, let alone financially, a blatant criminal like Najib Razak? Would they lend money to Mugabe? If not why to Najib?