Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has welcomed the apology issued by former prime minister Najib Razak over the 1MDB scandal.
“I welcome it (terima baik),” he told reporters here after Friday prayers when asked to comment on the apology issued by Najib yesterday.
Malaysian and US authorities allege that about US$4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB, a state fund co-founded by Najib. He has been slapped with a total of 42 charges in several trials linked to 1MDB.
Najib is currently serving a reduced six-year sentence following a pardon after he was convicted of misappropriating RM42 million in funds belonging to former 1MDB subsidiary SRC International.
Yesterday, he said he had reflected on the 1MDB fiasco over the past 26 months, and it pained him that it happened when he was the prime minister and finance minister.
“… and I would like to apologise unreservedly,” he said in a statement read out by his son, Nizar, at the lobby of the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex.
Najib also denied being the mastermind or collaborating with fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, in the scheme.
His apology came six days before the High Court decides whether he is to enter his defence in a 1MDB corruption case that started five years ago.
Forgiveness follows repentance in the normal course of things.
However, Najib has only admitted to guilt of being “too trusting” and to having been “misled”.
This won’t do and the facts defy it. His wilful and repeated refusals to believe only what he wanted to hear extended well beyond all that is taught about right and wrong.
From day one he listened to 24 year old Jho Low and refused to listen to the Chairman of the Board of 1MDB who called to warn him that the money had been removed against the orders of the directors. Later he refused to listen to the auditors KPMG who said they needed to look at the accounts in the normal way.
Both these entities. whom Najib knew he ought to have been listening to in order to avoid fraud at the fund, resigned in consequence (the latter he actually sacked for non-compliance with his demands they sign off on dodgy accounts) and Najib brought in flunkeys to replace them.
He then continued to attack all those who pointed out the escalating problems with 1MDB, threatening them with arrest and sacking his ministers and anti-corruption chiefs, whilst choosing to believe shifty types like Arul Kanda who claimed all was well till the roof fell in – even whilst Jho Low was already on the run.
Yet he actually did know pretty much everything, of course. We have all heard the tapes, recorded on July 16th 2016, just BEFORE the US Department of Justice published the entire money trail on 1MDB’s stolen billions, where Najib was pleading with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi to help him cover up that Riza had funded his films from 1MDB.
So, Najib knew, of course, that money had been stolen and it had gone to his own family. Yet, he continued to lie about it and to threaten, arrest, sack anyone who told the truth.
He is also ignoring the embarrassing reality that what he now HAS admitted to as his excuse for receiving a RM681 million payment into his personal account – that he thought it was a gift from the Saudi King to help him keep political power – was itself a crime. His government has criminalised foreign political donations. Yet, this is what he claims he thought the HUGE sum of money was.
In short, given Najib still only admits to being too trusting when he apologises, it is not an actual apology for what he did. It is merely another denial.
Had he been genuinely defrauded and at least at some point reported it then he would rightly have been thrown out of office as an ignoramus but would have had a genuine defence. But Najib brazened it out to the end, abusing his entrusted powers to threaten and destroy all who stood up for the truth. He did this well after the truth was out bringing Red Shirt gangsters onto the streets to wave sticks at those calling for a clean up.
Anwar therefore ought not to accept this apology that does not include an admission of guilt. There are plenty of thieves in Malaysia that would be relieved to hear they can say “sorry I didn’t realise” and be let off their sentence. None of them stole anything like what Najib did nor did half the damage.
(Moreover, it should be for the courts and not Anwar to decide whether Najib should answer for his crimes. And it is for the Agong to take the responsibility of issuing any pardon).