I Googled on this subject and saw something FAMILIAR -- From 1mdb.com.my:~~~~
The Dodgy USD$700,000,000 Loan Deal At The Heart Of 1MDB’s Mega Debt Crisis
18 Feb 2015 – Sarawak Report has obtained exclusive access to a
copy of the controversial 1MDB Joint Venture Agreement, completed on
28th September 2009 between Malaysia’s so-called development fund, 1MDB
(One Malaysia Development Berhad) and the company PetroSaudi.
The 26 page document, which has till now been kept secret, was signed by 1MDB’s then Managing Director, Shahrol Halmi and PetroSaudi Managing Director, Tarek Obaid.
Despite
1MDB’s servers having been wiped before Christmas the copy was passed
to Sarawak Report by a concerned insider just days after opposition
leader Anwar Ibrahim was controversially jailed last week.
It at last enables concerned parties to scrutinise the true nature of this widely criticised deal, which was driven through by the Malaysian Prime Minister in his capacity as Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Board of Advisors to 1MDB.
What the document reveals is that the Prime Minister and his advisors at 1MDB (believed to include the playboy tycoon Jho Low) paid USD$1billion of borrowed public money into a venture that already carried a $700,000,000 debt in the form of a loan from PetroSaudi’s parent company to the subsidiary that was entering into the joint venture, PetroSaudi Holdings (Caymans) Limited.
Crucially, under the terms of the joint venture, agreed to by 1MDB, the Malaysian development fund had committed to pay back this whopping great loan to the parent company, PetroSaudi International, on day one of the joint venture!
CLICK HERE
We do so in defiance of the obsessive secrecy of the Malaysian Government, which ought to have made such documents transparent and available in its public accounts.
Last week we revealed that the fund has wiped all its computer records in a further apparent attempt to conceal its investment activities.
Drawn up in great legal detail by the UK based office of the international law firm White & Case, the key requirement for 1MDB to pay back the PetroSaudi loan is couched in subtle legal language.
However, careful scrutiny of the document makes it perfectly plain that these are the terms of the agreement, which Najib Razak entered into on behalf of 1MDB:
Opposition spokesman Tony Pua has campaigned for Malaysia’s Public Accounts Committee to be allowed full scrutiny of 1MDB’s affairs, which have proved a growing fiasco with current debts of over RM40billion.
He told Sarawak Report that any legal scrutiny of the Joint Venture document would have identified the debt burden and the requirement upon 1MDB to repay it:
“It is like you or me buying a house that has a great big loan of two thirds of its market value outstanding on the property. Who in their right mind would buy into such a deal?”, said Pua.
The up front debt payment to PetroSaudi’s parent company means that only $300,000,000 of the original $1billion paid into the venture by 1MDB would have been left available for activities by the fund.
The joint venture document also makes provision for a whopping further $5billion in future funding by 1MDB into the dodgy venture on “terms to be agreed”:
The little known oil company (which was based out of a shared office in Geneva at the time) had in fact paid zero cash into the deal, having apparently invested its so-called assets into the venture instead.
These assets consisted mainly of a proclaimed oil concession in the Caspian Sea, which was supposed to be worth over $2.5billion.
But, again, the suspicious secrecy surrounding the entire joint venture deal has made such claims impossible to prove.
Another falsehood promoted by Najib and 1MDB’s publicity machine at the time of the joint venture on 29th September 2009 was the suggestion that PetroSaudi was somehow officially connected to the State of Saudi Arabia.
Observers, including Sarawak Report, later proved that the company was in fact a private venture set up by a little-known Saudi businessman called Tarek Obaid and his pal, who happened to be one of the many princes of Saudi Arabia.
Prince Turki bin Abdullah has recently been relieved from his post as Governor of Riyadh, a position he only achieved after the PetroSaudi deal.
Since PM Najib Razak seems to have achieved such a shockingly poor deal for the Malaysian development fund in this its very first joint venture, many will be asking if it is time for him also to be relieved of his post?
Source: http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/02/the-dodgy-700000000m-loan-deal-at-the-heart-of-1mdbs-mega-debt-crisis-exclusive/
The 26 page document, which has till now been kept secret, was signed by 1MDB’s then Managing Director, Shahrol Halmi and PetroSaudi Managing Director, Tarek Obaid.
It at last enables concerned parties to scrutinise the true nature of this widely criticised deal, which was driven through by the Malaysian Prime Minister in his capacity as Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Board of Advisors to 1MDB.
What the document reveals is that the Prime Minister and his advisors at 1MDB (believed to include the playboy tycoon Jho Low) paid USD$1billion of borrowed public money into a venture that already carried a $700,000,000 debt in the form of a loan from PetroSaudi’s parent company to the subsidiary that was entering into the joint venture, PetroSaudi Holdings (Caymans) Limited.
Crucially, under the terms of the joint venture, agreed to by 1MDB, the Malaysian development fund had committed to pay back this whopping great loan to the parent company, PetroSaudi International, on day one of the joint venture!
Nothing more than a $700,000,000 scam?
Sarawak Report is now publishing the entire joint venture document, which has been kept secret till now, in full.CLICK HERE
We do so in defiance of the obsessive secrecy of the Malaysian Government, which ought to have made such documents transparent and available in its public accounts.
Last week we revealed that the fund has wiped all its computer records in a further apparent attempt to conceal its investment activities.
Drawn up in great legal detail by the UK based office of the international law firm White & Case, the key requirement for 1MDB to pay back the PetroSaudi loan is couched in subtle legal language.
However, careful scrutiny of the document makes it perfectly plain that these are the terms of the agreement, which Najib Razak entered into on behalf of 1MDB:
Opposition spokesman Tony Pua has campaigned for Malaysia’s Public Accounts Committee to be allowed full scrutiny of 1MDB’s affairs, which have proved a growing fiasco with current debts of over RM40billion.
He told Sarawak Report that any legal scrutiny of the Joint Venture document would have identified the debt burden and the requirement upon 1MDB to repay it:
“It is like you or me buying a house that has a great big loan of two thirds of its market value outstanding on the property. Who in their right mind would buy into such a deal?”, said Pua.
The up front debt payment to PetroSaudi’s parent company means that only $300,000,000 of the original $1billion paid into the venture by 1MDB would have been left available for activities by the fund.
The joint venture document also makes provision for a whopping further $5billion in future funding by 1MDB into the dodgy venture on “terms to be agreed”:
- Further Funding
- (a) The Shareholders intend to make further contributions to the Company in the form of cash and assets of up to a total amount of five billion US Dollars (USD5,000,000,000) at a level and on terms to be agreed by 1MDB and PSI in their respective Shareholding Proportions.
False claims boosted the image of private company PetroSaudi
Sarawak Report has already noted that the original claims by Najib and 1MDB, which implied that PetroSaudi was paying a further $1.5billion into the Joint Venture, were false:The little known oil company (which was based out of a shared office in Geneva at the time) had in fact paid zero cash into the deal, having apparently invested its so-called assets into the venture instead.
These assets consisted mainly of a proclaimed oil concession in the Caspian Sea, which was supposed to be worth over $2.5billion.
But, again, the suspicious secrecy surrounding the entire joint venture deal has made such claims impossible to prove.
No cash injection, only cash extraction
And, while Najib and the 1MDB press releases had falsely implied that there had been a cash injection from PetroSaudi, no mention has ever been publicly made till now of this cash extraction instead, of $700,000,000 on day one of the deal.Another falsehood promoted by Najib and 1MDB’s publicity machine at the time of the joint venture on 29th September 2009 was the suggestion that PetroSaudi was somehow officially connected to the State of Saudi Arabia.
Observers, including Sarawak Report, later proved that the company was in fact a private venture set up by a little-known Saudi businessman called Tarek Obaid and his pal, who happened to be one of the many princes of Saudi Arabia.
Prince Turki bin Abdullah has recently been relieved from his post as Governor of Riyadh, a position he only achieved after the PetroSaudi deal.
Since PM Najib Razak seems to have achieved such a shockingly poor deal for the Malaysian development fund in this its very first joint venture, many will be asking if it is time for him also to be relieved of his post?
Source: http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/02/the-dodgy-700000000m-loan-deal-at-the-heart-of-1mdbs-mega-debt-crisis-exclusive/
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DESIDERATA: PLease note that the HIGHLIGHTS in red or blue (4th & 5THestaters do that for EMPHASIS...) are all done by YL CHong, d newsdog, aka Desiderata the BLogger/BUMMer, YL, DEsi
*************************************************
SExt, from therakyatpost.com:~~~~~
1MDB never hid Jho Low’s early involvement but his involvement soon ended.
Sometimes, I am amazed how Sarawak Report and the Opposition can get so many people to believe the absolutely ridiculous story that the son of the absolute king of wealthy Saudi Arabia would collude with a foreign Malaysian Chinese man to cheat Malaysia of US$1 billion.
And true enough — 1MDB got back every single ringgit they invested and made as much as US$500 million (RM1.8 billion) from this joint venture in three short years — a fact that has been audited by two separate international audit firms KPMG and Deloitte over 4 years and shall be confirmed once again by our Auditor-General in their special audit — with full documentation and proof, too.
4dENtree, I guarantee you'd ENJOY IT!
CHOW!
which can mean,
Seya later
OR
Let's MAKAN!
*********************************
FROM dinmerican.wordpress.com, an academic/blogger resident in Cambodia:~~~
April 11, 2016
The details of the Joint venture (and payment to Good Star) were left out of the Audit through this accounting device. The point of this ‘sale share agreement’, say accountancy experts, was to hide the details of the joint venture (and the payment to Good Star) by superseding the arrangement – the manoeuvre was conducted just days before the end of the financial year.
DESIDERATA: PLease note that the HIGHLIGHTS in red or blue (4th & 5THestaters do that for EMPHASIS...) are all done by YL CHong, d newsdog, aka Desiderata the BLogger/BUMMer, YL, DEsi
*************************************************
SExt, from therakyatpost.com:~~~~~
Jho Low, Prince Turki and Najib photos: Sarawak Report confirms PetroSaudi-1MDB is a G2G joint venture
By:
LIM SIAN SEE
LIM SIAN SEE
This picture was published by 'Sarawak Report'.
Adjust Font Size:
Letters From The Rakyat
LETTER FROM THE RAKYAT
NO matter how handsome Jho Low is in this picture, don’t look at him first.
Focus your attention on the tall macho
guy right next to him. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is tall,
but this guy is even taller than him. Who is he?
Sarawak Report probably thought that by publishing pictures of Najib family together with Jho Low in August 2009 before the PetroSaudi-1MDB joint venture was signed will damage Najib’s reputation.
Actually, the reverse is true.
Today, Sarawak Report proves conclusively once and for all that PetroSaudi is owned by Prince Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud.
In fact, Sarawak Report itself wrote
the caption for picture as thus: “From left to right are Prince Turki,
the owner of PetroSaudi; Jho Low, the mastermind of the joint venture;
Prime Minister Najib Razak, the man in sole charge of 1MDB; his all
powerful wife Rosmah Mansor; the couple’s son, Nor Ashman; Tarek Obaid,
the Director of PetroSaudi and Rosmah’s favoured daughter, Nooryana
Najwa.”
Prince Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud (born Oct 21,1971) is a member of the House of Saud and the seventh son of late King Abdullah, the ruler of Saudi Arabia then.
He served as deputy governor of Riyadh Province
from 2013 to 2014 and as governor of Riyadh Province from May 14, 2014
to Jan 29, 2015.
PM Najib was introduced to Prince Turki by the
late King Abdullah and told by the late King to work with his son’s
company when Najib went on a four-day official visit to King Abdullah in July 2009 — one month before these pictures of Najib with Prince Turki were taken.
In this meeting, King Abdullah Abdulaziz Al
Saud had expressed the possibility of Saudi Arabia participating
actively in Malaysia in the Islamic banking sector, expanding
participation in the Islamic services and product manufacturing sectors
and also raising its equity in the country.
As for Jho Low’s involvement, everyone knows he helped found TIA and was appointed by the then Agong and Sultan Terengganu Tuanku Mizan.
Jho Low has long been known for his
relationship with the Mid East royal families — even before Najib became
PM — and also the reason why Tuanku Mizan asked him to set up TIA.
This fact was never denied and in fact, it was clearly stated in 1MDB’s own website here: http://www.1mdb.com.my/news-coverage/time-of-reckoning-for-1mdb
1MDB never hid Jho Low’s early involvement but his involvement soon ended.
Out of respect for the Sultan of Terengganu and
the then YDP Agong, who was the one who asked Jho Low to set up TIA
(which was then renamed 1MDB) and act as adviser — specialising in
Middle-East relationships which Jho Low was good at and had earlier
proven a success — way before TIA or 1MDB existed and way before Najib
became Prime Minister, 1MDB just did not want to publicise this fact
much due to sensitivities among some Malays.
However, as far as I know, Jho Low never had any formal position once
TIA became 1MDB nor was he paid any salary or was put on any formal
employment contracts or advisory positions.
PM Najib never said he does not know Jho Low.
It would be quite ridiculous for him to even say he doesn’t know Jho Low since Jho Low has been quite famous since 2007 and 2008 when he and his Middle East partners bought out two listed companies in Malaysia — Loh & Loh Bhd and also PutraJaya Perdana — and took a controlling shareholding in listed RM1.7b company UBG Group in 2008, even before 1MDB came into existence.
PM Najib never said he does not know Jho Low.
It would be quite ridiculous for him to even say he doesn’t know Jho Low since Jho Low has been quite famous since 2007 and 2008 when he and his Middle East partners bought out two listed companies in Malaysia — Loh & Loh Bhd and also PutraJaya Perdana — and took a controlling shareholding in listed RM1.7b company UBG Group in 2008, even before 1MDB came into existence.
This pic again proves that. Not sure what is Sarawak Report‘s purpose was to release this. It’s counter-productive to them.
After
meeting with Prince Turki and Najib, Prince Turki wrote officially on
his royal letterhead to PM Najib to proceed further with the joint
collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, in the guise of
PetroSaudi and 1MDB.
Prince Turki’s letter enclosed PetroSaudi’s CEO
letter addressed to PM Najib, too — which specifically mentioned the
meeting between Prince Turki, King Abdullah and Najib.
PetroSaudi has the full backing of the Saudi
Arabia government, as can be seen in this 2010 letter from their embassy
which states that this joint venture will improve the relationship
between both countries.
Petrosaudi’s own bank, Banque Saudi Fransi, also testifies to the ownership of PetroSaudi and their financial strength.
Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) (Arabic:
البنك السعودي الفرنسي) is a Saudi Joint Stock Company established by
Saudi Arabia Royal Decree No. M/23 dated June 4, 1977.
Saudi government-owned bank confirming Prince Turki and Tarek are owners of PetroSaudi and confirming their financial strength. |
Not long after this boat trip and photos, the 1MDB-PetroSaudi JV was thus set up.
And just 5 months after this boat trip and
photos, on Jan 20, 2010, PM Najib made another 4-days official trip to
Saudi Arabia where he was conferred Saudi Arabia’s highest owner, the King Abdulaziz Order of Merit (1st Class) by King Abdullah Abdulaziz Al-Saud.
“I consider this a manifestation of the close relations enjoyed between Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, and it symbolises a huge potential for us to cooperate in various fields, not only in the common interest of the two countries but also for the benefit of the larger Muslim community,” said Najib then.
Regardless of Jho Low’s presence in this
meeting, PM Najib did the right thing as he was asked by King Abdullah
to do business with his prince’s company as part of Saudi
Arabia-Malaysia collaboration, which is supported by the Royal Saudi
embassy and 1MDB got back all their money and made a decent profit
— above their cost of funds.
It would be quite ridiculous that PetroSaudi
owner, the future governor of Riyadh, Prince Turki, the seventh blood
son of the then King Abdullah — the custodian of the two holy mosques
and the absolute ruler of Saudi Arabia — would want to pakat (join) with Jho Low to cheat Malaysia of US$1 billion.
After all, Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest
oil producer and exporter with a GDP more than twice the size of
Malaysiaand forex reserves of US$280 billion.
Saudi Arabia and the royal family are not hard up for money at all.
Sometimes, I am amazed how Sarawak Report and the Opposition can get so many people to believe the absolutely ridiculous story that the son of the absolute king of wealthy Saudi Arabia would collude with a foreign Malaysian Chinese man to cheat Malaysia of US$1 billion.
And true enough — 1MDB got back every single ringgit they invested and made as much as US$500 million (RM1.8 billion) from this joint venture in three short years — a fact that has been audited by two separate international audit firms KPMG and Deloitte over 4 years and shall be confirmed once again by our Auditor-General in their special audit — with full documentation and proof, too.
By the way, thank you to Sarawak Report for helping
finally confirm in pictures (assuming not edited by Xavier Justo) that
this is indeed a true government-to-government deal. Banyak terima kasih.
LIM SIAN SEE
* This article first appeared on blogpost:
http://limsiansee.blogspot.com/2015/07/jho-low-prince-turki-and-najib-photos.html?m=1
DESIDERATA: I am adjourning for capitalist lunch, unsual during a weakday, for I'm a flexible SOcialist, at Tarot CAfe, please join me,
-- but bring thy AMEX along OK, knot LIngam! --
BE A GOOD BOY/GAL/inbtwin, meanwhile, surf
to donplaypuks.blogspot.com,DESIDERATA: I am adjourning for capitalist lunch, unsual during a weakday, for I'm a flexible SOcialist, at Tarot CAfe, please join me,
-- but bring thy AMEX along OK, knot LIngam! --
BE A GOOD BOY/GAL/inbtwin, meanwhile, surf
4dENtree, I guarantee you'd ENJOY IT!
CHOW!
which can mean,
Seya later
OR
Let's MAKAN!
*********************************
FROM dinmerican.wordpress.com, an academic/blogger resident in Cambodia:~~~
Guess who is running 1MDB
April 11, 2016
Guess who is running 1MDB
by Sarawak Report
The facts published by Malaysia’s Public
Accounts Committee have proved that the constant denials issued by Jho
Low, Najib Razak, Shahrol Halmi and their friends at PetroSaudi over the
past few months about 1MDB were repeated lies.
For example, Low has officially claimed
that he had no involvement in 1MDB beyond May 2009, when he allegedly
stepped down from his post as Najib’s official ‘Advisor’ to the fund.
In the same vein, Najib Razak has claimed
he performed a distant ‘advisory role’.So, setting aside all the
evidence of the emails from the PetroSaudi database, published by
Sarawak Report, which PetroSaudi have libellously accused us of
“tampering”, we now have the official report of the supreme
Parliamentary authority on the matter.
The PAC report has confirmed that Najib
was the sole shareholder and signatory for the fund – and now for the
first time Sarawak Report is able to publish the actual documents to
show the proof. These company records show that from start to finish,
Najib was signing off on resolutions, which the Prime Minister plainly
knew were riddled with lies.
Government to Government with ‘KSA’
Take, for example, the on-going fiction
that the PetroSaudi deal was a ‘government to government’ joint venture
with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Najib was still signing documents
alluding to this bogus claim as late as 2011, when he sent off yet
another whopping sum of US$125 million, borrowed by 1MDB, supposedly
again to PetroSaudi.
The fact that PetroSaudi had nothing to
do with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was merely a small private
company, in which the King’s seventh son had a 50% share, was plainly
known to Najib, since the beneficial owners had to be declared to the
banks (we have already shown the documents).
We also have emails from shareholder
Tarek Obaid’s brother warning that PetroSaudi must tone down Najib’s
proposed press release at the launch of the joint venture, to make sure
1MDB did not mislead the international press with claims of a
‘government to government’ venture.
Najib wanted to give a false impression
that the company was an official organ of the state and was involved in
minute detail in the drafting of the public announcements, according to
this evidence:
Ironically, PetroSaudi has been
threatening to sue journalists for suggesting that Prince Turki was even
a shareholder of the company (which he exited later in 2014). Surely
it ought to be suing Najib for claiming it was owned by the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia and indeed King Abdullah himself?
Jho Low phoned Najib during Board meeting to overrule 1MDB Chair
Meanwhile, in September 2009, Jho Low,
far from having quit, was attending board meetings of the fund and
calling the shots, most particularly at the crucial meeting of September
26, just two days before Najib and the executives from PetroSaudi
signed their joint venture deal.
Sarawak Report has learnt that the former
Chairman, Bakke Mohd Salleh (also Chief Executive, Sime Darby) was
particularly vocal and tough at this meeting, insisting that proper
checks should be made before a billion dollars were hastily invested in a
company, which the Board had not heard of until a week before.
In response, we have been reliably
informed, Jho Low dialled up the PM on his handphone, which he then
passed to board members, in order to be informed ‘from the top’ that the
deal was authorised to proceed! So, who do we conclude was running the
show?
The result was a reluctant concession by
the 1MDB board that the joint venture with PetroSaudi should be
approved, but only subject to conditions, such as a proper and
independent valuation of the company.
CEO Shahrol Halmi simply ignored those
conditions and sent off the money anyway (mostly to a third party
company, Good Star Limited, owned by Jho Low). His excuse? Section 117
of the articles of the company meant that the real boss was Najib, so
it was Najib whom he chose to obey!
Converting PetroSaudi JV to a ‘Muharaba loan deal’
Other documents accessed by Sarawak
Report show how Najib signed off on later major decisions. This
included changing the relationship with PetroSaudi from a joint venture
to a ‘Muharaba loan’ arrangement just six months later:
The details of the Joint venture (and payment to Good Star) were left out of the Audit through this accounting device. The point of this ‘sale share agreement’, say accountancy experts, was to hide the details of the joint venture (and the payment to Good Star) by superseding the arrangement – the manoeuvre was conducted just days before the end of the financial year.
Even so, auditors Ernst & Young were
not happy with the information that they had been passed by 1MDB it has
emerged. The Hansard notes of the PAC meetings and PAC report make
clear the frictions – the auditors having demanded to see the financial
statements of the joint venture company from September 2009 and also
documentary proof of the value of the assets of PetroSaudi, before
agreeing to sign off on the 2009/10 accounts.
1MDB failed to produce these basic
documents and, instead, the records show that Najib signed off on a
resolution to sack these pesky and demanding accountants, who were
wanting proof about the value of the PetroSaudi deal:
Who had signed off on this ‘investment’? Najib, of course:
As the driver of all these decisions,
through a series of changing CEOs and accountants, it is simply not
acceptable for him to attempt to blame anybody else or expect anybody
else to account for the money.
In late 2014 an attempt was made to imply
that this so-called US$2.23 billion had been ‘redeemed’ and returned as
‘cash’ to BSI Bank in Singapore, into an account managed by Jho Low’s
personal relationship manager Yak Chee Yiew. By March 2015 this ruse
had been exposed as a lie, because the Singapore authorities had
determined that there was no actual money in the account.
Yak was sacked and he has now been
followed into ‘retirement’ by his boss at the bank, Hanspeter Brunner.
The so-called Brazen Sky account in question has been frozen and is
under investigation.
In fact, the whole world of global
financial regulators is now avidly investigating 1MDB and tracing the
money trail of the missing billions, while Najib persists in alleging
that first nothing went wrong at 1MDB; second that no money has gone
missing and third that if something did perhaps go wrong it was owing to
1MDB executives, or Board Members or perhaps those Finance Department
officials whom he had banned from being involved in the company.
Power without accountability appears to be Najib’s favourite motto when it comes to 1MDB. – SARAWAK REPORT