Thursday, August 6, 2015

On the matter of the US$ 681 million donation to Prime Minister Najib Razak: Sender did not describe payment as a donation

by Ganesh Sahathevan
The Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said that  someone has sent him a donation of US$ 681 million, via Wells Fargo Bank of New York, using a BVI company (since liquidated) called Tanore Finance. That company was a client of Falcon Private Bank Of Singapore, which was the ordering institution for that wire transfer.

The Wall Street Journal which broke the story of that massive "donation" has placed on-line the relevant documents.

Readers are referred to pages 2 and 3 of the documents,and to the items marked 70-Remittance Information.
Curiously the transfers  (the sum total was paid in two amounts)  are  described as  "Payment" and not " Donation".
This is not a matter of mere semantics.In these days of heightened controls on the transfer of funds, given the fear of terrorist financing, descriptions are important , even for very small sums. In this case where that large amount of money was being transferred to an individual the description becomes even more important.


Readers may also be interested in item 71A Details o Charges
 "SHA" means charges are shared and it is again curious that such a generous donor would want the recipient to share in the charges for the transfer.
A PDF copy of the documents may be sighted at :
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2158723/1mdb-documents.pdf

END

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