In 2016 this writer noted that the promise of a RM 120 million reward from the US SEC makes AMBank and ANZ boards vulnerable to whistle blowers, with regards transactions involving 1MDB, AMBank and Goldman Sachs.
Given the potential reward AMBank insiders might be interested in the reward earned by an insider in Brazil:
Former Brazil Surgeon Turned SEC Whistleblower Gets $4.5 MillionBy Benjamin BainMay 25, 2019, 4:59 AM GMT+10
A former Brazilian surgeon who blew the whistle on a medical device company that allegedly bribed doctors to win business will get a $4.5 million award from U.S. regulators, according to his lawyers.
The surgeon will get the money for playing a crucial role in helping the Securities and Exchange Commission uncover a bribery scandal at Biomet Inc. that spanned the globe, his attorneys Christopher Connors and Andy Rickman said in a Friday statement that didn’t identify the doctor by name.
"Today’s award will spur many would-be foreign whistleblowers to come forward now that they know that the SEC is committed to rewarding whistleblowers” for tips tied to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act anti-bribery law, said Connors and Rickman.
Biomet, which has paid tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. government to settle charges of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, is now named Zimmer Biomet.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The SEC separately issued a statement Friday that said it was granting more than $4.5 million to a whistleblower who reported “significant wrongdoing” to the regulator after filing an anonymous tip internally to a company. SEC rules prevent the agency from naming whistleblowers or even identifying the specific enforcement actions that trigger awards.
The Dodd-Frank Act required the SEC to start a whistleblower program. The agency can give tipsters as much as 30% of any fine for cases that lead to sanctions exceeding $1 million. The regulator says it has awarded more than $380 million since 2012.
END
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PM Mahathir need only look to AMMB and ANZ in his quest to recover all monies stolen by Jho Low-More on what else Malaysia should do, but is not ....
by Ganesh Sahathevan
This writer reported recently that it does not look like PM Mahathir's government is interested in doing anything on its own to help the effort, which to date has been driven by the US Department Of Justice, of recovering the money that PM Mahathir says Jho Low stole from 1MDB.
That story was concerned primarily with some USD 1 Billion held in Singapore,which came out of KWAP.
Meanwhile, it does not appear as if the Malaysian Government and
its agencies have done anything to secure the evidence of AMMB Holdings Bhd's investment banking division's collaboration with Jho Low which netted him some USD 126 Million.Bloomberg reported on 24 January 2019:
Authorities are probing a 5 billion ringgit ($1.2 billion) bond sale in 2009 by Terengganu Investment Authority, or TIA, a sovereign wealth fund that later became 1MDB, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators believe that $126 million of illicit funds -- which Low and his associate Eric Tan have been charged with receiving -- came from the deal arranged by AMMB Holdings Bhd., known as AmBank, and involving companies in Thailand and Singapore, said one of the people.
The above investigation should have led to a long overdue raid of AMBank, and seizure of all relevant records.It should have also led to an equally overdue investigation into ANZ Banking Group Ltd's part in the 1MDB theft. The inaction does not reflect well on all involved in the 1MDB investigation, and charged with the recovery of the stolen assets.
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Reference
This writer reported recently that it does not look like PM Mahathir's government is interested in doing anything on its own to help the effort, which to date has been driven by the US Department Of Justice, of recovering the money that PM Mahathir says Jho Low stole from 1MDB.
That story was concerned primarily with some USD 1 Billion held in Singapore,which came out of KWAP.
Meanwhile, it does not appear as if the Malaysian Government and
its agencies have done anything to secure the evidence of AMMB Holdings Bhd's investment banking division's collaboration with Jho Low which netted him some USD 126 Million.Bloomberg reported on 24 January 2019:
Authorities are probing a 5 billion ringgit ($1.2 billion) bond sale in 2009 by Terengganu Investment Authority, or TIA, a sovereign wealth fund that later became 1MDB, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators believe that $126 million of illicit funds -- which Low and his associate Eric Tan have been charged with receiving -- came from the deal arranged by AMMB Holdings Bhd., known as AmBank, and involving companies in Thailand and Singapore, said one of the people.
The above investigation should have led to a long overdue raid of AMBank, and seizure of all relevant records.It should have also led to an equally overdue investigation into ANZ Banking Group Ltd's part in the 1MDB theft. The inaction does not reflect well on all involved in the 1MDB investigation, and charged with the recovery of the stolen assets.
END
Reference
Deafening Silence Out Of Australia Over 1MDB's Connection To Top Bank ANZ
Today the Bloomberg news service released details from Malaysian investigations into a matter long suspected by observers of the 1MDB scandal, namely hanky panky surrounding the original bonds raised in May 2009 by AmBank to launch the fund’s forerunner the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA).
Those bonds worth RM5 billion ($1.2 billion) were originally sold by the sovereign fund at a considerable discount of 13%, despite an usually attractive high rate of interest. That meant a considerable loss to the fund and many have questioned whether intermediaries had stood to benefit.
The advisor to the fund was PM Najib Razak’s proxy Jho Low and today’s leaked information to Bloomberg has apparently confirmed an extraordinary pattern of dealmaking by AmBank on the bonds that enabled Jho to skim a whopping $126 million from the fund out of those sales.
Thanks to close orchestration by a number of parties, which appears to have included banking officials, 3.8billion ringgit of the original TIA notes were sold to a Thai company called Country Group Securities at a discounted rate of 87 ringgit for 100 (the remainder of the issue was bought by a Singapore company and the bank itself at the same discount rate).
Yet, within 24 hours all these bonds had been resold by those parties for a fat profit, according to documents obtained by investigators. AmBank apparently assisted in arranging those instant resales for 100 ringgit to 105 ringgit to local investors.
Following which, lo and behold, Country Group issued a third-party transfer instruction to AmBank to pay $113 million of the windfall to a Singapore company named ACME Time, which Sarawak Report has already identified as being under the control of Jho Low through his proxy Eric Tan. A further $12.6 million was paid to ACME Time in July 2009.
AmBank, which had bought RM500 million of the bonds at the same discount was also in position to have made a similar huge sum, which must certainly have generated good bonuses. RM700 million went to the Singapore company.
So, unless the Bloomberg story is entirely false, despite providing the most likely explanation for the strange pattern of sales, AmBank was involved every step of the way and also involved in the profiteering. It makes its position every bit as awkward as that of Goldman Sachs, which performed a similar role during the later bond issues by 1MDB leading to investigations by the FBI leading to criminal charges from Malaysia as well.
ANZ Bank Is Largest Shareholder of AmBank
This is not the only embarrassing 1MDB related matter that has entangled AmBank. The bank was also the key player in the buy out of UBG by a bogus subsidiary of 1MDB’s first bogus joint venture partner, oil firm PetroSaudi thereby netting healthy profits for Jho again, who had invested in the Chief Minister of Sarawak’s family company.
During that sale Sarawak Report has detailed how faced with political pressure the bankers involved overlooked time and again glaring irregularities, including the fact that the so-called PetroSaudi subsidiary that was allegedly buying UBG was in fact an entirely separate bogus off-shore company trading off an identical name.
None of this could have escaped the scrutiny of the hierachy of AmBank in KL, particularly given the massive sums involved. These were the top deals at the bank at the time. And it is this fact that demands an investigation and explanation from the Australian financial regulators known as ASIC, because the majority shareholder of AmBank is the leading Australian bank ANZ.
Sarawak Report has already pointed out along with others that all the top ranking officials stationed to managed AmBank in KL were on secondment from ANZ’s Sydney headquarters, a matter advertised as a badge of strong managment by the then Head of ANZ, Mike Smith, who had presided over the expansion of ANZ into Southeast Asia.
Mike Smith, like Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein, surprised many by taking an early departure from his Chief Executive’s post, just as the 1MDB issue started to hot up around his bank. A number of other key Australian executives have also moved on to greater things, including the former AmBank Chief Financial Officer, who has taken up a leading job in another financial group. The AmBank CEO of the time Ashok Ramamurthy relocated back to Sydney early.
However, despite persistent and compelling information that all such senior officials in KL along with ANZ’s own top brass had to have known about the massive transactions and also the huge sums that later poured into Najib’s own personal account at AmBank, there has been no announcement of an official enquiry by ASIC or investigations into malpractice.
Mike Smith’s successor as CEO Shayne Elliott told Australian MPs when questioned that ANZ’s seconded staff in KL had no duty to report back to ANZ or apparent duty to maintain standards of due diligence, despite ANZ’s largest single 20% shareholding in the bank:
“Once those employees are seconded there, they essentially sever their ties with ANZ almost 100 per cent,”
That claim by the bank’s head honcho was made in October 2016, since when the full nature of the scandal has become increasingly and unavoidably clear. Other banks have been investigated, punished, fined by different regulators and Goldman has apologised and admitted money was misappropriated from the bonds it raised.
Sarawak Report has also showed that ANZ’s own PR has contradicted the claim about the severing of ties:
“Mr Ramamurthy will also report to ANZ” – not so ‘severed’ after
all!
all!
The Australian prime minister at the time of the 1MDB misappropriations, Tony Abbott, tweeted his disappointment that Najib Razak (whom he described as a ‘good friend to Australia’) was defeated on May 9th.
However, Abbott’s successors ought to wake up to the fact that matters have moved on and slowly and inexorably investigators from the new government of Malaysia are turning up the details of exactly what happened at AmBank during the course of the 1MDB scandal.
That looks likely to include ANZ’s role in the affair and in any cover-up conducted by the Australian bank, including failures – deliberate or otherwise – on the part of the Australian regulators.
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