India joins club of corruption tainted DCNS/Naval Group submarine contracts -Australia remains the only country where there was no corruption involved............

by Ganesh Sahathevan

SEE FIRST 

DCNS's Philippe Japiot charged with corruption, spent much time in Australia before the award of the Australian AUD 50 Billion contract

And from India

3 Companies, 3 Directors In Common — One Link To French Sumbmarine-maker. Was Loss-making Company Taken Over By Offset Partner To Benefit Rahul’s Partner Ulrik?

Written By Shawan Sen | Mumbai | Published: May 04, 2019 17:36 IST

Hack:

• Republic Media Network has accessed more documents on the companies which were merged with Flash Forge India Private Ltd which won a Scorpene submarine offset deal under the UPA
• All the companies involved are in some way or the other linked to Ulrik McKnight who co-owned Backops Limited with Rahul Gandhi before the UK-based companies dissolution about a decade ago

Following sensational newsbreaks regarding Congress president Rahul Gandhi's link to the UPA-era Scorpene submarine deal via his UK company business partner Ulrik McKnight, Republic Media Network has accessed even more documents on the web of companies which were merged with Flash Forge India Private Ltd, the offset partner of French company DCNS which bagged the defence deal. All the companies involved are in some way or the other linked to Ulrik McKnight who co-owned Backops Limited with Rahul Gandhi before the UK-based companies dissolution about a decade ago

The documents relating to the companies and their owners add up to raise the question - Why were loss-making plastic manufacturing firms taken over by a defence company for a defence deal? 

Two Indian Nationals - Gautam Makkar, Sunil Menon - and Ulrik McKnight were behind the formation of multiple companies involved. Flash Forge Private Limited was incorporated by Makkar and Menon in 1991. This company ended up being the offset partner of submarine maker DCNS via a contract awarded by the UPA 2 government in 2011. Soon after, Flash Forge Pvt Ltd took over a loss-making company where Ulrik McKnight was a director. 

Meanwhile, Optimal Armour Limited which manufactures plastic products was incorporated by Makker, Menon and McKnight. Makker and Menon are still directors of the company. This Staffordshire company has total liabilities of £243.94k and less than ten employees, Republic TV has learnt. However, despite the poor balance sheet, the company was taken over by Flash Forge. 

Read the document below:

Composite Resin Development Limited, which manufactures plastic products, was incorporated in Kent with once again Gautam Makker, Sunil Menon and Ulrik Mcknight as directors. The company is still active but changed its name from Millennium Valves Limited. 

Read the document below:

Ulrik’s total liabilities stand at £39.3k.

Ready to face any probe, says Rahul gandhi

HT Correspondent

872 words

5 May 2019

Hindustan Times

HNTM

English

Copyright 2019. HT Media Limited. All rights reserved.

NEWDELHI, May 5 -- Facing a sharp attack by leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday offered to face a probe over allegations that his former partner in a UK-based company had acquired defence offset contracts when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power

At the same time, Gandhi called for an investigation into alleged wrongdoing in the ~59,000 crore contract signed by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

At a press conference, Gandhi said: "Please undertake any investigation you want, do any inquiry you want, I am ready as I know I have not done anything wrong, but please also investigate Rafale."

According to a news article posted on the website of Business Today magazine, the co-promoter of Gandhi's UK firm Backops Limited acquired defence offsets under the UPA regime.

Ulrik Mcknight was 35% co-owner of Backops UK, in which Gandhi owned the remaining 65%.

The company, founded in 2003, was wound up in 2009. Mcknight later went on to acquire offset contracts from French defence supplier Naval Group against Scorpene submarines in 2011, the article claimed.

The article offered instant ammunition for leaders of the BJP, which Gandhi has doggedly pursued over the deal for 36 Rafale jet fighters signed by the NDA government, alleging that the aircraft cost three times the initial bid by Dassault Aviation, the maker of the planes, when the UPA regime was trying to buy the warplanes. He has also alleged that the deal was signed to offer an opportunity for businessman Anil Ambani of the Reliance Group to win an offset deal from Dassault. Both the NDA government and Reliance Group have denied any wrongdoing.

Defence offsets require a foreign supplier to source a certain percentage of the value of the contract from Indian sources.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an election rally on Saturday: "Today, I read that during UPA's tenure, one of naamdar's [dynast's] business partners got defence offset contracts. Apni sarkar, dost bhi apna, aur raksha sauda bhi bada - yaani naamdar ke liye malai ka poora intezam tha."

The Hindi quote translates loosely as: "His government, his friend, even the defence deal was big. That means the cream was ready to be served to the dynast."

BJP president Amit Shah took to Twitter to attack Gandhi. "Midas Touch, no deal is too much!" he wrote.

"When he has a say, his business partners make hay. Doesn't matter if India suffers on the way! #StealLikeRaga."

After the remarks by Modi and Shah, finance minister Arun Jaitley launched a more elaborate attack on Gandhi at a press conference. Jaitley claimed that on May 28, 2002, a company was formed in India named Backops Services Private Limited with Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi as its directors. On August 21, 2003, another company was formed in Britain with the same name - Backops Limited - which had Rahul Gandhi and Ulrik Mcknight as directors, the minister claimed.

"This in itself is quite innocent but what does Backops mean. It was not a company that was into services or manufacturing but naturally into liasioning. It's an influence-for-cash company. 'We will use influence to get your work done,"' he said.

Jaitley alleged that Mcknight was also part of "Rahul ji's social gang" and the son-in-law of a senior Congress leader from Goa and his wife was a journalist by profession.

After Backops wound up, Mknight continued his work through different companies, including one named Optimal, Jaitley claimed. In 2011, when the French company, DCNS(former name of Naval Group), got the contract to build six Scorpene submarines in Visakhapatnam, a small Indian company - Flash Forge - acquired two companies of Ulrik. And the offset contracts of the Scorpene deal were bagged by this company," Jaitley claimed.

Hindustan Times could not independently verify any of the allegations made by the minister or the magazine article.

Referring to Congress allegations on the Rafale deal, Jaitley said the party had set in place new norms that not the law of evidence but rules set by Rahul Gandhi apply. Now those standards will apply to Gandhi himself, Jaitley said.

He demanded a response from the Congress.

"Did he [Gandhi] want to start as a defence dealer, disguised defence dealer, proxy defence dealer, facilitator. What is the meaning of Backops? It is a serious issue and we would want the Congress leadership to answer it as early as possible," he said.

"It is the story of a man who once aspired to be a defence deal pusher and today aspires to be the prime minister. It is a serious charge," he added.

Incidentally, Backops also figured in the row over Gandhi's citizenship sparked by a home ministry notice to clarify his position on a claim by BJP leader Subramanian Swamythat Gandhi had mentioned his nationality as British in annual returns filed by the company in 2005 and 2006.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from HT Pune.

For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at contentservices@htlive.com

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Document HNTM000020190531ef550060r

Three warships arrive in Sydney Harbour, and AG Speakman SC minister in charge of protecting NSW from terrorism, knew nothing- Less interference with religious freedom, more attention to his duties, might help

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Australia's coastline has always been vulnerable to unauthorized entry;it is for that reason that we spend billions on border security; the Pacific Solution, Manus and Christmas islands are all part of the defense.

The danger has always been in arrivals by sea that are too small to be detected,,especially when landings take place in the more remote, underpopulated areas of the continent. 

Here on the other hand three Chinese warships arrive in Sydney Harbour, send out invitations to local Chinese to come on board, and Premier  Gladys Berejiklian and her Minister in charge of keeping the state safe from terrorism, Mark Speakman AG SC  knew nothing (see story below, The Australian, 4 June 2019).

This writer has previously  commented on the Member for Cronulla, Mark Spreakman AG SC's incompetence. As readers will be aware Speakman's staff have taken steps to discredit what has been written.particularly with regards Speakman's determination, despite the legislation,  that ministers of religion are not suitable to be  witnesses to even the simplest statutory declarations(see story at link  below). The Member for Cronulla and his officers need to spend more time on their duties rather than pursuing their pet social projects if we are to be kept safe.
END

Great squall of China: storm over surprise warship visit

Chinese navy personnel stand guard aboard one of the warships docked at Garden Island in Sydney yesterday. Picture: AAP

• JOE KELLY

  POLITICAL REPORTER

  @joekellyoz

  
  

  ANDREW CLENNELL

  NSW POLITICAL EDITOR

  @aclennell

  
• 12:00AM JUNE 4, 2019
• 293 COMMENTS

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was not informed of the arrival of three Chinese warships until the vessels steamed into Sydney Harbour yesterday morning, with Labor challenging Scott Morrison to explain why he did not ­announce the visit.

Defence experts said it was ­important there was transparency about engagement with China, ­arguing the decision not to form­ally announce the arrival of the biggest Chinese naval taskforce to Australia in years was “a bad look”.

The Chinese naval taskforce is comprised of the frigate Xuchang, the auxiliary supply replenishment ship Luoma Hu and the landing platform dock Kunlun Shan,with about 730 officers and sailors in total.

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The Defence Department confirmed the taskforce was conducting a “routine port visit” until June 7, with strategic analysts saying the visit was a symbol of China’s growing naval strength in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The department received a ­request for a port visit from Beijing in April, and the Prime Minister conceded yesterday that the arrival of the warships had caught people off guard.

“It may have been a surprise to others, but it certainly wasn’t a surprise to the government,” he said. “They were returning from counter-drug-trafficking operations in the Middle East. That is a further demonstration of the relationship we have, and this had been in train for some time.”

Officers stand to attention. Picture: AAP

Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles took aim at the government for its failure to ­announce the arrival of the ships in advance. “The visit is entirely appropriate. I’m just not sure why the government wouldn’t bother to let anyone know it was happening,” Mr Marles said.

Videos on Chinese social media platform WeChat showed members of the Chinese-Australian community coming out to greet the ships, with dozens of people lining the harbour.

Executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, questioned why the “goodwill’’ visit from the Chinese navy was not properly ­announced. He said Defence “should do a better job of being open about engagement with China”.

“There’s been a pattern over years where we only find out about senior PLA generals visiting after they’ve left,” he told The Australian. “I know from my time in Defence that that happens at China’s request. But I think ­domestically this is a bad look — that our government doesn’t ­appear to be able to find ways to advise of a major warship visit ­before the ships are up against Garden Island.

Two of the three Chinese warships at Garden Island in Sydney yesterday. Picture: Dylan Robinson

“It strikes me as bad for our own domestic situation.”

A Defence spokesman told The Australian that the navy “liaised with the NSW government”.

“Defence co-ordinates the diplomatic clearance process for all visiting warships on behalf of the Australian government,” he said.

“It is the ­visiting foreign navy’s responsibility to appoint a ship’s agent to co-ordinate all logistic requirements for a ship’s visit.

“As is normal, Defence provides support to visit arrangements through liaison with appropriate state and federal government departments and agencies, including with NSW police and the Port Authority of NSW.”

Mr Jennings said the taskforce was “probably the biggest to visit” Australia and argued the public should start to “expect almost every year that there will be some sort of Chinese naval visit”.

Speaking in Honiara yesterday, Mr Morrison said it was a “reciprocal visit because Australian naval vessels visited China”.

He also downplayed the timing of the visit, with the ships arriving the day before the 30th anniver­sary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He cautioned against engaging in “over analysis”.

Members of the Chinese community in Australia are invited aboard. Picture: AAP

Senior research fellow at the National Security College at the Australian National University, David Brewster, said the timing of the visit was a “bit of an embarrassment for the Morrison government both in terms of the anniversary of Tiananmen Square and the fact Morrison is currently in the Solomon Islands trying to shore up Australia’s position vis-a-vis the Chinese”.

“What we’ve been seeing over the last few years … is that these Chinese task groups basically have become much more focused on naval diplomacy, meaning that they tour the whole of the Indian Ocean and some of the Pacific to assert a Chinese presence,” he said. “It’s interesting that these task groups are getting larger and they will continue to get larger.”

Defence confirmed the visit was part of an extended deployment after the Chinese warships completed anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

Flag-waving supporters welcome the naval task group. Picture: Matrix
Flag-waving supporters welcome the naval task group. Picture: Matrix

HMAS Melbourne was the most recent Australian warship to visit China. It arrived in Qingdao in late April for the People’s Liberation Army-Navy’s International Fleet Review.

The PLA-Navy last stopped in Sydney for a similar visit in 2017. It comes days after Australian navy pilots were the target of laser ­attacks over the South China Sea and Australian ships were tailed by Chinese vessels. Helicopters from HMAS Canberra were forced to land as a precaution last week after they were targeted by lasers from fishing vessels.

Additional reporting: Ben Packham, Heidi Han


See Also

NSW AG Speakerman' and his LPAB confirm that ministers of religion cannot be witnesses-Speakman & Berjelikian iseem unaware that their position can cost them the Muslim vote

Laugh at Mat Sabu's English, but listen carefully to what he had to say: Lessons for NZ in addressing passive support for jihadis, and a warning to China

by Ganesh Sahathevan 


This may sound funny, but bear in mind that it is a speech at a  forum for the exchange of ideas, not English elocution: 

While the Malaysian politician Wee Ka Siong thinks these statements amusing, they reflect long held Malaysian thinking on these matters:

On the matter of terrorism:

Without mincing his words, Dr Wee questioned Mohamad’s logic in saying that in order to prevent further terrorist attacks, the authorities should identify the parents of these perpetrators.

“Terrorism isn’t inherited. Why should their parents be identified to combat terrorism activities?”

In fact, Malaysia was one of the earliest venues for the British policy of containment as a means of defeating terrorism. Sir Gerard Templer's new village scheme worked on the assumption that effective control of communist terrorist required control of entire families and the communities that they formed into. 
That Sabu has raised familial links as a factor in jihadism reflects the Malaysian experience during e the Emergency (and after, between 1960 and 1985), and in the present time where familial links have proven vital to jihadis in and from Malaysia.

On the matter of China and the South China Sea

Listen again and take note of Sabu's reference to the likely response from the United States to any Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. 
Sabu's statements are consistent with Malaysia''s  long held policy of non-alignment,which has allowed successive governments to work with the United States,, as well as Russia and China in all fields including defense.



END 

The Problem Of Passive Supporters Of Jihadi Terrorists And The Putin Solution

by Ganesh Sahathevan

While I have previously taken a top-down approach to describing the networks that support  jihadists (see goo.gl/vBAolR) , the profileartion of Al-Qaeda franchises and off-shoots, such as those at work in Syriaⁱ requires that a bottom-up , or grassroots, approach be adopted.

While the top down approach looked at the support states provided jihadists, the bottom-up approach is concerned with how individuals at the grassroots can comprise networks that jihadists might rely on for their activities. Civil rights activists might be alarmed by such language, afraid that large sections of a given population could be branded jihadists, but there is in fact a theoratical framework and empirical  evidence to support this hypothesis.

Juan José Miralles Canals ⁱⁱ describes these types of networks using a mathematical and computer modeling approach:

Passive supporters of the jihadist cause are normal people who do not need to express their position explicitly. They just do not oppose a jihadist act in case they could. They are sharing independently an identical opinion of identifying with the jihadist cause. They do not need to communicate between then. This is an individual dormant attitude associated to a personal opinion. It does not need to be explicitly so. They are unnoticeable, and most of them reject the violent aspect of the jihadist action.

Social permeability to the jihad describes the physical pathways that nodes of the jihadist networks can establish and use to move freely and safely along, thanks to the passive supporters of the jihadist cause.

Social permeability to the jihad  describes the physical pathways that nodes of the jihadist networks can establish and use to move freely and safely along, thanks to the passive supporters of the jihadist cause.

Cannals provides a mathematical analysis which concludes that disruption at the nodes is required to disrupt jihadists activities. Given what was seen in Iraq, and now Syria ,and well before these, Gaza, of apparently innocent non-combatants supporting the jihadists' cause, it does appear that Cannals theoretical perspective has and is being borne out in the real world.

I have previously written about the relevance to this day of the British Malaya administration's policy of new villagesⁱⁱⁱ, used to defeat the Communist Party Of Malaya, which while being financed by the Peoples' Republic Of China, relied heavily on the support of local Chinese to facilitate their activities on the ground.

That solution may today seem inhumane, but critics conveniently forget that lives were saved by that solution. Be that as it may, Russian President Vladimir Putin might have provided an alternative , a middle path:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law the controversial bill ….amending the Criminal Code to expand the number of offenses classified as terrorism and require the relatives of people deemed to have committed acts of terrorism to pay financial compensation for the material damage they caused^iv.

Not unexpectedly Putin's law has already come under criticism. However it is suggested that critics should rather see this law as the basis for other similair policy instruments that might be used to curb acts of terrorism. Either that, or a return to the new villages.

END

i http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/20/us-syria-crisis-raqqa-idUSBREA0J17W20140120,

ii Fourth-generation warfare: Jihadist networks and percolation

•  Juan José Miralles Canals

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895717709001526

iii https://web.archive.org/web/20070625204337/http://www.terrorfinance.org/the

_terror_finance_blog/2007/04/ending_support_.html (See also complete article below)

iv Russia To Hold Relatives Of 'Terrorists' Financially Responsible For Material Damage

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-terrorism-law-terrorists-financial-liability/25157756.html

Posted by Ganesh Sahathevan on February 25, 2014 at 18:10 | Permalink

Ending support for terrorism in Iraq: Lessons from the Coalition forces past

The following are notes from 3 journal articles which  outline the history of the new villages scheme, devised and implemented by the British, with assistance from the Australians and Americans, which led to the relatively speedy end of the guerrilla war waged by the Malayan Communist Party in Malaysia (then Malaya) between 1948 and 1960:

On its origins

Britain’s inability to crush the guerrillas caused great frustration in London. In March 1950, Defence Minister Emanuel Shinwell informed the prime minister that he was “very disturbed” by the “grave” situation in Malaya….Anxiety became intense after the insurgents ambushed and assassinated the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, in October 1951. That same month saw the highest number of casualties among the security forces since 1949. An internal report prepared in 1957 acknowledged,“There is no doubt that in the first two years of its activities the CTO [Communist Terrorist Organization] was a very real threat to the security and economic recovery of Malaya after the war…..In  1950 the British secretary of state for war, John Strachey, declared: “I do not believe that the Army alone, as such, can finish them off. In order to finish…them off we have got to have a large military effort . . . and an equally large police and administrative and political effort…..The counterinsurgency employed a range of strategies and fought on a number of fronts…..Britain launched a major “population control” effort involving the relocation of more than 50,000 Chinese “squatters,” the creation of nearly 450 “New Villages,” and the mass deportations of detainees.

(http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/icas/PhillipDeery.pdf)

On its impact

Today the initial phase  of this resettlement program is an accomplished fact. Squatters have been relocated in protected areas bounded by authority and order. Resettlement is the primary reason why Malaya today can carry the battle to the Communists. Though it does not mean the end of Malaya's drive against Communism, it has proved to be an effective weapon against the terrorist attacks by the guerrillas. After the completion of the resettlement program, terrorist attacks fell off almost 75 percent, Communist guerrillas surrendered  and deserted in increasing numbers, and security force and civilian casualties dropped appreciably. Resettlement of the Chinese squatters has helped to disrupt the Communist organization in Malaya and has severed important underground links and disorganized Communist cells.

(http://www.jstor.org/view/03628949/di014049/01p0879u/0)

On its role in nation building

Begun in June 1948, the scheme was completed in 1954 without causing widespread unemployment--an achievement unparalleled in all of Southeast Asia--and was especially noteworthy because it coincided with a period when the Federation of Malaya was preparing itself for self-government and eventual independence….although it was conceived as a military necessity, the establishment of Rasah New Village improved the living conditions of some 2,000 peasants.

(http://www.jstor.org/view/00044687/di014141/01p1502u/0)

Naturally, if such a scheme is to be implemented in Iraq, it would need to be modified to suit local conditions.

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Will Australia's barristers boycott legal work in Malaysia in protest of the perceived lack of independence in its judiciary?

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Chris Leong, Past President, Bar Council of Malaysia, Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Richard Malanjum, Chief Justice of the Federal Court, Malaysia, Arthur Moses SC, President, Law Council of Australia, Elizabeth Espinosa, President, Law Society of New South Wales, Datuk Seri Panglima David Wong Dak Wah, Chief Judge of The High Court of Sabah and Sarawak, and Andrew Goledzinowski AM, Australian High Commissioner in Malaysia at the High Commissioner's residence in Kuala Lumppur.Moses was nvited to give an address at the Australian High Commission.

This excerpt from a 1990 article by the then President of the NSW Bar Association, Nicholas Cowdrey QC was discovered in the course of this writer’s ongoing (and admittedly self-interested ) research into the Australian legal establishment and in particular the NSW Bar's attitudes to Malaysia under Mahathir.  In an article tilted " Nick Cowdery QC reports on the judgment of the Supreme Court of Malaysia in Manjeet Singh Dhillon's case". Cowdrey concluded:

What do the judgments (and the manner of their preparation and delivery) say about the independence of the judiciary in Malaysia? What do the judgments say about the future of the rule of law in Malaysia? Just what are the "local circumstances" in Malaysia? How secure is the future and the independence of the Malaysian Bar? We should watch for the answers


Cowdrey’s comments  remain relevant to this day given the recent comments by the president of the Law Council Of Australia and immediate past president of the NSW Bar Association, Arthur Moses SC, in Kuala Lumpur in January this year(see photo and link  above).  Readers will recall that Moses thought it necessary to remind his audience of the 1987 judicial crisis in Malaysia, and to insist that PM Mahathir was responsible for that incident, despite statements made last year (while Mahathir led the opposition against Najib) by Abu Talib Othman, who was AG in 1987, contradicting the assumption that Mahathir was responsible for the 87 crisis. See previous story by this writer:

Assisted by DFAT,Australian lawyers take aim at Mahathir,while seeking new markets in Malaysia-REPOST with tweet from the Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia ,Andrew Goledzinowski ‏ Verified account


All of the above needs to be seen in the context of the actions of the Attorney General of NSW, Mark Speakman SC, and his officers, who insist that Mahathir financed this writer’s 1MDB investigation and publications, which were then fed to the ABC’s 4 Corner’s program, to wrongly and maliciously accuse the former PM Najib Razak of involvement in the 1MDB scandal:

Diplomatic incident brewing: Mahathir declares Raja Petra a liar,AG NSW and his department insist that RPK is a credible source of information about Mahathir


Speakman, his officers, and indeed the NSW Bar have seen no need to comment on their actions ,despite the scandal they have perpetuated against the newly elected prime minister of Malaysia , and despite the matter being reported nationally in The Australian, on 17 January 2019, the same day Moses delivered his speech in Malaysia(see story by Ben Butler )


In his 1990 article (which should be read in full and is available at the link provided above) Cowdrey seemed to suggest that public condemnation of judges is justifiable when judges misbehave. Here in NSW on the other hand he and the NSW Bar Association seem to have preferred silence despite facts reported in The Australian, which in effect call into question the judgment and skills of some of the state’s most senior judges and lawyers, including the Chief Justice. 

The Chief Justice NSW Tom Bathurst was once president of the Australian Bar Association (ABA). The ABA has in the past complained that the independence of the Malaysian Bar was being threatened:
Independence of Malaysian Bar under threat

Meanwhile, Australian barristers and solicitors seem happy to pursue business in Malaysia despite the lack of independence  they complain of, among judges and lawyers.

That pursuit of business has now expanded to include legal education, with the Australian  legal establishment's College Of Law promoting its "LLM in Malaysian Legal Practise" in Malaysia. The College has made a number of claims about its contribution to legal practice in Malaysia, which have been denied by the relevant Malaysian authorities. The relevant authorities in Australia including the Law Society NSW and the Legal Profession Admission Board(LPAB) appear to have decided to ignore the Malaysian information (which includes correspondence from the Registrar , Federal Court Malaysia).

Of greater concern is the fact that the LPAB  has made adverse findings against this writer for informing and querying the Attorney General's Chambers Malaysia about the College's Malaysian adventure.

It should also be noted  that where necessary Australia's lawyers and judges are prepared to prefer Malaysian judgments, regardless of how tainted the judgments might be, to those of their own courts.

This writer can report that in  making adverse findings against him the   LPAB preferred the judgement of   Saufee Affandi of The Industrial Court Malaysia  which favored Vincent Tan, to that of his own Supreme Court Of NSW in Carlovers Carwash Ltd, which went against Tan in spectacular fashion. In doing so the LPAB agreed with Affandi that this writer had breached criminal laws in Malaysia with regards the dissemination of false news, and criminal defamation, despite he never being even charged  or investigated for those crimes. Readers may recall that the story which earned this writer his sacking from The Sun by Vicnent Tan concerned the business dealings of among others Mokzhani Mahathir.

END

NOTE

The ABA considers its work in Malaysia and South East Asia to be part of its charitable outreach,as it claims in a 2014 press release:
“Australian barristers already contribute thousands of hours of pro bono training and professional development for our colleagues in Asian nations.....".

AMBank insiders can be rewarded millions for information about Goldman Sachs-More on what can be done to recover 1MDB money

by Ganesh Sahathevan



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

See also

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.


END 

Reference 

Deafening Silence Out Of Australia Over 1MDB's Connection To Top Bank ANZ

• 25 January 2019
   
• 16

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!

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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