left to right – Tarek Obaid, Prince Turki and Najib Razak – the three named Shareholders of the 1MDB PetroSaudi Joint Venture meeting a month before the deal on the yacht Tatoosh.
THE LIST OF PRINCES, BUSINESSMEN, CURRENT AND FORMER MINISTERS DETAINED IN A PROBE BY SAUDI ARABIA'S NEW ANTI-CORRUPTION BODY INCLUDES:
* Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of Kingdom Holding
* Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, minister of the National Guard
* Prince Turki bin Abdullah, former governor of Riyadh province
* Khalid al-Tuwaijri, former chief of the Royal Court
* Adel Fakeih, Minister of Economy and Planning
* Ibrahim al-Assaf, former finance minister
* Abdullah al-Sultan, commander of the Saudi navy
* Bakr bin Laden, chairman of Saudi Binladin Group
* Mohammad al-Tobaishi, former head of protocol at the royal court
* Amr al-Dabbagh, former governor of Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority
* Alwaleed al-Ibrahim, owner of television network MBC
* Khalid al-Mulheim, former director-general at Saudi Arabian Airlines
* Saoud al-Daweesh, former chief executive of Saudi Telecom
* Prince Turki bin Nasser, former head of the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment
* Prince Fahad bin Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Saud, former deputy defence minister
* Saleh Kamel, businessman
* Mohammad al-Amoudi, businessman
EN D
by Ganesh Sahathevan The New York Times and others have reported:
Saudi Arabia announced the arrest on Saturday night of the prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, plus at least 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers.
The announcement of the arrests was made over Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned
satellite network whose broadcasts are officially approved.
The king (Salman) had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption
committee, headed by the crown prince(Mohamad Bin Salman), only hours before
the committee ordered the arrests.
Al Arabiya said that the anticorruption committee has the right to investigate,
arrest, ban from travel, or freeze the assets of anyone it deems corrupt. It is hard to imagine how ,or why, the Saudis would not freeze assets at home and abroad connected to the 1MDB theft, especially when the Kingdom and at least one prince are said to be central to the theft.
left to right – Tarek Obaid, Prince Turki and Najib Razak – the three named Shareholders of the 1MDB PetroSaudi Joint Venture meeting a month before the deal on the yacht Tatoosh.
(PHOTOS FROM SARAWAK REPORT-SEE STORY BELOW)
END
References
Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal
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Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men, was reportedly arrested in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.CreditIshara S.Kodikara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
LONDON — Saudi Arabia announced the arrest on Saturday night of the prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, plus at least 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers.
The announcement of the arrests was made over Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned satellite network whose broadcasts are officially approved.
The reports in Al Arabiya and from other sources that Prince Alwaleed was among those arrested were sure to send shock waves both through the Kingdom and the world’s major financial centers.
Prince Alwaleed, who controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, has major stakes in News Corp, Time Warner, Citigroup, Twitter, Apple, Motorola and many other well-known companies. He also controls satellite television networks watched across the Arab world.
The sweeping campaign of arrests appears to be the latest move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son and top adviser of King Salman.
At 32, the crown prince is already the dominant voice in Saudi military, foreign, economic and social policies, stirring murmurs of discontent in the royal family that he has amassed too much personal power, and at a remarkably young age.
The king had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption committee, headed by the crown prince, only hours before the committee ordered the arrests.
Al Arabiya said that the anticorruption committee has the right to investigate, arrest, ban from travel, or freeze the assets of anyone it deems corrupt.
The Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the de facto royal hotel, was evacuated on Saturday, stirring rumors that it would be used to house detained royals. The airport for private planes was closed, arousing speculation that the crown prince was seeking to block rich businessmen from fleeing before more arrests.
Prince Alwaleed was giving interviews to the Western news media as recently as late last month about subjects like so-called crypto currencies and Saudi Arabia’s plans for a public offering of shares in its state oil company, Aramco.
Photo
At 32, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is already the dominant voice in Saudi military, foreign, economic and social policies.CreditFayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
He has also recently sparred publicly with President Donald J. Trump. The prince was part of a group of investors who bought control of the Plaza Hotel in New York from Mr. Trump, and he also bought an expensive yacht from him as well. But in a twitter message in 2015 the prince called Mr. Trump “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.”
As president, Mr. Trump has developed a warm, mutually supportive relationship with the ascendant crown prince.
At least three senior White House officials, including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were reportedly in Saudi Arabia last month for meetings that were undisclosed at the time.
Before sparring with Mr. Trump, Prince Alwaleed was publicly rebuffed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who rejected his $10 million donation for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York because the prince had also criticized American foreign policy.
As powerful as the billionaire is, he is something of an outsider within the royal family — not a dissident, but an unusually outspoken figure on a variety of issues. He openly supported women driving long before the kingdom said it would grant them the right to do so, and he has long employed women in his orbit.
In 2015 he pledged to donate his fortune of $32 billion to charity after his death. It was unclear Saturday whether Saudi Arabia’s corruption committee might seek to confiscate any of his assets.
Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy without a written Constitution or independent government institutions like a Parliament or courts, so accusations of corruption are difficult to evaluate. The boundaries between the public funds and the wealth of the royal family are murky at best, and corruption, as other countries would describe it, is believed to be widespread.
The arrests came a few hours after the king replaced the minister in charge of the Saudi national guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, who controlled the last of the three Saudi armed forces not yet considered to be under control of Crown Prince Mohammed.
The king named Crown Prince Mohammed the minister of defense in 2015. Earlier this year, the king removed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as head of the interior ministry, placing him under house arrest and extending the crown prince’s influence over the interior ministry’s troops, which act as a second armed force.
Rumors have swirled since then that King Salman and his favorite son would soon move against Prince Mutaib, commander of the third armed force and himself a former contender for the crown.
Last week in California the Prime Minister’s step-son, Riza Aziz, filed a notice to dismiss the US Department of Justice’s seizure of his properties on the grounds that he was the “innocent owner” and could not be held responsible for the fact the money was stolen from 1MDB.
Motion to dismiss by Riza’s lawyers
Those properties include a Beverly Hills mansion, the film production company Red Granite’s future earnings from Wolf of Wall Street, a London Belgravia town house and a New York penthouse.
What this defence contends is that Riza had simply no idea that the hundreds of millions that suddenly started coming his way was not stolen, but thought it was a gift. For this reason he reckons he should be allowed to hang on to all the items bought with Malaysia’s stolen development money (money which the Malaysian tax payer is now faced with paying back to the original lenders at high interest rates).
Yet Sarawak Report has established new evidence that Riza was in from the very start on the 1MDB heist, in that he was invited to attend the meeting where the first ‘joint venture’ was cooked up between Jho Low, the Prime Minister and company PetroSaudi on the super-yacht Tatoosh in August 2009.
A trip manifest reveals that the jaunt, which took place between 15-20th August, was organised by a “high-end boutique concierge company” named Baroque, of which Jho Low was a member. According to the note made by the representative for Baroque, Sahle Ghebreyesus, the trip was in fact commissioned by his client Jho Low (whom he describes on the manifest as “my guy”). In March the following year Tarek Obaid also joined Baroque, which is an agency designed to pamper the super-rich:
High-end boutique concierge company that organised the rental of Tatoosh
Photographs later obtained by Sarawak Report show the main players behind the theft of the first billion from 1MDB through the PetroSaudi ‘joint venture’, which was strategised during this super-yacht meeting.
However, we can now confirm that Riza Aziz also joined the party, along with Najib’s key financial cronies Bustari Yusof and Robin Tan. Robin Tan is the son of Vincent Tan, long associated with BN political funding, and Bustari is the Sarawak PPB party treasurer cum billionaire, who was handed the ‘turnkey contract’ for the Pan Borneo Highway project and whose brother Fadillah has now been appointed Minister for Public Works.
This gives the Bustari brothers control over all the big contracts handed out by the Government, in Malaysia’s notoriously corrupted procurement process and Bustari has rarely strayed from Najib’s side in recent months.
‘My guy” Jho Low fixed the trip. “innocent owner” Riza Aziz was also on board
Did Riza have simply no idea what was going on as these guys did the business which was soon to send money streaming his way?
It was just a few short months later that he went on to launch his production company Red Granite Pictures at the most lavish launch party ever seen at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
And over the next two years Jho Low was at Riza’s side at every major film event involving Red Granite Pictures, including Wolf of Wall Street, which was funded by yet more money stolen from 1MDB, thanks to the later ‘Power Purchase Loan’ manoeuvres also organised by Jho Low.
According to the New York Times, Low was furthermore directly involved in the purchase of both of Riza’s US properties in Hollywood and New York. Did Riza simply fail to realise what was going on?
There can only be two conclusions. Either Riza is lying and he did know or Riza is a sad and stupid creature, who was merely used as a front and proxy by the players behind the scandal, which included his friend Jho Low and step-dad Najib.
He is therefore EITHER innocent OR the owner. He cannot be the “innocent owner”!
left to right – Tarek Obaid, Prince Turki and Najib Razak – the three named Shareholders of the 1MDB PetroSaudi Joint Venture meeting a month before the deal on the yacht Tatoosh.
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Singaporean prosecutors and police are looking at Goldman Sachs Group's relationship with the scandal-hit Malaysian state investment fund 1MDB, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Singapore's economic crime unit and city prosecutors have interviewed current and former Goldman Sachs executives who worked on bond offerings from 1MDB, Bloomberg reported.
1MDB, founded by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, is facing money laundering probes in at least six countries including the United States, Switzerland and Singapore.
Najib has denied any wrongdoing.
A Goldman Sachs spokesman in Hong Kong declined to comment.
Officials at the Singaporean police and 1MDB were not immediately available for comment.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had earlier in the week barred two individuals involved in breaches related to the 1MDB fund from taking part in financial services management and advisory activities.
In March, the MAS issued a 10-year prohibition order against Tim Leissner, former Southeast Asia chairman at Goldman Sachs, who it said had made false statements on behalf of his bank without its knowledge or consent.
Leissner was responsible for managing the relationship with 1MDB when Goldman Sachs was engaged to arrange three bond issues from 2012 to 2013. MAS had flagged its intention to ban Leissner last December.
-Reuters
Read more at https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/400581#Z8yLebT4WQe13Akw.99
That the witness is Malaysian human rights campaigner Ambiga Sreenevasan, one of Najib and his government's most vocal critics, makes motive for the attacks rather obvious, raising all sorts of rule of law issues for UK PM Theresa May. May recently met with Najib, as he was passing through en-route Malaysia. It was not an official visit, but portrayed by Malaysian media as an affirmation of Najib's stature in the UK.
Hadi Awang is suing for defamation he says was caused by Rewcastle-Brown's publication on her Sarawak Report news site where she claimed that Najib had used money from 1MDB to buy Hadi's support.
The problem for May : What does one do when a Commonwealth PM, with whom you are supposed to have a special relationship , uses his power to intimidate a witness in a matter before UK courts,clearly attempting to undermine the processes of the UK justice system? In other words, what to do when contempt of a UK court is being perpetrated by a close ally, the Prime Minister Of Malaysia,and his associates?
TTF: Ambiga will never answer the allegation (see news item below). There are two possibilities though – first, Clare Rewcastle Brown may actually have slandered the ex-Bar Council President. Clare is using every trick in […]
“Ms. Rewcastle will keep lying under oath just to prevent the trial from coming to an end. She is well aware that Hadi isn’t party to publications by The Third Force or Malaysia Today, but [… ]
“So you see, you must not blame Ambiga for staying mum on Ms. Rewcastle’s recent allegations. While it is true that the Bersih co-chairperson is in the business of fabricating evidence to destroy anyone she […]
THE STAR and MD Wong Chun Wai's Ops Lalang series of stories, which desperately attempted to omit any reference to that event and any reference to Najib Razak . brought back memories of this:
Excerpt
Umno Youth, headed by Najib Razak, reacted by calling a counter-rally for Oct 17 at TPCA Stadium in Jalan Raja Muda, with Najib threatening to call out 500,000 into the streets. A year earlier, in Novmber 1986, Umno Youth had held a demonstration at Putra World Trade Centre to protest against a statement by Lee Kim Sai that all three major races in Malaysia had arrived through immigration and only the Orang Asli were prebumi.
The TPCA stadium rally was a heated affair with cries for blood. Najib Razak was reputed to have drawn a keris and threatened to bathe it in blood, and there were other blood-curling statements made, including cries of “another May 13″.
The very next day, Kuala Lumpur and the metropolitan area went into curfew shutdown mode when a Malay Regiment soldier from an Ipoh camp, private Adam Jaffar, allegedly went amok in the Chow Kit area, loosing off his M16 automatic assault rifle: an elderly Chinese man died after being hit by a ricochet, and several others were wounded.
Twenty-five years ago today, the first Umno Malay Civil War caused the arrests of at least 106 civilians in the infamous Operation Lallang (Operasi Lalang, in Malay) when the beleaguered Mahathir Mohamad government used the political turmoil that had been festering through the year to detain opposition politicians (and a few from Umno), Chinese educationists, academicians and activists, priests and a Malay Christian convert.
It was clear then, as it is now, that the detentions and the subsequent climate of fear were aimed at ensuring Mahathir’s survival. The events of 1987 would subsequently lead to the judiciary’s loss of independence, tighter restriction on the media, and a free hand for Mahathir and his political and business cronies. The Constitution was ripped apart, with one of the three Estates left in limbo.
The country has still to recover from that grievous wound.
Things had come to a head earlier in the year, when Mahathir Mohamad was challenged for the leadership of Umno, for the first time since he took power 12 years before. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah had teamed up with Musa Hitam (“Team B”) to take on Mahathir and his gang.
At the Umno general assembly on April 24, Mahathir narrowly survived, by 43 votes, against Tengku Razaleigh, whose Team B managed only to win a third of the seats on the Umno supreme council.
Tensions had been growing in Umno in the three years after Tengku Razaleigh had been replaced as finance minister by Mahathir’s partner Daim Zainuddin. Malaysia had just come through two years of a global economic recession in 1984-85, but there was growing discontent about Mahathir’s privatisation policies to selected cronies, as well as his authoritarian style.
After the party election, a suit was filed on June 25 by “the Umno 11″ — a group of Umno members (one had dropped out) who sought a court declaration to have the Umno elections overturned, on the ground that 78 illegal members were among the delegates at the Umno general assembly, and that documents had been tampered with.
On Sept 30, the High Court gave the two sides a fortnight to settle it between themselves. There was a standoff: Razaleigh’s side wanted new elections, Mahathir’s camp offered a “face-saving solution” if they accepted the results. On Oct 19, the Umno 11 said the suit would proceed.
Operation Spectrum: young professional social activists rounded up, accused of a Marxist plot
Tensions had been further heightened when on May 21, the Singapore government carried out a security crackdown, alleging a Marxist conspiracy “to subvert the existing social and political system … to establish a Marxist state”. They were 16 mostly English-educated people comprising a mix of church workers, social workers, graduates and professionals. It prompted fears of repercussions in Malaysia.
In the midst of all that, Chinese educationists had been unhappy with the posting of non-Mandarin-speaking heads of Chinese schools by the Education Ministry (then headed by Anwar Ibrahim).
Political temperatures had been rising.
As the Barisan Nasional’s Chinese-based parties added their voices to the ruckus raised by Dong Xiao Zong and the DAP, a rally was called on Oct 11 next to Thean Hou temple.
Umno Youth, headed by Najib Razak, reacted by calling a counter-rally for Oct 17 at TPCA Stadium in Jalan Raja Muda, with Najib threatening to call out 500,000 into the streets. A year earlier, in Novmber 1986, Umno Youth had held a demonstration at Putra World Trade Centre to protest against a statement by Lee Kim Sai that all three major races in Malaysia had arrived through immigration and only the Orang Asli were prebumi.
The TPCA stadium rally was a heated affair with cries for blood. Najib Razak was reputed to have drawn a keris and threatened to bathe it in blood, and there were other blood-curling statements made, including cries of “another May 13″.
The very next day, Kuala Lumpur and the metropolitan area went into curfew shutdown mode when a Malay Regiment soldier from an Ipoh camp, private Adam Jaffar, allegedly went amok in the Chow Kit area, loosing off his M16 automatic assault rifle: an elderly Chinese man died after being hit by a ricochet, and several others were wounded.
Rumours of shootings and deaths in Chow Kit, and memories of the 1969 race riots spread throughout the city, heightening the tension, which worsened through the hours of a 30-hour siege when Pvt Adam refused to surrender to the police, demanding to see his unit commander. He was finally taken into custody by the military before being put on trial.
A day later, the Umno 11 raised the ante against Mahathir. They rejected making a deal with Mahathir and announced the suit would proceed.
It was against that fast-moving backdrop of intense Umno Malay rivalry and racial and political tension, that the police began their swoop in the early hours on Oct 27. They called it an act of national security. But it was all for Umno’s security, and for the job security of Mahathir Mohamad.
