3, 2... Mic on.
Now, Najib's lawyer, Shafiq Abdullah,
claimed at a press conference recently
that your book exculpates Najib from
any wrongdoing
that it was in fact, Jho Low
who misled the former prime minister.
How would you respond to that claim?
It's nonsense.
Clearly,  Shafiq hasn't read the book very closely.
We are fair to Najib in the book, in fact everyone.
and I
think what we say is that Najib did not
know the full import of what was going
on, only Jho Low knew that.
So did Najib know that
4.5 billion or more was
taken from the Malaysian people?
Probably not.
but he did know it was a slush fund
and he did know that you know, that all these assets
getting purchased and all of these places
in the US, the film company
The money went back into an offshore company called Tanore.
It didn't go back to the Saud, it didn't come from the Saudi.
The money came from 1MDB via Tanore
It went back to Tanore
and from there it was used to
buy the 27 million dollar jewel for Rosmah.
Where does Rosmah come in? How much of a player was she in this whole scandal?
She's sort of like Jho Low's entry
point right. Rosmah was important because
she, I believe helps Jho Low get to the
center of power in Malaysia
and then
of course she benefits from this
because suddenly she's getting
hundreds of millions of dollars of jewelry
and
other assets through this connection.
What's so amazing about Jho Low was he was always
able to go into a room,
see who is powerful,
work out how that person could help him and connect that person to
another powerful person and put himself
in the mix that was really his genius.
So when he first sort of burst onto the
scene here in Malaysia after Wharton
he's able to connect Middle Eastern
investors with then Deputy Prime
Minister Najib Razak even when he is
exiled from Malaysia by Najib in 2015
he goes to China and he persuades CEOs of
state-owned companies to invest in
East Coast rail deal.
He never gives up
even now,
he is sending messages into
the new Malaysian government saying
"Look, I'll help you with Mahathir's meetings in New York this week."
"I'll help you with (you know) getting the assets back."
"You'll never get these
assets back if you don't include me."
What would be that one burning question that you and Bradley are dying to ask him if you had access to?
Why did you do it?
and
Why did you stop their allegations that he's taken 4.5 billion dollars?
Why did you not start to fill the hole?
There's a loan from Deutsche Bank
and instead of using that loan,
instead of filling that hole
He goes and buy Equanimity
so it's almost as if
he believed that
with the political cover of Najib,
he could just write off his money.
