The Quality of Australian Justice

The Quality of Australian Justice

The below article appeared in the Melbourne Age and extracts of it were published in the Australian Financial Review in 2020.

Except for comments added by the writer in the context of Australia’s involvement in destabilizing the government of DS Najib in Malaysia for over a decade, the rest of the article below is attributed to the authors identified in the article.

The heading in bold is attributed to the publishers of this blog.

CBD Melbourne: Questions over counsel as Heydon goes to lunch

Samantha Hutchinson and Colin Kruger

July 2, 2020 — 11.59pm

It seems former High Court judge Dyson Heydon has found a regular lunch partner as he battles an independent investigation’s findings that he sexually harassed six female associates.

Heydon, who continues to deny any allegations of sexual harassment, was spotted at Mosman’s Public Dining Room at Balmoral Beach on Wednesday with fellow Sydney silk, Francis Douglas, QC. CBD spies inside the restaurant spotted Heydon enjoying a beer as he waited for Douglas, who practises out of the prestigious Tenth Floor Chambers.

Douglas and Heydon did not return requests for comment on Thursday, but it’s apparent the pair are more than passing acquaintances.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, Heydon was spotted on the day before the sexual harassment allegations went public, joining a friend for lunch over Merlot at the members-only Australian Club on Sydney’s Macquarie Street.

Investigation

Heydon controversy

Dyson’s ‘dirty deeds’: the public v private face of ‘Sexual Harasser’

And who was the chap who he was having lunch with? Turns out it was Douglas, who also would not respond to questions about whether he would represent the former High Court judge in court if it was ever required.

Indeed, it’s difficult to determine who Heydon’s counsel is given Speed and Stracey, the prominent tax lawyers who have represented Heydon, are no longer responding to journalists’ inquiries.

OFF THE LIST

Heydon lost his licence to serve as a barrister this week after failing to renew his practising certificate with the NSW Bar Council ahead of its expiry on June 30. He is not the only high-profile silk in the non-renewing category.

As of July 1, former Australian chief justice Murray Gleeson, QC, had not renewed his practising certificate with the NSW Bar Council, nor had former High Court judge Michael McHugh, SC.

The NSW Bar Council did not respond to repeated requests for information regarding the two senior justices on Thursday. McHugh’s Eleven Wentworth Chambers did not respond to a question regarding his certificate and whether he planned to renew.

Of course, the High Court investigation into Heydon’s alleged misconduct recorded a claim that Gleeson and McHugh were told of their colleague’s behaviour. Gleeson headed the court for a decade until 2008, while McHugh served on the court from 1989 until 2005.

Details from the report included an account of how McHugh’s then-associate Sharona Coutts claimed that in 2005, Heydon’s associate Rachael Patterson-Collins had said “Heydon tried to kiss me and I had to push him off me!”

Coutts told the investigator she had informed McHugh, who allegedly replied that he was “truly shocked”. A day later, McHugh allegedly told her he had passed the information on to Gleeson. Gleeson has rejected an account of the events as “false”, without going into detail.

REGIME CHANGE AUSTRALIA AND THE MORALS OF “PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES”

Reading this article in Malaysia and other Regime Change victim countries in Asia one can be forgiven for being shocked at the hypocrisy of the Australian media who pursued DS Najib and his government at the behest of Soros and the NED.

Australia and its national broadcaster the ABC, its other government funded media  organization the SBS, all played an active role in destabilizing the Najib government in Malaysia. Yet none of them were brave or concerned enough to shine a spotlight in the deeply embedded corrupted judiciary and government in their own country, Australia.

Queensland, a state best known for its long history of embedded racism at all levels is currently the subject of a documentary (being currently filmed) by a group of documentary makers with several high-profile Netflix documentaries to their credit.

The material for the Netflix documentary appears to have come from a massive hack and dump of sensitive and confidential material hacked from the “secured” email servers of judges and the legal professions in 4 major Australian capital cities.

Due to prevailing laws prohibiting the use and dissemination of hacked material, we are unable to publish any of the material (which we do not possess or have access to) obtained by hackers nor direct readers to its sources on a Dark Web site.

MALAYSIA A NATION WITHOUT A CONSTITUTION

In Malaysia’s parliament there are currently 5 standing committees (if my memory serves me well). these are;

1. Selection committee
2. Public accounts committee
3. Standing Orders committee
4. And privileges.

The above are also mirrored in the Dewan Negara or the Senate. The Parliamentary Select Committee on Integrity was set up in or around 2006.

However because of the dysfunction in government precipitated by the Regime Change initiatives of the US and its allies like the Malaysian Bar and Bersih, each seeking to infiltrate and control legitimately and democratically elected governments and turn them into client states, the entire parliamentary system of responsible government has fallen into a dung heap.

Fundamental to the causes of that fall has been a partially educated and completely polarized, politicized Bar in Malaysia. A bigger problem lies with the fast tracked law degrees handed out like confetti in Malaysia sans the critically important subjects of constitution law and jurisprudence.

In its place are short phrase regurgitated past exam papers on the subject designed not to imbue in students the knowledge required to practice in the subject, but a means of attaining a pass sufficient to satisfy a basic criteria to secure an LLB. And the fall in educational standards over the past decade or two has permeated the legal profession seeping into the judiciary eventually.

CROWN IMMUNITIES AND INDEMNTIES

IMMUNITIES (THE CROWN)

Immunities, or jurisdictional privileges, provide persons or groups of persons some degree of protection against civil or criminal rules that do not apply to all citizens. These provisions are in place to ensure the unimpeded performance of public functions and to avoid targeted prosecutions or political persecution.

However, immunities can also be abused by officials who use it as a shield from liability for criminal offences, including corruption. Good immunity regimes manage to balance the independence required for public officials to fulfil their mandate with the right accountability mechanisms to ensure that corruption is effectively sanctioned and prevented.

While most countries provide immunity protections for their public officials and members of parliament (as is the case of common law countries like the UK and Malaysia (as it is meant to do), each jurisdiction varies in the range of officials covered, scope of immunity and rules regulating the procedures for lifting immunities. International norms and standards have emerged in the last two decades with the aim of sharing best practices and closing loopholes that may encourage corrupt behaviour. Most notably, Article 30 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption provides a legal framework for the reduction of immunity protections.

THERE IS A PURPOSE FOR IMMUNITIES GIVEN TO MP’S JUDGES AND CIVIL SERVANTS

Immunity provisions help ensure a better separation of the judiciary, executive and legislative powers. They are in place to ensure the unimpeded performance of public functions and to avoid targeted judicial proceedings or political persecution.

One crucial distinction can be drawn between jurisdictions that provide immunity for public officials only for acts committed in the course of the performance of their function (functional immunity), and jurisdictions which extend immunity for any acts committed by public officials, whether they are directly related to their official function or not (absolute immunity) (UNODC 2017).

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) highlights ‘absolute immunity as the type most likely to be invoked in the context of criminal proceedings for corruption offences’ (UNODC 2017).

Among countries that provide their officials with functional immunity, two further categories can be observed: non-liability and inviolability. Non-liability is a type of functional immunity which provides legal protection for opinions and votes cast in parliament. Non-liability applies almost exclusively to MPs and does not cover other categories of public officials. It is otherwise known as narrow immunity.

The other type of functional immunity, known as inviolability, extends legal protection to public officials not only for opinions and votes cast, but also for any acts they perform in their function. As a wider provision, inviolability can be extended not just to MPs but also to heads of state, ministers and other public officials.

Historically, immunity protections have been given to members of parliaments to ensure that kings and courts would not intervene with the work of the elected representatives of the people. MPs, particularly those from the opposition parties, remain to this day susceptible to political persecution and legal harassment in many countries.

For this reason, immunity protections for MPs are still very common. The last systematic assessment of immunity legislation around the world, conducted by the World Bank in 2013, shows that 84 out of the 88 countries assessed provided some type of protection to MPs.

In Malaysia as it is in the UK immunities from prosecution for MP’s is implied in the constitution (under Crown immunities) if it is not expressly stated so.

HASTY CONVICTION OF NAJIB WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OR ADMISSABLE EVIDENCE- A POLTICAL RUSE

The haste with which to deny DS Najib the extension of time he sought to allow his new lawyers the time required to get acquainted with some very complex facts and the law in a complex and complicated matter was no extension by indulgence of the court that DS Najib sought.

His rights and the conduct of the case against him was fraught with a litany of circumstantial events, procedural breaches by the DPP and evidence which would not have stood scrutiny in any mature civilized jurisdiction except in Malaysia.

Let me explain the harshness with which I make reference to Malaysia and its legal system by referring to it by implication of my words as being less a less civilized and less mature a jurisdiction.

This narrative is distilled from a lengthy explanation of procedural rules and protocols in the PDRM by former serving police inspector of the PDRM now a senior legal practitioner in Malaysia ( a former member of Anwar Ibrahim’s team).

The lawyer expressed quiet outrage at the raid on the Penthouse at the Pavilion apartment block in 2020 under the supervision of Commissioner of police Amar Singh. That property was in the Pavilion in KL which DS Najib and his wife sometimes resided at.

Amar did not record nor did he or his men carry out the obligatory body camera filming of the event as is required under police protocols (for evidentiary purposes). Nor did the corrupted Amar Singh or his men categorize or properly catalogue what ‘evidence’ they had seized from the Pavilion residence that day of the raid.

Amar became immediately unavailable for comment or scrutiny and the evidence obtained was denied access to the defence when it should have been made available to them immediately. Reason? in the event the evidence was tampered with, become stale or destroyed before the defence had access to it in the form it was seized from the Pavilion the film recording of the event would corroborate and serve as an alibi to the event.

Amar disappeared because according to the former policeman turned lawyer, he failed to follow protocol by recording the raid and making the contents of the recording available to the defence even if via the courts immediately.

In fact the case against Najib was flawed conceptually as is the case against his wife Rosma. She was asked to prove she was not corrupt (when even a cursory reading of Malaysia’s legislation on corruption will show the reason why corruption is difficult to prove. The legislation on corruption is full of drafting holes in it for starters).

JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT-DENIAL OF NATURAL JUSTICE-BIAS AND BULLYING

Rosmah was asked to put in a defence when no reasoning in the courts decision to compel her to put in a defence was given to her defence. She was asked to provide a defence to a charge to which by law she had no obligation to say anything about to the court or to anyone else.

In a criminal case, the onus is on the prosecution to prove every element of its case against the defendant and not the other way around. The defendant is not obliged to say anything at all. The privilege (right to some) of silence belongs to the defendant (DPP vs Woolmington). Yet the judges comments as embarrassing as they are did not cause the Malaysian Bar to bat an eyelid. The only one standing with any credibility is lawyer acting for Rosma Mansor, Mr. Jagjit Singh and his fellow attorneys.

The case against DS Najib and his wife has been characterized by prosecution delays and a judiciary favourable to the prosecutions case.

Some examples of the favoritism shown by the prosecution and failures by DS Najib’s team to ameliorate and to mitigate the impacts of obstacles to their defence aided and abetted by the prosecution:

• Failure to summon Jho Low
• Failure to summon and extradite Jasmine Loo
• Failure to seek orders to bring in as a late witness – even if on a separate application
• Failure to recognize that the allegations against Najib was one involving several other witnesses in what is alleged to have been a conspiracy. Yet the burden of proof was placed on Najib instead of prosecution and the so called co conspirators.
• Failure of extradite and compel Amar as a witness along with his fellow officers a part of the Pavilion raid
• Failure to secure a delay pre- judgment based on Chief Justices and other panel of the bench for the comments they made on DS Najib’s application for a delay.
• The delay itself should have been dealt with as a separate question to be tried on its merits.
• Failure to compel parliament to indemnify DS Najib against the charges
• Failure to compel parliament to review the matter, effectively charges against the Crown without a proper parliamentary committee investigation the facts and law relating to the charges proffered against DS Najib.

There remains an approach to the various legal professional bodies of the common law world to analyze and to comment independently on the two cases and the state of Malaysia’s judiciary and its legal fraternity.

Conspicuous errors of law, fact and reasoning- Najib’s case

Conspicuous errors of law, fact and reasoning- Najib’s case

Many Americans, including members of Congress, believe or act as if Roe v. Wade 1974 ( A woman’s right to abortion) a case recently displaced by a majority of the US Supreme Court in 2022 and the U.S. Constitution have equal authority.

They are wrong, both as to Roe’s place in American constitutional law and as to the duty of citizens and judges to follow it unquestioningly. This point is critical as it questions rightfully the mistaken belief by some lawyers and judges that precedent must be slavishly follwed without question. The law is more flexible than that.

Few decisions in the history of the Supreme Court of the US and the case of 1MDB (Najib’s case) in Malaysia have cried out so shrill for reversal and review of law and procedure on constitutional,  moral and legal grounds. And rarely has any decision been so fraught with conspicuous errors of law, fact and reasoning as was the majority opinion in Roe (and in Najib’s case in the Malaysian context).

This note is addressed to the judiciary, parliament in Malaysia and the Malaysian Bar who may think that the Najib matter (an abortion of the AG’s, the Judiciary’s and the Malaysian Bar’s own making) deserves a measure of deference as a landmark of constitutional law and procedure (notwithstanding its unconstitutionality, its unlawful and immoral outcome).

Legally speaking, Najib’s case like Roe is an abomination, and an embarrassment to lawyers, judges, the Agong and public officials who feel compelled to defend the decision and outcome in the courts of Malaysia.

THE COURT’S DECISION IN NAJIB’S CASE EXCEEDED ITS CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY AND LIMITS.

Under the legal system established by the Malaysian Constitution, the power to make laws is vested in the legislature. It is not the role of the Supreme Court or Courts of Appeal to substitute the policy preferences of its members for those expressed in laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives, parliament.

The role of the judiciary in constitutional review is to determine if the law being challenged infringes on a constitutionally protected right.

To exemplify and stress the point” Justice O’Connor (US Supreme Court) reiterates this principle, quoting Chief Justice Warren Burger:

Irrespective of what we may believe is wise or prudent policy in this difficult area, “the Constitution does not constitute us as ‘Platonic Guardians’ nor does it vest in this Court the authority to strike down laws because they do not meet our standards of desirable social policy, ‘wisdom,’ or ‘common sense.'”

IGNORANCE: A COMPANION OF MALAYSIA’S JUDGES AND ITS LAWYERS

The Chief Justice of Malaysia and her fellow judges sought to usurp the power, right and authority of the legislature by making laws for their own blinkered convenience by denying DS Najib a delay and adjournment in his case for appointing fresh counsel (un unfettered right of any defendant in any case, save in exceptional circumstances) and providing his responses in a case as complex as his was.

DS Najib’s circumstances in his requests for an extension of time to file his material by any reasonable standard did not fall under any of the exceptions the Chief justice used to deny his request.

In fact what the Chief justice used as an excuse to deny DS Najib his request for an extension of time relied on an old and outdate quote from William Ewart Gladstone a Prime Minister of Britain (between 1868 and 1894) “justice delayed is justice denied”.

This was the same Gladstone whose ideas of justice included owning African slaves as an ‘investment’ sent out to the new colonies.

Gladstone’s quote is an amorphous, ambiguous and imprecise maxim which cannot be defined or applied without a context. Who for instance does the justice and delay belong to? The prosecution? The judiciary or the defendant?

In the common law Westminster legal system, the benefit of all doubts must favour the defendant as against his accuser, in this case the prosecutor (and a biased judge).

To assert he was using the requested delay to attempt to frustrate an inevitable outcome in his cause (my words, their imputation) was both wrong and unconstitutional.

Delays and adjournments however inconvenient to the courts can and must be granted to an applicant (in this instance DS Najib) with good reason. And how is good reason decided? and who decides it? another independent judge of course.

Otherwise where the request is of a controversial and contestable character or nature, it should have been decided by an application addressed to the court by Najib’s lawyers (which they did not) before an independent judge, as a separate question of law to be argued on its merits before being decided. It is a matter which was not within the purview and powers of the judge deciding whether or not to grant to be arbitrarily dismissed.

The Malaysian Bar was represented in this dilemma in which it had a crucial role to play “without fear or favour” with a deafening silence.

Intimidated by its collective ignorance and inexperience, Malaysia’s lawyers members of the Bar, not one of who knows of or has used such an application to decide a separate contentious question in a trial, were willing to speak on an issue o the law. Instead they did what they did not do when Anwar was on trial in his Sodomy 1 and Sodomy 2 and that was to keep quiet, not interfere and or to join a lynch mob against a particular defendant.

Instead in its place were the vacuous comments by the Chief Justice, The Attorney General and the Prosecutor. Additionally and outrageously a cacophony of parliamentarians and members of the legal fraternity in Malaysia joined in the lynch mob with cries of guilty, guilty, guilty. ”Without fear or favour” was the Malaysian Bar’s response.

The courts reason for denying Najib’s requests firstly for a British QC to represent him was met with resistance by the Malaysian Bar whose incompetence is universally acknowledged by the outcomes of their more controversial cases are decided underlined by the way their legislation and judgments are written. And they accept it without question.

To celebrate and reinforce its lack of impartiality and it long history of politicization, Karen Cheah Yee Lynn president of the Malaysian Bar authored a desultory contumely of insults directed not at the source of the problem, the Chief Justice, the Attorney General but at DS Najib. Najib is the victim of a monumental blunder by the Malaysian justice system.

Whatever the outcomes against him, he was entitled to be heard before a properly constituted tribunal of fair minded judges and afforded a legal representative (s) of his choice. “Without fear or favour“. Embarrassments excepted.

DELAYS: A VIRTUE RATHER AND NOT A VICE- THE INNOCENCE PROJECT

A further point on why adjournments and delays are not necessarily vices at law but instead something that should be taken more seriously instead of applying the Chief Justice of Malaysia’s (And the Malaysian Bar’s) logic.

There is the very strong empirical evidence from many more mature and justice conscious jurisdictions where the benefit of delays in cases involving otherwise “sound” judgments and “evidence”. In these cases misguided and often politically sanctioned views has led to the perception of an overwhelming aura of guilt around many capital offence cases, and unjustly so.

THE INNOCENCE PROJECT

I speak of the USA where large numbers of condemned prisoners wait in death row for their day with the executioner, their cases and appeals delayed for decades by determined and dedicated lawyers who understand the law.

The US innocence project has successfully prosecuted the defence of many condemned prisoners condemned to death by “cogent and irrefutable” evidence through obtaining delays. 36 of these death row prisoners out of nearly 200 by an average of 15 years of delaying their executions, have been freed because of delays fought for and granted inspite of similar illogical jurisprudence now the preserve of the Malaysian legal system. “Time wasting” as Malaysia’s legal system calls it.  

WHY AIR ASIA CAN’T FAIL

As all indicators point to an insolvent or near insolvent behemoth of the skies, the question arises as to what went so horribly wrong with Air Asia; the darling of the skies, of Mahathirism and of the dynamics of ‘The Asian way’ in the Asian century.

As desperate appeals for funding pour in from the airline’s chief executive to its customers, some of them indicate how desperate the airlines financial situation is.

Travelers are being asked to withhold exercising their rights to a refund for services not provided by the airline. Auditors, creditors, analysts and shareholders are beginning to look more closely into the companies recent and historic annual reports, its accounts and to the inexplicably narrow margins (for error) and contingencies factored into the company’s accounts.

As well they are looking into its operating revenues, its earnings, its income and its cash flows for over the past 5 years which are scarce to obtain in any meaningful detail.

Was AirAsia reporting fiction and padding its accounts in its periodical reports? Me thinks that this is a real possibility. Was AirAsia in fact converting the debt of some of its subsidiaries into assets? Was it reporting earnings earned but not received and possibly impossible to recover as assets?

SOCCER CLUBS & OTHER NON CORE INDULGENT ASSETS

What on earth was the airline investing its surpluses in (if they did exist in recent times) ? Who funded the purchase of prestige non core assets such as an English League soccer club? There were other prestige investments and political donations which were neither core businesses nor beneficial to an airline operating in a highly volatile unstable political environment and market as Malaysia and the world is today.

The real fear today is that if the airline, that came into existence courtesy of Dr. Mahathir’s largesse fails, it will have repercussions reaching far beyond Malaysia’s shores.

AirAsia’s failure will blow the lid off the standards of Malaysia’s financial reporting, the credibility of the Bursa Malaysia and yes the credibility of Bank Negara Malaysia too. It will also uncover the practice of bribery, graft and corruption unseen since the Lockheed scandal of the 1970’s which brought down governments and the all powerful Japanese Prime minister of his time, Kakuei Tanaka.

THE ZETI FACTOR AS THE VENEER PEELS ON THE REAL FINANCIAL SCANDALS

Bank Negara is the gatekeeper of Malaysia’s entire financial system (if you could call it that). The recent revelation of its failures in compliance falling squarely at the feet of its forme Chair Zeti Akhtar has a nexus to the myriad of financial disasters that has plagued Malaysia for over 2 decades covered up by the Bank.

A convenient scapegoat and distraction to the Titanic of Malaysia’s “Tiger Economy” of the Mahathir era is the trial of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, a former Prime Minister of Malaysia.

It was indeed a tangled web they wove when they practiced how to deceive. That web of deception is coming apart at the seams. Is it going to be Zeti or Fernandez’s AirAsia that will be the iceberg to sink Malaysia’s run as a “Tiger economy?”

AirAsia, the poster child of ‘wunderkind’ Tony Fernandez is beginning to not only come apart at the seams but it also threatens to spill the beans on the entire money merry go round from treasury, Petronas and other government sources of funding to an elite exclusive coterie of recipients all with a direct link to not only Dr. Mahathir but also to UMNO Baru.

It appears there was good reason for economist prince Tunku Razaleigh Hamzah to get out of the way when the wheels of UMNO Baru’s juggernaut began to fall off in the farcical games of prime ministerial musical chairs played out in parliament recently.

Already under the spotlight, Bank Negara, and revelations about its former Chair Zeti Akhtar and her failures during her term as chair at the Bank have begun to shake Malaysia’s “Tiger economy” to its very foundations.

Added to the fuel of Zeti Akhtar’s scandalous failures at Bank Negara, the spark of AirAsia’s current financial problems, the demand for clarity and transparency on the situation relating to many of Malaysia’s top corporations that comprise the Bursa Index is beginning to heat up.

The Bursa like Zeti was asleep at the wheel at the AirAsia bus from all accounts.

WHAT LIES AHEAD

The inevitable to the Malaysian economy and the Ringgit cannot be put off forever with leggy young nubiles and a hot PR campaign anymore. Such campaigns and self promoting dazzling circuses can’t pay the rent, the lease payments on a fleet of expensive aircraft, wages of a few thousand employees, contractors, merchant services, fuel bills and government taxes. And it hasn’t.

This simply points to an insolvent airline flying on a wing and a prayer, hope and promises alone.

How Serious is government and how experienced are its advisors in preparing it for a tsunami which will consume the entire Malaysian economy in one large wave?

A good guess is that the government and its advisors are not up to scratch to deal with these dominoes when and not AirAsia falls. This will be worse than what hit Malaysia’s non banking financial sector in 1991 when Anwar was minister of finance. The world today is not the same place it was in 1991.

As the heat of Air Asia’s financial troubles is turned up with Ernst & Young’s qualification of the company’s reports and its financial condition, a requiem can be heard in the background by all, except AirAsia’s biggest shareholders, its founder and his partner.

Perhaps this is because they have their proverbial headphones on and eyes shut as a distraction to what’s about to befall them.

A DEPARTURE THAT RANG WARNING BELLS- NO ONE NOTICED

The departure of Sir Richard Branson’s group from the AirAsia shareholder register in 2012 should have sounded warning bells about the management style and practices of the highly geared overly ambitious AirAsia. It did not.

There was nothing like the fanfare that greeted Virgin’s entry into the airline’s share register in 2007 when Branson’s Virgin divested its interests in AirAsia. Branson’s executives were tight lipped about Virgins exit. But the Malaysian government and its Bursa preferred catwalks to compliance, prestige to pragmatism, pandering to the airline, instead of ordering an investigation into its practices and finances then.

They continued to pamper the airline pretending all was well with it without investigating the possibility that something was not quite right with the company.

The Airline concealed its financial problems by threatening to move its head quarters and operational hub offshore. They were deft at playing musical chairs with their finances and brinkmanship with regulators.

Leaving aside the Bank Bumi scandal and the the Malaysian Housing collapse of 1998, this is the biggest economic and reputational threat hanging over corporate Malaysia, its government and its reputation as a place to do business in.

When AirAsia collapses as is expected by the financial community it will bring the economy down with it worse than what Covid has done to stronger more robust economies worldwide.

The real problems that Mahathir and Anwar distracted the world with so successfully by drumming up the 1MDB and Najib circus is about to come undone. And with it will be recriminations of a kind no one has seen before.

BLAME AND RESPONSIBILITY

As was the case with previous financial disasters, the accounting and banking profession have a lot to answer for it if a crash of this airline occurs. Each of Malaysia’s legal and accounting peak professional bodies must be brought to account for these failures. They were not brought to account during the Bank Bumi, Maminco, the Housing sector collapse, the non banking financial sector collapses scandals previously and their vices were celebrated as a virtue then. Why should it be any different now?

Let’s hope Air Asia can survive as it has in the past and continue to fly on a wing and a prayer. Lots of prayers.

The Malaysian economy is more and more appearing to be like that proverbial house built on sand. Shifting sands that is. It is not Najib they ought to worry about. It is those who painted pictures of Dr. Mahathir on planes using shareholder funds that is the real concern.

When AirAsia collapses as it is expected to, the Malaysian Ringgit will go down with it as will those companies built on the largesse of Dr. Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim, their padded revenues and earnings, their off balance sheet debts and liabilities leaving Malaysia in a mess only a tsunami could otherwise leave it in.

ZETI AKHTAR-MONEY LAUNDERER AND LIAR?

HOW LONG DID ZETI KNOW OF HER HUSBAND’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE 1MDB FUNDS?

MACC’s confirmation that RM65 million in funds belonging to 1MDB was in the possession and control of Zeti Akhtar’s husband Tawfik Ayman via one of his companies is nothing more than a formal restatement of a position that had been long canvassed and clear to anyone with an eye on the 1MDB saga.

ZETI’S WILFUL BLINDNESS TO MONEY LAUNDERING AT BANK NEGARA

For Zeti Akhtar Aziz to attempt to deny or remain silent on the allegation now will only cement her already sullied and damaged reputation and her professional and personal integrity as a banker, a professional and a public figure.

Former Bankers involved in the saga complaining now that they were given false information or threatened by Datuk Ser Najib are weak and incredulous individuals attempting to hide behind what is fundamentally a lame excuse and an indictment on their caliber as bankers, accountants and professionals. It is late mail anyway.

“The Devil made me do it” is not an acceptable or plausible defence to charges of money laundering, theft or lying. These are not schoolboys being threatened by the schoolyard bully. These were educated professional bankers, meant to be of impeccable, impeachable character and integrity. Of their late material it appears they were far from it. Surely they knew their responsibilities and obligations that came with their office. The same obligations and responsibilities applied to Zeti.

There is a much larger conspiracy at play here behind the tsunami of allegations directed against former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, his wife Rosma Mansor and the Barisan Nasional, the party that ruled Malaysia since its independence in 1957.

Allegations of money laundering against Zeti as head of Bank Negara continue to more than simply linger around her in rumours. These allegations are the subject of formal, though discreet, investigations launched in the US, in Europe and in the Middle East because of the very lax and negligent rules that prevailed during Zeti’s stewardship (as head) of the Bank Negara.

In the US her role at Bank Negara (especially during and immediately prior to 9/11) has become the subject of investigation by lawyers (and investigative agencies) acting for the families of those killed in the twin towers attacks in 9/11.

There is a nexus to the flow of illicit funds to terrorist groups through UMNO Baru and few Islamic charities that found a cover of legitimacy through UMNO Baru’s patronage and the blind eye of the Bank Negara under Zeti Akhtar’s stewardship.

Evidence suggests that very large sums of money were transferred in and out of Malaysia at the time Zeti was head of Bank Negara without question inspite of ‘red flags’ popping up before her. The billions that flowed in and out of Bank Negara immediately prior to her appointment was ignored by her when she ought to have queried suspicious transactions that were tied to the Maminco, Bank Bumi and Forex scandals in Malaysia. She had a legal duty and an obligation as head of Bank Negara to review these not too insignificant transactions involving billions of dollars in foreign exchange.

These transactions in question include the several billions of dollars which moved around in and out of Malaysia for brief periods during and subsequent to Dr. Mahathir’s tenure in office as prime minister for over 20 years.

ZETI THE NEOCONS MONEY LAUNDERING (AND THE WHARTON CLUB?)

But Zeti has her backers and apologists in the USA and in some quarters of government in Malaysia at least. Her father after all, the late Professor Unku Aziz was a CIA informant (along with several prominent members of government in the 1960’s and 1970’s). (Victor Marchetti- former CIA agent -Holland in 1971). There is also much speculation about her preferential treatment at Wharton where she secured a Phd from the university of Pennsylvania.

First of her backers are the Neocons under Paul Wolfowitz, the man who first tapped Zeti along with Anwar Ibrahim to work on the Regime Change initiatives of the Soros Foundation, Open Societies, the NED and the American Democrats linked to the Clinton Global Fund. Their job was to destabilize the Mahathir regime in Malaysia.

Then there is the “Wharton club”. All of them alumni graduates of Wharton’s Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, an exclusive club of very prominent graduates of the school like Low Teik Jho, Michael Milken and a group of bankers who were prominent in the fall of Wall Street and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

And like Zeti these Wharton alumni are prominent not for their academic prowess but their pedigree and ability to network to the extent they could bring down the world banking system in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 with relative impunity.

A powerful network of financial movers and shakers they are more connected to power than to their knowledge and intellect.

UMNO BARU ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS AND ZETI’S ROLES

What Zeti really has to be more concerned about today though is the allegation she may have through willful blindness allowed or turned a blind eye to money laundering activities by religious extremist from the middle east through UMNO Baru and the Bank Negara.

These two organizations, Bank Negara and UMNO Baru are state protected organizations. The first, Bank Negara which assisted UMNO Baru to divert and to launder funds that were supposedly ‘donations’ to charitable purposes in the middle east that the US has evidence were diverted to two high profile terrorist attacks against US targets. These being the attacks on the twin towers on 11 September 2001 and the other the attack on the USS Cole that preceded it.

Back to what Zeti knew at Bank Negara. It is now becoming clearer that Zeti knew of the transfers of large sums of money from not only 1MDB to Datuk Seri Najib’s bank accounts long before it became controversial in Malaysia, but also of billions of dollars in large questionable outflows of capital after the Asian currency crisis.

It was a series of events that Bank Negara (and therefore she) and perhaps even the Singapore authorities should have queried but did not. Zeti turned a blind eye to all of it. Singapore’s collusion with the Regime Change initiative in south east Asia is now being questioned by some ASEAN leaders.

The Department of Justice in the US (DoJ), in particular Loretta Lynch, was in touch with Zeti through third parties not only tracking but perhaps also conspiring with her and others to set up Datuk Seri Najib and to implicate him in a scandal of their making.

ZETI-PERJURY AND DELIBERATELY MISLEADING THE COURTS

Zeti’s silence thus far has only assisted in implicating her more deeply in what appears to be a criminal conspiracy and a seditious one at that directed against not just Datuk Seri Najib Razak but also the Malaysian government.

With the revelation that her husband Tawfiq Ayman was in possession of a not insignificant portion of the 1MDB money, her culpability in the 1MDB conspiracy cannot be washed away or ignored through her silence or a wall of lawyers defending her misconduct.

Zeti will either have to come clean and answer honestly before a court, her willful silence and refusal to make voluntary disclosure during the trial and by that misleading the court in the 1MDB matter or go to jail for contempt and perjury. By her silence she may well have also committed the offence of perjury.

If the government and the courts refuse a motion now for a mistrial in the 1MDB matter against Najib Razak with the benefit of the MACC evidence, the integrity of the courts in Malaysia already damaged by reputation will suffer even further.

The government, it is said has no credibility left anyway. But the courts must act independently given the opportunity they now have with the MACC revelation to redeem themselves.

The courts must be seen to be independent of government. But will they stand up for themselves and be true to their creed?

ALL ROADS LEAD TO UMNO BARU SLUSH FUNDS

A CULTURE OF GREED AND CORRUPTION INSTITUTIONALIZED

It never ceases to amaze as to how corrupt and reckless many in government can be. And when I say government I mean UMNO Baru.

Datuk Seri Najib’s farcical corruption trial as well as the trials of his wife Datin Rosma Mansor and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi  all have one thing in common. The source of the corrupt funds is alleged to have come from UMNO if you listen to the prosecution. That is what the prosecution is trying to prove.

And although in the case of this trio, if the case were independently heard by an impartial judge, it could not have been proved on the “facts” before the courts. The judge in the 1MDB trial concluded that DS Najib is guilty.

It is highly probable now that Datin Rosma Mansor and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi will alos likely be found guilty on the same basis that the trial judge in DS Najib’s trial found him guilty of the charges he faced.

Now here’s what confronts the prosecution. The prosecution has a whiff of the smell of decay but it is unable to and has not found the corpse, the source of that smell to support its case of corruption against DS Najib, for the present at least. It is circumstantial evidence they rely on. Even then, that circumstantial evidence is very thin. Why?

The prosecution is reliant on certain facts and the evidence of certain persons and their documents which have been conveniently excluded by the court or that they simply simply can’t be found or compelled by the court to be produced or to attend in person to be cross examined or to testify.

No one from the prosecution or government will touch the real evidence with a barge pole because the evidence points to the billions of dollars in slush funds, Dr. Mahathir wanted diverted to his projects even after he left office.

And to go after that pot of gold now smelling like a rotting corpse is to unravel the rot and financial corruption within UMNO Baru on a monumental scale. It has at various times infected the opposition (yes the religious parties and the DAP too have been recipients of UMNO Baru’s largesse over the years).

The prosecution will urge the judges to find each of these individuals “guilty”. Each of them will then file appeals. Those appeals will run into years of court room dramas, submissions, counter submissions, reviews and stale evidence by which time witnesses will either fall out of high rise buildings, be found strangled in banana plantations or the evidence will become irrelevant and the case difficult to prove.

FROM TRIUMPH OF MERDEKA FROM TRUST, TERRORISM AND TO TREASON

The involvement in UMNO Baru’s corruption and its gatekeeper in many instances are eminent persons in various honorary government positions sitting comfortably on the boards of many large government or government linked corporations on a sinecure in sworn silence .

The Malays and in fact all other communities placed their faith in UMNO believing all Malays and successive leaders of UMNO would be imbued with the natural leadership qualities of Tunku Abdul Rahman. Not so after one look at UMNO in the years that followed Merdeka.

Zeti, a privileged non Malay whose pedigree was built on marriage into a royal household (although not alone in this regard) is under investigation by US authorities as part of a wider investigation into the funding of radical Islamic groups and to the group behind the USS Cole bombing and 9/11.

This much we are able to reveal, having spoken to one of several law firms acting for the victims of 9/11. Zeti relies on her royal pedigree and her late father’s reputation as an academic to indemnify herself from her shameful conduct as most royals tend to do with a wink and a nod from UMNO Baru (courtesy of Dr. Mahathir’s precedents laid in holding royalty to ransom).

PUBLIC MONEY-PRIVATE BENEFIT

Thus far what DS Najib and his wife face are mere allegations not the subject of irrefutable proof of corruption. They are allegations the subject of circumstantial evidence against each of the defendants.

Having money in your bank account is not a criminal offence. Transferring money from any account into a recipients bank account without their knowledge or authority is an offence if that money is tainted with a crime.

Everyone knows where the billions of dollars that went into projects, transfers, transactions in most corruption matters have come from. Yet no one in the prosecution or even in the defence legal teams or Bank Negara wants to ‘bell the cat’ by calling out the sources and disclosing the records of these transfers and transactions.

Yeoh Tiong Lay according to the South Morning Post written some time back was the recipient of several hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the Malaysian government (read Petronas) and UMNO Baru’s coffers and guarantees.

The South China Morning Post article of more than 10 years ago identified the Mahathir government as being the benefactor of Yeoh Tiong Lay and his group in their purchase of power stations, large construction contracts domestically and abroad and of government guarantees (similar to that used to prop up Air Asia today) to fund these large “investments”.

And the truth is that the likes of Zeti knew or were legally bound to know about the trail of government and UMNO Baru money being channeled unlawfully to benefit private companies and individuals at public expense. Public money (UMNO Baru, Petronas and the government), Private benefit (YTL, Air Asia, Anand Krishnan, Vincent Tan and others).

All of these guarantees and ‘loans’ (largesse of Mahathir’s government) were made and given without proper parliamentary scrutiny, reporting or disclosures required under law for such transactions and ‘favours’.

Why was there no corruption probe and subsequent trial into any of these transactions by UMNO Baru or their supporter beneficiaries of UMNO Baru and Mahathir’s government ?

UMNO Baru is coming under increasing scrutiny and heat to explain the unauthorised flow of money from Petronas, UMNO Baru’s coffers to individuals and politicians and their side kicks over the past 7 decades.

The qualifications of someone like Rafidah Aziz to sit on Air Asia’s board, the right of wealthy Chinese and Indian businessmen to benefit from billions of dollars of cheap loans from UMNO Baru’s treasure chest whilst many Malays and the national economy go begging for scraps, flies squarely in the face of the claim that only Malays are privileged in Malaysia.

There is ample material on the Mahathir years, on the Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank Bumi scandal, the Port Klang Free Trade Zone, Malaysian Airlines, Air Asia and other large scale projects funded with government money approved by government (under UMNO Baru) researched and compiled by “a large media organization of investigative journalists” could blow many in Malaysia’s government (and its opposition) out of the water.

But they won’t because there is a sinister hand at play behind the seemingly unnoticed corruption that riddles Malaysia helped by that unseen hand of the US funded NED.

MALAYSIA WILL FAIL BEFORE IT GETS BETTER– MORE TROUBLE LIES AHEAD

There is a view. and it is one that cannot be ignored, that significant pressure has been exerted on the ICIJ (International Consortium of Independent Journalists) by the US state department and certain powerful individuals not to release any of the information they hold on Malaysia’s institutionalized corruption from the Mahathir years. There is good reason for it.

George Soros and the Clinton Foundation (currently being wound up too late) who backs the ICIJ want to demolish the real UMNO (as opposed to UMNO Baru) by completely destroying Datuk Seri Najib and his wife first.

THE ROMANIAN EXPERIMENT– NAJIB AND ROSMA

Demonize them first then destroy them.

Soros’ first experiment in mobilizing opposition by using significant minorities (Gypsies or Roma and Hungarians of Transylvania) in Romania into a lethal movement that toppled the Caucescue government.

The immediate aftermath of that mob rampage funded and fuelled by Soros and the CIA was a frenzied mock trial (completely illegal and unconstitutional) of the Caucescues.

What followed was a media celebrated lynching of Nicolaue Ceausescu and Elena before a hastily assembled firing squad.

The Romanian experiment turned Romania into a case study for Soros and the CIA to be repeated the world over in from Yugoslavia to Tunisia, from Egypt to Thailand, from Malaysia to Hong Kong where only the Asians managed to stave off the influence of Soros and the CIA because of China’s covert intervention and some resistance from locals.

Bersih and the other 80 or so Soros/ US funded regime changers have not quite finished with DS Najib. They have run UMNO from behind the scenes using their agents of influence like those who sit on boards of large corporations and influence the destruction of Malaysia’s economy.

Unless the Malays and concerned UMNO supporters raise their voices in the trials of DS Najib, Datin Rosma and Zahid, all of them (the Malays) the Malays are doomed to return to the days of being peons and drivers for the wealthy Malays and Chinese.

A real fear is that DS Najib and Rosma will be turned against each other. Najib’s star is rising. No one wants him to be leader again lest he unleash his revenge on those who betrayed him and the country.

Nicola and Elena Caucescue were in the process of spring cleaning their government when Gorbachev’s political recklessness gave Soros and the CIA the opportunity to engage in their own spring cleaning in Romania and use Romania as their lab for regime change. For a time they succeeded.

How Deep was UMNO Baru’s Role in Funding 9/11 and the USS Cole Bombing?

As the controversy into Bank Negara’s handling of black money laundered through secret banking destinations like Singapore hots up domestically, its failure to report billions of dollars of suspicious transactions that flowed through it has investigators abroad from as far away as Israel and the US taking a closer look into the Bank and its former governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

It is widely known though not necessarily in Malaysia, that Khalid Amdhilar, Nawaf Alhazmi and two others identified as two of the 9/11 plotters stayed with a former major of the Royal Malaysian Armed Force in Cheras on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur prior to 9/11.

What is not as widely known is that 4 US intelligence agencies, amongst these the FBI and the CIA were actively trailing 6 of the Arab hijackers of the 9/11 aircraft in Kuala Lumpur trailing them and monitoring all of their local movements and contacts.

The 9/11 commission report out of sheer embarrassment avoided any direct mention of the intelligence operations in any great length or depth for two specific reasons.

The CIA and FBI both had the opportunity to nab the hijackers in either Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Bangkok after they split into 2 groups upon leaving Malaysia. They failed to do so.

The FBI and the CIA in competing to take credit for capturing the Arab hijackers (as wanted men) in the process, failed to share vital information about the Arab extremists, their movements, whereabouts and any intelligence about their activities and networks in Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Bangkok between themselves.

It was a fatal and disastrous element of pettiness on the part of the intelligence agencies which also exposed their weaknesses, this being the second reason.

However lawyers acting for the families of victims of 9/11 assisted by former operatives of the CIA and the FBI have begun to work to uncover Bank Negara’s negligence, Zeti’s (and her colleagues)failures and those of the Malaysian government under UMNO Baru in the process.

This is now an inescapable feature of the Zeti Bank Negara axis that demands investigation into Bank Negara and how it operated under Zeti. The unauthorised, unlawful transfer of large amounts of money in suspicious transactions from 2000-2016 at least when Zeti was in charge of the Bank cannot now be ignored.

Zeti can’t simply wash her hands of these transactions now because she has already assisted the government in disclosing DS Najib’s personal banking transactional details and transactions said to be connected to it and 1MDB.

She can’t be selective about what she realeses and what she does not unless of course there are matters of state security involved. And if they are, parliament must be informed of it first to determine whether the Bank and Zeti are justified in refusing to release important documentary evidence evidening large suspicious financial transactions. And there have been many.

The purpose of that meeting in Kuala LUmpur between the 6 Arab extremists and others meeting at that place in Cheras in 2000 was to plan amongst other things, the final stages of the attack on the twin towers and the attack on the USS Cole. That intelligence is not going anywhere in a hurry.

The flow of funds to various “Islamic charities” and “foundations” was channeled through ‘donours’ in Malaysia. Petronas and UMNO are not just believed but known to have been on the FBI’s radar in this regard  at the time. But the FBI failed to inform the CIA and the money trail was not properly investigated then.

Malaysia resisted any inquiry at the time into either of the Saudis who came to Malaysia or the financial transactions (quite large) out of Malaysia to Singapore and other foreign banks at the time. There are reasons for it.

Investigators and lawyers in the US on behalf of the families of 9/11 victims and Israeli investigators are known to be still on the trail of a group of Malaysian and Singaporean bankers and at least 2 cabinet ministers of the Malaysian government who at the time arranged for large amounts of money (purportedly diverted from Petronas) paid to Arab extremist groups as ‘donations’ just prior to 9/11. Bank Negara covered up those transactions. And theyn were not acting alone.

Bank Negara knew or ought to have questioned the source and purpose of those funds and transactions at the time because it involved the transfer of large amounts of cash from Malaysian banks to hitherto unknown recipients. However Bank Negara failed to report it or raise any suspicion about the transactions. There was no 9/11 anti terrorism laws in place at the time. But money laundering laws were in place.

Lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims are believed to be hot on the trail of those transactions and those involved in it in Malaysia. They are being assisted by locals some from inside UMNO because of the large bounty available for such information. Thus far none of the lawyers representing the victims of 9/11 will publicly comment on the Malaysian connection inquiry except to say “inquiries are on going”.

Jack Abramoff the disgraced Washington based lobbyist for Malaysia was paid millions of dollars to keep any inquiry into the Malaysian connection into the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 away from the media and US investigators. Jack Abrahmoff was convicted and jailed in the US in 2006 for 6 years.

Abramoff collected money from Mahathir’s government to fund Jewish charities one of which included a sniper’s school in the west bank. He later went on to purchasing a $200,000,000 floating casino (partly funded by and UMNO subsidiary it is said).

The families of the victims of 9/11 are not going to let UMNO Baru or Mahathir or those who may have funded the 9/11 and USS Cole operations walk. Whether their involvement was intentionally or not -it is known that much of the money including funds to Abramoff was Petronas funds channeled illegally via members of UMNO Baru and bankers connected to them at the time.

It won’t be long before lawyers for the families of the victims of 9/11 come knocking at UMNO’s and Bank Negara’s door in search of details the Bank with held from investigators. Zeti Akhtar will have difficulty denying them an answer.

UMNO Baru and Zeti Akhtar Aziz have a lot to answer for their roles in money laundering for support of the 9/11 hijackers. She was once the darling of many in the US but not anymore. It is now becoming clearer why.

UMNO AT THE CROSSROADS (Pt 1)

A seismic seminal event occurred a few weeks ago on the way to the forum. Zeti Akhtar Aziz former controversial governor of Malaysia’s Central Bank  disclosed publicly certain facts about suspicious large financial transactions (SLFT) related to the 1MDB scandal whilst defending allegations that her family may have also been beneficiaries of that same scandal tainted money. But what about the other hundreds of millions of dollars in SLFT’s she had a duty to report but failed to?

At around the same time, the statesman prince Tenku Razaleigh Hamza a veteran of Malaysian politics, urbane, educated and highly respected, threw down the gauntlet to Malaysia’s largest political party the United Malay Nationalist Organization (now UMNO Baru) to validate their legitimacy in parliament  in a challenge to the late Justice Harun’s decision to invalidate the legitimacy of the original UMNO of 1946.

Mired for decades in controversy and corruption, the UMNO Tenku Razaleigh was confronting was not the UMNO of 1946. Instead his challenge was directed to the more recently created UMNO in its place UMNO Baru. UMNO Baru is the by product of a divisive and controversial former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed. The new UMNO although appropriating to itself the same acronym by which UMNO (1946) is known is not the same as the 1946 model.

UMNO Baru has dominated Malaysian politics for decades and has become a by word for financial scandals, tribalism and for having abandoned the economically disadvantaged and rural Malays. Not for good government. UMNO Baru is also characterized by the cult of patronage, corruption and scandal, and for leading the country into turmoil and to its first defeat in over 6 decades of government at the 2018 general elections.

Decades of internal squabbling within UMNO Baru, has crippled the machinery of government so much so that the judiciary, parliament and the reserve bank (Bank Negara) have all become mired in corruption in stark contrast to their sworn obligations to upholding the constitution, transparency, independence and integrity within the law. Neither parliament, Bank Negara nor the courts observe their respective obligations or honour their commitments to the people or to the constitution today.

Although volumes have been written about the sin of corruption engulfing government, none has yet come close to identifying with any degree of specificity, the source and nature of the problem in any substantive way.

Malaysia’s courts, its parliament and the legal system are in convulsion. Gripped by a paralysis of fear and ignorance, they each have to guess what their powers, limitations and roles are in a parliamentary democracy to simply survive. And if the courts, the legal system and parliament can’t get it right, you know the country is in trouble.

Tenku Razaleigh’s courage in standing up to the issues that confronts political instability in Malaysia is like rain upon a barren desert landscape. Unexpected yet subtle, it is welcomed for the promise it brings with it. The only reason UMNO Baru and the opposition have not yet responded to his speech is that they have been taken by surprise.

Delegitimization of the old UMNO and appropriation of its assets by UMNO Baru is on any reading of Justice Harun’s decision 30 years on is not only reversable and a bad decision but a seminal legal wrongdoing as well. That decision was conceptually flawed. A review of that decision will not only open up a can of worms, it will release the bats out of hell.

What’s been described by some observers as reclaiming the “Golden Fleece” snatched from the Malays some 30 years ago perhaps, lies at the root of UMNO’s internal problems. In truth it goes much further than that.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz holds the keys to resolving the other half of the equation at the core of Malaysia’s problems stemming from financial corruption. The Bank holds vital records to many SLFT’s executed in inexplicable circumstances, benefiting certain individuals and organizations which must see the light of day for scrutiny. That obligation on Zeti and the Bank is unavoidable.

A myriad of SLFT’s  that have never been previously reported by Bank Negara, which Zeti as governor ought to have known and reported remain ignored and undisclosed. Recent selective disclosures by her and the Bank appear to have been politically motivated.

The real fear that grips parliament, UMNO Baru and government from Zeti’s and Tengku Razaleigh’s separate though unintendedly convergent actions is this: that disclosures of SLSFT’s spanning decades, will reveal the extent of illegality and financial corruption on an industrial scale within government and UMNO Baru. And with such disclosures of the extent of corruption especially within UMNO Baru will bring the organization down.

Tengku Razaleigh and UMNO Baru are each acutely aware of that ticking timebomb within UMNO Baru and Bank Negara’s records since Zeti’s selective disclosure of those records relating to 1MDB.

This is Tunku Razaleigh’s nuclear option. UMNO Baru is vulnerable. The Bank Negara and in particular Zeti Akthar Azis is vulnerable to investigation on undisclosed financial transactions not only those relating to UMNO cronies, the Petronas transfers but also and more importantly those relating to funding of extremist Arab Islamist groups. The opposition can’t take any comfort in this situation as it too is vulnerable.

Tenku Razaleigh now confronts the damage done by Justice Harun’s decision to Malaysia’s majority, its Malays, in creating UMNO Baru (the refuge of the urban elite). This is a matter that’s been lying dormant at the heart and heat of an internecine decades old battle for that “Golden Fleece”, UMNO. The real UMNO and its vast asset base that is.

What can be implied from Tengku Razaleigh’s recent move is this. He has the keys to unlocking that door behind which lies a panacea for root causes of the nation’s woes. Exposing the naked truth of corruption. It is a relatively simple solution he offers to a complex web of problems. So what was it that caused Tengku Razaleigh to spit the dummy?

Fueling Tengku Razaleigh’s tour de force is that much maligned ‘elephant in the room’ Zeti’s explosive though selective disclosure of details of the 1MDB transactions which condemned DS Najib. Zeti’s disclosures of alleged financial impropriety by the former prime minister, the consequences of which she hardly expected or foresaw has exploded in her and in UMNO Baru’s hands.

Her disclosures has added to the impetus of Tengku Razaleigh’s drive to a clean-up politics and government and with it UMNO Baru and its political structure. Many of whom do not have a legal right to sit in parliament. Zeti’s disclosures on 1MDB has politicized the Bank and her role in it. The Bank and she are now bound to reveal the rest of the available evidence of years of suspicious LSFT’s from corrupt activities in the Bank’s possession. The disclosures will not rattle UMNO Baru alone. Opposition members seeking to benefit from such disclosures are themselves vulnerable.