PETALING JAYA: Lim Kit Siang has egged Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak on again. This time, the DAP adviser is pushing the former prime minister to speak up on claims by the US Department Of Justice (DOJ) that 1MDB funds had been used to lobby and bribe US officials to drop the US DOJ’s litigation on the investment board.
Najib had come out with at least five FaceBook postings, but not a single one on the US DOJ bombshell on the latest 1MDB developments, Lim said today.
“Malaysians are entitled to know what Najib has to say with regard to the US DOJ revelations in the US courts that hundreds of millions of ringgit from the 1MDB scam had been deployed not only to influence DOJ’s investigation into the 1MDB scandal, but even to secure the US President, Donald Trump, to drop the US DOJ kleptocratic proceedings on 1MDB altogether,” Lim said in a statement.
“Several individuals, including a former DOJ staff, George Higginbotham, had been bribed to lobby high-level government officials on the US DOJ probe on the 1MDB scandal.”
Lim pointed out that Higginbotham had pleaded guilty to aiding the “principal architect” behind the 1MDB scheme, by conspiring to deceive US banks of the source and purpose of tens of millions of US dollars sent from overseas to finance a lobbying campaign on behalf of foreign interests.
According to the Nov. 30 proceedings in the District of Columbia District Court, four seizures from several accounts totalling US$73 million were made from the period between January to July 2018, the DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri said.
“The court proceedings also referred to meetings of the conspirators with Jho Low (Low Taek Jho) in Thailand and Macau,” Lim said.
“What is particularly interesting is Paragraph 30 of the ‘Verified Complaint for Forfeiture In Rem’ for the four seizures totalling US$73 million, where US DOJ made the revelation that in August 2017, Jho Low and the conspirators even prepared ‘talking points’ for Najib’s meeting with US President Donald Trump which took place in early September 2017.”
