Malaysian Traitor

How Najib Sold Out Malaysia To China

www.sarawakreport.org
Najib Razak Arrested Again Over Corruption Scandal

The latest six charges laid against Najib and his trusty lieutenant, Treasury secretary-general Irwan Serigar Abdullah, confirm again how blatantly the previous prime minister and his government were prepared to lie in the face of evidence leaked by brave insiders to Sarawak Report.
They also lay bare the outrageous extent to which this former prime minister was willing to rob his country, laying it open to China's economic imperialism, which was naturally quite happy to suck Malaysia into a vortex of debt that would have destroyed the nation’s independence.
Way back in 2016 Sarawak Report published the secret agreement that lay behind the sudden inflation of the budget for the East Coast Rail Link to double the original proposed cost of $30 billion. 

 The secret deal with China’s state owned CCCC (China Communications Construction Company) laid out in clear detail (including amounts and dates) how the repayments on the debts owed by 1MDB were to be concealed through those inflated figures.
The Chinese government had effectively sanctioned the corrupt deal, offering Najib a 2% loan and various up-front incentives, after Najib’s fugitive proxy Jho Low negotiated the terms on his behalf in Beijing. 

 And, as the figures showed, Jho Low had taken care to look after himself in the process by apparently using the deal to also purchase shares in companies he had originally bought using 1MDB’s stolen money.
Najib and his ministers, including then Public Works Minister, Sarawak’s Fadillah Yusof, (brother to Bustari Yusof a key collaborator of Najib and major recipient of money diverted from 1MDB) at the time claimed the story was nonsense.
However, within just a few weeks Najib had visited China and signed off on exactly the contract terms that had been leaked to Sarawak Report for the now massively expensive rail project that experts predicted could never be made profitable for Malaysia.
And this week, following the new charges, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has made clear that the money to fund 1MDB’s loan repayments was being funneled through the project just as had been detailed in Sarawak Report. 

Inflated pipe line projects in East Malaysia were being employed for the same reason.
Further tranches of cash were also purloined using an inflated and unnecessary land purchase by Bank Negara (no wonder the long standing deputy resigned) and, perhaps even more disgracefully, a straight theft of money from BRIM, the payments supposed to alleviate the lives of the poor.

Given Najib had time and again boasted of BRIM to curry votes it is particularly notable that he was prepared to raid it to pay for the massive hole in 1MDB accounts punctured by thefts used, for example, to pay for his step-son’s production of Wolf of Wall Street and Jho Low’s massive payment of a quarter of a billion dollars for one of the world’s largest super-yachts.
And yet today the ex-PM’s lawyer (Shafee Abdullah, himself facing charges for laundering money from 1MDB and failing to declare tax) called the charges laughable. 

Few others in Malaysia are likely to see the joke as the sums officially misappropriated by Najib have leapt by a further staggering RM6.6 BILLION to RM 9 BILLION (and rising).

The list of 1MDB repayments agreed with amounts and dates as part of the secret deal with CCCC to inflate the cost of the ECRL by over 100%

The Global Pariah

Canada Blocks Chinese Takeover on Security Concerns

By Alexandra Stevenson

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government have blocked the sale of a construction company to a Chinese interest.
HONG KONG — Canada has blocked a $1 billion takeover of a construction company by a state-controlled Chinese company over national security concerns, a rare move by a government that until now has largely welcomed such deals despite growing skepticism over Chinese money elsewhere.
The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said late on Wednesday that it stopped the deal for the Aecon Group, a construction company that helped to build the landmark CN Tower in Toronto, following a review that began earlier this year.
The deal became politically charged after members of Canada’s opposition party raised concerns about Aecon’s access to government contracts — particularly in the nuclear power industry — and the Chinese company’s ties to the Chinese state.
“As is always the case, we listened to the advice of our national security agencies throughout the multistep national security review process under the Investment Canada Act,” Navdeep Bains, the Canadian minister of innovation, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Aecon said the company was “aware of the government’s decision and will be issuing a response in due course.”
Chinese companies are increasingly facing hurdles as they go overseas to spread their wealth and acquire technology. 

Governments from Germany to the United States and Canada are pushing back, citing national security concerns.
These companies have faced the greatest test in the United States, where a series of deals have been blocked by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal body that reviews proposals by foreign-owned entities to buy American companies.
The Trump and Obama administrations have expressed concerns over Chinese investments in American companies in areas where China has made clear it wants to be a dominant player, like artificial intelligence. 

Washington officials have stymied a series of Chinese deals, including the acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor by a China-backed investors in September.
The overseas unit of the China Communications Construction Company, a publicly listed company in which the Chinese government is a majority owner, made a bid for Aecon in October in a deal that Aecon said would help it to expand overseas.
But by February of this year, the government said it wanted to review the deal by CCCI, the overseas arm of CCCC, under the Canada’s National Security Review of Investments Act. 

In Canada, any deal involving a state-owned company worth more than 398 million Canadian dollars, or about $310 million, can be subject to a review if the government believes it could be “injurious to national security.”
On Wednesday, the government said it blocked the deal that based on its findings “in order to protect national security,” without elaborating.
“Our government is open to international investment that creates jobs and increases prosperity, but not at the expense of national security,” Mr. Bains said.
The Canadian government did not give details about its decision, but one of the biggest hurdles facing the deal, according to analysts, was Aecon’s contract for Canada’s Candu nuclear reactors, which generate electric power.
Earlier this year, Canada’s Conservative Party called for a review of the deal and raised concerns about Aecon’s contracts with both the military and the nuclear industry. 

Members of Parliament also cited bribery allegations against one of CCCC’s units in Bangladesh. 

In January, the finance minister of Bangladesh said it was blacklisting China Harbour Engineering Company, a subsidiary of CCCC, after allegations arose that it tried to bribe an official.
CCCC is controlled by the Chinese state.
The giant engineering and construction firm has generated controversy in other countries, too. 

CCCC has been involved in China’s program to build artificial islands in the South China Sea, something that has become a growing source of tension between China and Western countries.
The World Bank also banned CCCC from making bids for projects for eight years until 2017 following a bid-rigging scandal in the Philippines.