Photo has tongues wagging over Sarawak Report expose
(The Star) – A photo of Datuk Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan and Sarawak Report founder Clare Rewcastle Brown has raised suspicion of his involvement in the whistleblower’s recent expose on 1Malaysia Development Bhd.
A search by The Star found that it was Khairuddin, a vocal critic of the 1MDB, who uploaded the photo on his Facebook on July 1 after their meeting in London and chatting about the arrest of former PetroSaudi International Ltd executive Xavier Andrea Justo.
Justo, a Swiss national, was arrested by Thai police for allegedly leaking company secrets to SR.
Khairuddin, former Batu Kawan Umno deputy chief, wrote that Brown confirmed that SR lawyers sent a notice to the cyber intelligence company, Protection Group International (PGI), to verify if PGI was involved in a New Straits Times (NST) report that the SR article was based on documents that was falsified by Justo.
Khairuddin and his actress trophy wife
“Unfortunately, PGI failed to verify whether the source revealed in NST’s article was from their company,” said Khairuddin in his post.
He questioned why PGI would not verify that it sent the statement (to NST) if they were the ones that stated Justo’s documents were fake.
“Clare Brown confirmed that the facts in her articles have nothing to do with the information from Justo,” said Khairuddin.
“The writings in Sarawak Report are based on authentic and accurate information.
“If the articles are based on false facts why didn’t 1MDB or Putrajaya take legal action against Sarawak Report or her as the editor?” Khairuddin said.
Dr Mahathir at Khairuddin’s wedding
Khairuddin said Putrajaya had jumped the gun by stating that the documents were not authentic even before the Thai police release their report.
“Another thing that is weird is that Thai police said that Justo is detained on the basis of blackmail and not for leaking documents or falsifying information,” he said.
A few days after Khairuddin’s post, Sarawak Report and The Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that almost US$700mil (RM2.63bil) of 1MDB funds went into Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s personal accounts.
Khairuddin on Friday then challenged Najib to lodge a police report and take legal action against Sarawak Report and Wall Street Journal to clear his name of the allegations.
Attempts to contact Khairuddin for comment were unsuccessful.
SR in February alleged that businessman Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, engineered PetroSaudi’s US$2.5bil joint venture with 1MDB in 2009 in order to siphon off US$700mil from the deal.
It also said the US$1.5 billion in assets PetroSaudi had injected into the joint venture did not actually belong to the firm.
The joint venture deal ended six months later, with 1MDB’s investment of US$1 billion converted into Mubaraha notes, which 1MDB president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy has said was paid back in full.
However, NST quoted PGI saying that the documents stolen from PetroSaudi by Justo and published by the Sarawak Report was doctored.
