1MDB - A RM20 BILLION FINANCIAL MELTDOWN FIASCO WAITING TO HAPPEN? WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE PAKATAN IN & NAJIB & BUMNO/BN OUT, OUT, OUT TO OBLIVION!

by bernie madhoff, Donplaypuks® intrepid genius financial correspondent for $20 billion james bond affairs

Malaysians have plenty to worry about 1MDB's bond issues totaling some RM20 billion to-date, 100% guaranteed by you and me through sovereign gurantees so generously approved by PM Najib. According to KiniBiz (CLICK HERE), there are allegations that 1MDB's secretive and over-the-odds ways of pricing bonds and raising funds and investing may well be laying the foundation for a giant ponzi scheme sting.

Originally, 1MDB was called TIA (Terengganu Investment Authority). The Federal Government was supposed to pay TIA the royalties due from Petronas to Terengganu, to be invested in a sovereign fund, for the benefit of its people. Najib then hijacked the idea, cancelled TIA and created 1MDB, a Federal entity under his control, now supposedly a sovereign fund for the benefit of all Malaysians. 

This of course completely ignored and bypassed Khazanah, the Government's investment arm, since that's exactly what it is supposed to do - invest Taxpayer's money in viable projects for the benefit of all Malaysians. But then cunning, thief-minded and serially lying Najib did not wish for TIA, with its billions of ringgit, to be managed at State level in a transparent and accountable manner. Our former Agong and King of Terengganu had already as far back as 2008 shown his independent mind by refusing to accept UMNO's preferred candidate for the post of Menteri Besar (Chief Minister). By moving it to Federal level, Najib could manipulate the funds in total secrecy without worrying about Terengganu and Royal whistleblowers.

When IMDB's CEO, Directors, "Advisors" and Trustees (one of whom is PM Najib) all bleat the same tune - that the accounts have been audited by an international firm, and filed in accordance with company law - we have much to worry about. Not only because these accounts filed with the ROC (Registrar of Companies) are in the abbreviated form. Such accounts do not tell us who the bonds were issued to at fanciful discounts and interest rates, why funds were raised overseas at interest rates way above international norms or why foreign countries are issuing default guarantees and at what reward to them. These audited accounts cannot explain why 1MDB paid over the odd premiums (billions of ringgit) to acquire IPP's (Independent Power Producers) owned by UMNO-linked cronies and that are due to expire in a few years,when by holding out they could have it for a song!

Most importantly, it does not tells us if 1MDB was forced to appoint a certain local bank controlled by the brother of a prime minister, with exclusive rights to its bond issues. Tellingly also, 1MDB's detailed audited accounts are not posted at its website at http://www.1mdb.com.my/.

Consider that PKFZ was also audited by reputable audit firms; yet today our Government is staring at the possibility of a total bailout bill of RM12.4 billion, having already forked out RM4 billion to save blunders and crony and crooked dealings by UMNO and MCA at Ministerial and Cabinet level, and fraud at corporate level. 

Remember too that when the sub-prime and CDO crises hit the United States of America in 2008, necessitating a US$700 BILLION bailout of Wall St. and banks, the CEO's of Lehmann Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch, AIG, Citibank, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac etc, ALL, without fail, also claimed their accounts had been audited by the "Big Four" and filed in full compliance of all laws.

But in USA Congressional and Senate hearings, evidence of massive fraud and financial mismanagement surfaced. All the CEOs had to offer, while lying blatantly with a poker faces, is that they had been sincere in their dealings and decisions i.e. $700 billion dollars of it. If sincerity were gold, there would be another Klondike-like stampede among the "financial experts" in USA and Europe to trade and gamble on it, while blaming China if they lost money.

Here is another huge reason to worry about. Najib and 1MDB are courting the same "financial experts" in their clandestine wheelings and dealings. Thieves of a feather, surely flock together? And who is PM Najib most relying on - Goldman Sachs whose CEO Lloyd Blankfein, at the height of the USA CDO crisis, saw no conflict of interest in speedily short-selling the very shares he was urging his clients to buy at huge premiums!

And the sure kiss of death? Our PAC (Public Accounts Committee) pronounced that "1MDB acounts are healthy and in order". CLICK HERE. This is the PAC also under the chairmanship of Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid which determined there was no hanky-panky in the RM8 billion Scorpene Submarine purchases contracts despite the gruesome murder of Mongolian Altantuya. CLICK HERE. The PAC also found nothing wrong in defence purchase of MIG fighter aircrafts totalling over $2 billion, where some $300 million of commissions were diverted by a procurement agent and ex-thief Minister of Melaka, to a fake off-shore company to deceive his partners!

The simple balance sheet facts about 1MDB are as follows:

1. Paid Up Capital - RM1 million

2. Total Bonds issued to-date - RM20 Billion

3. Total Investments and Cash/Profits - RM20 billion

From this, it is clear that:

1. The money that Petronas/Najib promised TIA, some RM2-4 billion a year, has not been paid into 1MDB's bank account. Where has it all disappeared to?  What on earth is Najib doing, allowing 1MDB to gear up at the rate of 20,000 times its paid up capital of RM1 million?

2. Why were all these bonds issued overseas? Surely, with 6% annual bond interest, Najib could have created a 1M Trust Sovereign Fund exclusively for Malaysians to invest in. Which Malaysian would not want to invest in such a fund, out of sheer patriotism? After all, not even the EPF pays 6% interest to its shareholders. More worryingly, Indonesia's central bank sold 10 and 30-year US$ denominated bonds 3 weeks ago with a yield of 3.5%. What on earth was 1MDB doing floating 6% bonds, and that at a discount of 20%?

3. Why raise funds in US$ overseas for ringgit denominated investments and development projects in Malaysia, such as the  RM26 billion TRX (Tun Razak Exchange) and the 196-hectare Bandar Malaysia mixed -development real estate development?

4. With bond interest averaging 6%, 1MDB will have to generate at the bare minimum, about RM1.2 billion a year to service debt. What is 1MDB's projected income and profit over the next 20 years, to justify debt vs minimum acceptable returns of 10% on its investments? IMDB's CEO is of course playing around with semantics by claiming it has no loans. A rose by any other name, smells the same. Call it bond or loans, it is ALL DEBT which is guaranteed 100% now by us, the Taxpayer.

5. By signing up with indecent haste the old and expiring IPP's, Najib has tied the hands of any new incoming government. With 55% electricity reserves, we do not need old or new IPP's. Since all IPP's require a guaranteed power purchasing contract with Tenaga to operate, once again Tenaga will be robbed blind to the tune of RM 15-20 billion a year purchasing electricity from IPP's it does not and will not need! But Najib, in his vindictive crony oriented endeavours, forgets that such transactions can be reversed if they are not in the public interest, fraud is proved or inducements (illegal commissions and bribes) paid to certain parties to bulldoze through the acquisitions.

6. Questions have also been posed to the CEO and Board of Directors of 1MDB if the off-shore incorporated PetroSaudi Corporation is the real McCoy, or as in the case of MIG fighter planes and ex-Thief Minister of Melaka, a fake entity created and headed by nominees, for the benefit of UMNO and its cronies.

7. It should worry everyone that among 1MDB's "advisors" is Nor Mohd Yakcop, now chief of the EPU (Economic Plundering Unit) under PM Najib's control. Nor Mohamed was the man who was sacked in the early '90's as chief forex trader of BNM (Bank Negara Malaysia) for creating losses said to be ranging anywhere from RM6 billion to RM30 billion!! With then PM Mahathir's connivance, the losses were originally illegally hidden in the accounts by netting off against revaluation surpluses from gold and other assets. The scandal only came to light when Lim Kit Siang of DAP (Democratic Action Party) astutely discovered the huge hole in BNM's balance sheet and forced Mahathir to admit the fiasco in Parliament. One may well ask what Nor Mohamed is doing back in Government, especially since no RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry) has been held to determine if massive fraud was involved in a case which nearly wiped out all of Malaysia's reserves!!

8. We should not forget how Sime Darby had to write-off over RM4 billion in its power & energy forays in Saudi and the Middle East. All the JV contracts were one-sided and drafted in Arabic which were badly translated, and proper due diligence was sacrificed to satisfy "more speed, less haste national service" calls by Badawi and Najib. Sime lost its case in the Saudi courts. Something like this is likely to surface if any of 1MDB's overseas investments in JV with PetroSaudi, Abu Dhabi or Qatar goes sour. Najib is bending so low in courting the Arabs as to shamelessly expose his total nakedness.

There are literally hundreds of questions that worried financial analysts and Malaysians would like the answers to, vis-a-vis 1MDB and its furtive operations. By stonewalling and hiding behind carefully worded PRspeak and civil service/civil serpent mentality waffle, 1MDB is not endearing itself to us. They can tell us (their 100% funders and owners) the truth, nicely and voluntarily, in a forthright manner, or be prepared to be dragged off in chains later (as soon as next month) and forcibly be made to talk! Are you with the Government of Thieves, or with the Rakyat? The choice is your, 1MDB!

Donplaypuks® with our RM20 billion, man!

HINDRAF OR BLOODY HINDRANCE? IF THEY SIDE UMNO/BN, VOTE HINDRAF OUT!

by mahatma manu, Donplaypuks® intrepid correspondent for hindu affairs

HINDRAF or The Hindu Rights Action Force burst forth on the Malaysian political landscape in 2007 like a blazing comet from the Kuiper Belt. It dealt such a forceful blow to UMNO's (United Malay National Organisation) solar plexus as to knock the wind out of its lungs, body and sails completely, and  lay it flat out on the ground, paralysed for a few days.

UMNO never saw it coming. Malaysians never saw it coming. 

For once, some Malaysian Indians showed huge gutsy balls! 

Ground to dust by UMNO and the MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) which was (correctly) seen as increasingly, if not already wholly, representing the personal financial interests of party leader Samy Velu and his cronies, HINDRAF rose majestically, to restore pride and dignity to the vast numbers of marginalised Malaysian Indians, who number some 2.2 million or 7%-8% out of a total population of 28 million.

The MIC and its leaders were (again correctly) perceived as spineless and consummate brown-tonguing and brown-nosing (read as UMNO arse-licking) artistes who had since1981 when Mahathir became Prime Minister, allowed, through sheer lack of cojones, UMNO to walk and trample over the rights of Malaysian Indians, like Serbians over Bosnian Muslims in 1995. What happened to Malaysian Indians between 1981 and 2007 in economic and social terms, was not quite a kind of ethnic cleansing or attempted genocide, as claimed by HINDRAF. Nevertheless, it smacked of carefully orchestrated acts of economic, educational and jobs deprivation, and religious and racial bigotry promoted by rogue leaders within UMNO. Illegally deploying taxpayer's money to fund government department BTN (Biro Tata Negara) courses to brainwash the minds of the mainly Malay-dominant (85%) civil service employees into embracing the Ketuanan (Lord of The Land) concept, and that the Malaysian Indians and Chinese were "pendatang" (immigrants), and by inference, inferior citizens not deserving of equal respect or treatment the Constitution notwithstanding, is as racist an agenda as the regimes of Hitler or Stalin had conceived and promoted.

UMNO was so shocked out of its skin that any Malaysian Indian would actually stand up for his human rights, that its pathetic leaders like PM Badawi ran around like chickens with their heads chopped off. Who the hell, UMNO leaders demanded to know, HINDRAF thought it was? Who the hell were these Malaysian Indians who had the temerity to organise and demonstrate peacefully against the "caring and fair" UMNO government? UMNO, like its former leader Mahathir, at once suffered from a (as is usual) bout of selective amnesia syndrome, forgetting that it was the police who, without an iota of provocation whatsoever, turned on on the pepper spray and tear gas apparatus.

The laws of public assembly had been breached with impunity, and at that, by, how dare they, good God, low class Indians? That law was of course, an ass, and completely ultra vires the right of peaceable assembly guaranteed in our Constitution. But do remember that we are living in the era of PM Grossemajib and Najibonomics, where UMNO thinks nothing of blowing $160 million ringgit to to dubious and shadowy foreign organizations like APCO and FBC, to spindoctor that black is white, and that we are 1Malaysia, but with 3 or 4 or any number of arbitrary systems that suits UMNO. This kind of wretched spindoctoring rhetoric goes back a good 60 years when the War Office was replaced by the Ministry of Defence, and the Department of Unemployment, by the Ministry of Labour, in the United Kingdom. UMNO/BN being an organisation of mindless copycats, has predictably followed suit.

UMNO lost huge face, publicly. UMNO's embarrassment and shame in handling and treating Malaysian Indians like second-class citizens was palpable. So, predictably too, mindless and Stalinistic-minded UMNO, Badawi and Najib retaliated with the draconian ISA (Internal Security Act) and Sedition Act to try and silence HINDRAF leaders. Hindraf was declated illegal. They succeeded partly, through physical and psychological intimidation, in breaking up HINDRAF and forcing one of its founder-leaders, Waythamooorthy, into self-exile in London.

HINDRAF had started off  protesting against bigoted action by state authorities, primarily Selangor state under Khir Toyo's regime, in tactlessly and wantonly bulldozing down century-old Hindu temples. Most of these temples had been legally built during the British colonial era, to cater to the needs of  Indians employed in the plantation sector. Egged on further by greedy brown envelope armed and rapacious property developers, UMNO controlled state governments paid short shrift to Indian and Hindu rights. UMNO/BN really paved the way for HINDRAF to rise, when they continued to ignore the plight of displaced Indian estate workers and, disproportionately high numbers in poverty, unemployment, criminals and the poorly educated from within the Indian community.

Mahathir's and UMNO's economic pie sharing out policy of 7 for us (Malay/Bumiputra), 2 for the Chinese and 1 for others (if they can find it) was designed and constructed in its practical implementation to virtually exclude the Indian community at large (Samy Velu and MIC ruthlessly commandeered it for themselves with impunity, as they saw fit). And when it turned out after some 25 years that the reality was 7 for the Chinese (by virtue of the Ali Baba fraudtrepreneur and direct-nego non-tendered out government contract procurement legalised thieving system), 2 for the Bumiputra (in practical terms, Malay) and 1 for the others (excluding Indians), the Malaysian Indian was doomed.

So, where exactly is Hindraf today, on the eve of our General Elections, with Waythamoorthy back home on his own terms, and Uthayakumar now heading the Human Rights Party of Malaysia (HRPM)? CLICK HERE and HERE. What are their strategies? Waytha and Uthaya think that the Indians hold the balance of power in many marginal electoral constituencies, and therefore, can become Kingmakers.

One must preface this with the observation that many who fight for human rights would like to think they are on par with Gandhi and Mandela, and would go so far as to embark on hunger strikes, to emulate their heroes and show their resolve and credentials. But, the times and circumstances are different, and Gandhi and Mandela were no mere intellectual giants. Personal integrity was their calling card.

So, what are we to think of Waytha and Uthaya who having seemingly snubbed PKR and Anwar, propose to enter the fray during General Elections 13, to secure their long list of demands to redress the economic injustice committed wilfully on the Malaysian Indian since 1981, by joining forces with UMNO, incumbent PM Najib and his Government of Thieves? 

Thieves in power who have over the last 32 years, allowed the siphoing out of over a TRILLION ringgit, through gross mismanagement and wilful acts of fraud, and concealed the money overseas in Swiss, Singapore, Channle Isles, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Maldives, the Bahamas and Panama bank accounts? Thieves, who have closed one eye to countless deaths in police custody and murder and failed to instruct the IGP to investigate and charge the person(s) who ordered the killing of Altantuya? Thieves who have amassed $40 billion in personal wealth while in office as Chief Ministers, and Chief Ministers who spend $500,000 on their daughters' weddings? And money mules who when caught with $40 million of tainted, corrupt money, are let of the hook, claiming it constituted legal donation? Thieves who deliberately over-price government-linked and guaranteed bonds, to allow cronies to fraudulently cream off $2 billion from the top, and then protect them by classifying the contracts under the OSA (Official Secrets Act) and BAFIA (Banking and Financial Institutions Act)? Thief Prime Ministers who sell IC's and citizenships for money to illegal Muslim Filipino, Pakistani and Indonesian immigrants in social re-engineering experiments and then blame others for it? Thief Ministers and Prime Ministers who spend billions of ringgit on submarines, aircrafts, ships and national defence and protection equipment, and then fail to detect an "incursion" of 300 fully armed Filipino Muslim Sulus whom the Thief Home Minster declares are "non-militant and non-terrorists". Is this the kind of government any sane person would willingly be identified or be associated with?

This is the thinking of intellectual dwarfs, not giants. When you sup and sleep with the devil, your soul is damned for an eternity. When you knowingly embrace thieves, looters, plunderers, racists, religious bigots and protectors of murderers, you become guilty of the greatest crimes by association. What exactly do Waytha and Uthya think Najib will deliver to the Malaysian Indian? At a time when the country's borrowings are at an all time high ($503 billion) Najib is giving away my and your money, and claiming he's giving away his and UMNO/BN's money. How much more deceitful can any Prime Minister be? It would be wise to remember that Mahathir promised Sq Qui heaven and earth before the 1999 general elections, and then completely reneged on it after securing victory, declaring that he would not deliver on Chinese "blackmailing" terms!

So, my advise to Hindraf is simple:

1. Forget PKR IF you cannot come to an amicable compromise on a worthy partnership. But do not cut your nose to spite your face!
2. Drop Najib and UMNO/BN like a hot potato, NOW! You do not want to become an accessory after the fact to a Government of Thieves and Protector of Murderers, which is the credo of the men and women now leading UMNO/BN.
3. Contest GE 13 independently as the HRPM or as independent candidates. Then you will win our respect and votes.
4. Like PKR and DAP, move away from religion and race-based politics. The writing is on the wall.

Otherwise, my advice to all Malaysians is to vote PKR or DAP, and consign Waytha and Uthaya to the dustbin of historical footnotes. Let Gandhi not turn in his grave or Mandela expire from a premature heart attack.

Waytha and Uthaya, we may have only this one opportunity to change this country for the better, for all. Don't blow it by allowing ego and false pride to cloud your minds and judgement over who you you will forge a political alliance with. 

Donplaypuks® with a Government of Thieves, man!