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As I see it | It’s important Malaysian justice is seen to be done. Even if it’s Jho Low and Najib Razak
- It’s easy to read about the alleged exploits of the two men and the 1MDB scandal in press reports and the bestselling Billion Dollar Whale Book
- But justice takes place in the courts and everyone has a right to due process. On current evidence, Najib’s lawyers are right to say US actions are denying him a fair trial in Malaysia
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A friend aware of my abiding interest in Malaysia texted me recently seeking urgent answers after having gone down a rabbit hole over the multibillion-dollar 1MDB financial scandal.
She had read Billion Dollar Whale, the international bestseller by former Wall Street Journal journalists Bradley Hope and Tom Wright that details the high-level impunity that went on in the case.
Unsatisfied, she also watched documentaries that added sound and colour to the tales of audacity among the key protagonists as they went about stealing from the Malaysian state fund between 2009 and 2015.
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How is it that in this day and age, my friend asked me at the end of her knowledge binge, that the alleged architect of the plot – fugitive businessman Jho Low – remained at large?
Aren’t the transnational transgressions so severe that countries’ law enforcement agencies would put their differences aside and work together to locate him?
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She also wondered how and why Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister from 2009 to 2018, remained free after being convicted and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in the first of a series of trials linking him to the case.
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