Government not taking the necessary action to really address some of the structural issues we listen i still think that air travel is the safest mode of travel and to spend that we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter. Guilty of the corruption former malaysian Prime Minister a sentence of more than a decade in prison councilor jeepers accolades and involvement in the one g. B. Scandal so could this be a step towards rooting out graft in malaysia and what if any of the political ramifications this is inside story. Hello there and welcome to the program im laura caro for years the one m. T. B. Scandal has shaken malaysia billions of dollars were allegedly looted from a state fund set up to promote development of former Prime Minister was implicated as well as a network of Foreign Companies relations rule of law was put to the test on tuesday over najib results involvement in the scandal he was found guilty of all 7 corruption charges and sentenced to 12 years in prison also being fined close to 50000000. 00 so the 1st of 5 corruption trials and is centered on the transfer of nearly 10000000. 00 from the state fund into the jeeves personal accounts he denies any wrongdoing and says he will appeal this is what najib had to say after the ruling. This is. Definitely not the end of the world. Because theres a process of appeal. And we hope that we would be successful that so. But what continue and to my support this. I hope they will continue to believe in me believe in our struggle and continue to be in positive and i speak. There as far as larry reports now from kuala lumpur tuesdays verdict makes not the 1st malaysian leader to be convicted of corruption now hes also been sentenced to serve up to 12 years in prison in order to pay a fine of 50000000. 00 but the judge has allowed a delay in carrying out of the jail sentence and the payment of the fine now the judge in reaching his verdict rejected his argument that he had been tricked by finances he also described the defense argument that knowledge was led to believe that the 10000000. 00 that appeared in his personal bank account was part of a donation from saudi arabia as an elaborate but weak fabrication. Faces dozens of other charges including charges of laundering 550000000. 00 from state Investment Fund one and b. And some analysts say that tuesdays conviction could strengthen the prosecutions case in those trials. Civil Society Groups and opposition politicians have fought for years to bring the Corruption Scandal and one m. T. B. To light but criminal proceedings against not ship own the started when his party the United Malays National organization known as im know was voted out of power in a general election in 2018 and some analysts are also saying that this verdict could strengthen the credibility of Prime Minister justin who took power in february but it may also weaken his coalition because they rely very heavily on to hold on to a very slim majority in parliament those are the political ramifications but for now a leader who was once thought untouchable is now being held to account for his actions. Well the one Malaysia Development ahead fund or one m. T. B. Was set up in 2009 when the jeepers act was Prime Minister malaysian and us or thirtys allege 4500000000. 00 were illegally transferred from it into offshore Bank Accounts and Shell Companies that money was traced to investments in Luxury Real Estate or private jet and the financing of hollywood films such as the wolf of wall street but he was accused of receiving more than a 1000000000. 00 from the fund his inner circle is also accused of graft the g. Was defeated in elections in 2018 amid growing anger over the allegations last week u. S. Bank Goldman Sachs reached a near 4000000000. 00 settlement with the malaysian government over its role in the scandal thank you lets bring in our guests now and in kuala lumpur we have isa on oh hes senior fellow with Singapore Institute of International Affairs and a former political secretary to najib razak in london we have cleric arsal brown shes an investor journalist who helped expose the one scandal and also in kuala lumpur with her we have Bridget Welsh shes an ornery Research Associate at the university of nottingham malaysia campus a very warm welcome to all of you clare you spent years exposing this scandal how does it feel today to see najib being sentenced. Well. I hate to sort of use the word vindication or you know i i didnt one ever feels enormous delight at seeing someone poor will be faced with such punishments but i think malaysians deserve to have this crime identified for what it is and for a deterrent to be put in place so i think the situation i have now is is of mixed feelings because of course not james still thinks he can work the system hes managed to get a stake so hes not even going to have to go to jail to fight his appeal. And hes going to carry swanning round in his Police Escort and speaking in parliament and the person he did was step out and steps outside the court and with his with his lawyer cast aspersions on the judge effectively and continue to claim that hes innocent its true isnt it sunny a wasnt acting like a man whos just been brought down do you think the game expected the sentencing. Well i think before the sentencing to date did you know most r. A. T. s auto whites threat expectations because the serious off charges for example manini long varying criminal breach of trust and then be used as a power they shall we say quote unquote easy to prove then perhaps some of the charges which require a small string sawed off intend to requirements so yeah i would think. Hes de go team would have expected. At least the Money Laundering series off nick shannon and yet by all his lawyer would have a lot of precedence in trying to mitigate phase fi sentencing to try to stay his sentences which will run. Eventually but it why do you think that you resigned could go to stay of jail today and in doing so has the wrong message being sent to malaysians. Well the stay is quite normal and other political cases another such as on where you bring him after he was convicted there was a stay an appeal process so i think this is was expected and in fact the appeal process will go on for at least at least one year maybe 2 and given the fact that there are multiple trials coming expect this process of his jurisdictions that issues will last for at least 5 years moving forward now of course malaysians are divided on this issue well most relationships are are seeing this is the day of justice and the issues of corruption to be that addressed a lot of malaysians do continue to have support not cheap and also have reservations about the case has been given that the country is politically polarized and you say this could go on for 5 years this appeals process mentoring which presumably brigitte can continue Walking Around phrase continue is free to continue practicing politics well the Peace Process should be a couple of years but he has other cases that are going to come forward and he wont be able to run for office or parliament is the salt he will no longer be an m. P. Ok not able to run for office but how much power does the team still run and wield behind the scenes. Well hes obviously been slapped with a huge fine and his son funds according to his lawyer in that are available to him in k. L. Have been frozen however he is regarded as someone who still has a great deal of wealth at his disposal and that counts in malaysia Money Politics is what practiced hes still regarded as a very powerful player and hes created this sort of cult i dont know how much of it is bought and how much of it is genuine but he speaks turned himself into a sort of victim figure. A champion of the malays course allegedly and is playing you know playing to the gallery as you know as hard as he can to tip and this could become very destabilizing i think his is cut these best card now is is to stir up political unrest. To to to benefit is a position and to urge for an election which i think he hopes that he can win where he wont have to try very hard to start political Unrest Police and i mean this scandalous shake up malaysian politics the last 2 years more than weve seen in the last 60 years since independence what impact do you think this is going to have on this very shaky Ruling Coalition that doesnt involve no party. Well awful for exam oh oh so rival factions weve been no one who perhaps not too obese least to see and not get that despite the. Sympathy or empathy for him solo you would see for example in the days to come s. Not g. It is at least temporarily in the tate. Politicly there will be a rush to try to feel is. First and foremost weve in the ruling im no part of the self and as such factions trying to just so far all power and try to come to a more political prominence. And this temporary receipt to background i think you would see very interesting Political Developments 1st of all weve been no and 2nd of all weve been the ruling National Coalition because no as was suggested as being very persistent in pushing for a general election eve day. In the interim. Struck oh wow that cameron Prime Minister missed a movie didnt made breath. A sort of a fresh in terms of not having so much pressure being on him by alan not to go for general election how safe is the prime is the moment we can position. Well in parliament he has only a number one or 2 majority and i think that is something that has been quite precarious there has not been an official vote of confidence despite him being in office for over 5 months that was a proxy vote to remove the speaker of parliament but not a vote of confidence i think in the next month that the parliament has to sit there will be some sort of vote whether or not it is an actual official vote of confidence or whether or not its a vote for example over the covert relief measures we will see but my sense is that he has more of a fighting chance of winning that vote that people appreciate there may be others that choose not to abstain or different alliances that emerge he just needs to get through this process before he has to hold another session of Parliament Later in the year and i have a feeling that and yes and well get through this because i think it has strengthened his hand despite how it looks that he that potentially there will be a defection from no and i think your son is correct ill know its quite divided and not only is it divided there is also a court case going against of its president so hed come easy so i think theyre going to be other issues that the party is going to have to face involved in issues of corruption ok a car you have an Anti Corruption website the sorrow that propose a place where you were born if malaysia a corrupt country over is this an isolated scandal. Well i dont think id be the only person to get to this is an isolated scandal id spent 5 years prior to coming coming only one n. D. P. Investigation. Veiling one corruption after another involving the ruling party and sarah its a major problem that malaysia needs to tackle to progress and i think its an interesting conundrum we have now because the americans have managed to retrieve roughly a nearly 2000000000 in assets and that it is not liquid a sin the idea is that that money goes back and indeed to following the 2018 alexion a new government came in it started pursuing these corrupt practices and going after people and not cheap in the courts. And the money started to flow back and then of course we now have a situation when really it is government is largely dependent on these 3. 00 characters including one g. And his party. A large number of whos leading lights are like so he demurred facing various corruption charges linked one in t v and others so should the money continue to be going back to malaysia and i think thats a very strong argument to say no do you agree with that ethan well i think that a mormon malaysia was certainly need that amount of money on various africa r s f region mention coffee banking the relief measures and so on thats why you saw for example of a what a pos film on the government not that they appear to be. Willing to settle for less. When question reason is where your money will be properly spent. The whole month i think the money would go for many of these. 19 unrelieved. What continue to be various any gay sions off our options subtly this is them up in countries the almost inevitably so but just how confident are you that malaysia will not see corruption on this scale again. Well i think you know corruption happens in developing and developed countries as well but i think this is somewhat unique because it is such a large amount of money you know 4500000000 its just certain parts of it involves other much maybe as much as 10000000000. 00 this is the largest kleptocracy case in the world and i think in part because of the success of this i think this is one of the reasons why youve seen this on president Development Today which is it former Prime Minister of this country was convicted and i think this actually is really sending not extensive how unique this is of this scale i think probably unlikely whether or not there continues to be issues in terms of corruption absolutely and then fact many of the concerns are that there are not enough checks in the current government to deal with the issues patronage issues of contracts that i think are still quite significant and thats why this is this decision is a 1st step and there and of many many steps that are needed to strengthen malaysias anticorruption measures azan you know james political secretary at the same time that one m d b was set up in 2009 but then no inkling amongst government that this was going on. Whiting at least initially when i worked for mr not git ss on it because secretary understanding all one n. D. P. Was and. What we call a special purpose of a co 2 hands not to transform nation managers knew you would like to for example go into some of them are at bands Technology Technological fields and so on and we thought that one n. D. P. Could be such a vaiko all of kinds of mostly off the i laughed well 2 a lot of allegations has come out that for example if it was you fall for a diversion all fonts for various odd sometimes very private purposes ok why do you think that they did thought that he could get away with pilfering such enormous sums of money. Malaysia is a very centralized it really reached a situation where not she had the most extraordinary control over every on the government he was a head of the on and ruling on it. He was the finance minister and Prime Minister and i think he just so he you know he owned a country he could get away with anything and look if i hadnt broken the story from outside the country and then really sort of ended up you know we went through 2 years of utter denial in my old not cheap scotty not one of the you know not one of the people who are accepting maybe that that. That hes corrupt very few were prepared to to do anything but you know abilify me vilify all the reporting even when the department of justice United States lodged court cases to retrieve the stolen money and laid out the money trails for everyone to see you know malaysia was still denying it they still not cheap thought you could get away with it and it was it was this unexpected election result that brought him down but what really worries me is the corruption were seeing return now that weve seen this recent coup of various factions a link to i dont know and and a 1000000 and malaysia has been shocked again by blatant corrupt practices the offering a plum jobs to politicians you know in government late companies has been run cant youve seen that theyve been endless stories where m. P. s of come out and and confessed of the extraordinary sums that theyre being offered to switch parties in order to battle u. T. Its blatant corruption and very disappointing really after a period of trying to sort out the present moment is is is dependent on this kind of return that proposes that encarta to stop such a thing happening again to stop this corruption being just been talking about there really needs to be an atmosphere of free speech doesnt there not an atmosphere where whistleblowers fail that they can be protected and you werent protected what of harassment did you fail and do you see other people facing similar situations similar threats. Well and of course journalists in malaysia that the crackdown again has has gone right back to how it was the worst of the last sort of lash back as he was trying to protect himself he was cracking down on malays on malaysian journalists he brought in one of the worlds 1st socalled fake news sources and you know and i know for a fact that journalists presently feeling once more very intimidated theyre being harassed that been threatened and gone after the whatever excuse. You know the authorities can come up with to accuse them of breaking this law and that and its very effective if you will if youre trapped in the jurisdiction it was bad not me being in london you know i had private investigators track me around town i was some tactic into i had taxation just ambitious at the expense of legal cases launched against me and of course im a red notice for my extradition to malaysia to face all sorts of byzantine charges that would have put me in jail for 20 years so i think that it was lucky as any good 12. Britain in a state of intimidation that clare describes is that very much the case in malaysia now that doesnt the bit about the state of democracy because of course the case in very serious nor is that limited free speech in silence criticism to what extent they still being used. Well after the election in 2018 you could see a real change in the Political Climate where there was much more open space open discussion issues and this liberalization really has been reversed in the last few months by a number of activists and journalists being called in and of course and many of the issues that have been reported for example on Migrant Workers their news of news organizations like al jazeera have also been targeted so there is a deep sense of insecurity within this current government and how its being perceived and of course the journalists and critics are seen to be targeted and i think this is quite normal in malaysian politics when there is high intensity periods of insecurity as there are now but it is also something that is highly polarizing so in the sense that it actually is provoking very strong reactions from malaysians so many are outraged by the attacks and and of course the sense of wanting to curb space its seen as a sign of weakness not strength and i think were going to see this continued period of uncertainty not necessarily be a good one for journalists because of the high levels of sensitivities given the fact that the divisions within the mill a community are very sharp and there are no clear sense of who is going to win the only thing that we saying today is who is going to lose and in this process that jeep is not doing well just one last question to you najib is the walking free as we as weve discussed waiting the appeals process do you think the malaysians feel that hes ever going to be put behind bars. Well i think. Long as your process as i read your suggest that an ultimate leak would off cause you to. Fall upon an awe commutation of these sentences so all in that sense i think youll be at least a long time before we see. That really put behind bars if at all and that. To some of the more shall we say publicly aware or awakened citizenry in malaysia is something terribly disappointing because they would like to see justice being served but of course the east on the other hand. Not haha supporters who see him being framed so does parise asian all for malaysian politics indeed runs deep in society told the reins of malaysia in a moment ok many thanks to all our guests for joining us today in sun. Brown and bridget. And thank you to you for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website thats on to 0 dot com for that its gotten to go to a face that pays thats facebook dot com for slash a. J. 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