Partly in response to the article Difficulties mount for BC Liberal partner, a reader sent this material:

Excellent story. Agreed. There’s a great deal wrong with BC’s LNG deal with Malaysia.

In the latest Corruption Perceptions Index, Canada was ranked at a low of 9. Malaysia for the last three years has moved higher in the ranks of corrupt nations and now stands at 54.

Fifty-four compared to nine… But we are obliged to trust them based on assurances?

Despite this, or just ignoring this, Minister Coleman continues to express his profound lack of “fear”. Premier Clark went to Ottawa to flog the deal despite simply fantastic Great Depression Era losses by the major oil and gas players.

As one example, Shell, a major LNG player, just reported a loss of 80% year-to-year profit.
Shell Profits Plunge By 80% Amid Oil Slump

However, with quite an odd choice, the CBC’s Karin Larsen cited a loss of earnings of only 44%.
Shell announces earnings down 44 per cent on low oil and gas prices

A later CBC report by Richard Zussman stated that Shell’s profits dropped only 56%, in the latest quarter…

The postponement is mainly a result of sagging oil profits. Shell’s most recent numbers show a 56 percent drop in profit compared to what the company made in the previous quarter.

Sagging? What number would describe catastrophic?

Both CBC articles understate the situation faced by Shell executives, and the likely blowback Shell senior management can expect from investors if senior management seeks to proceed with even more BC LNG investment despite a year of 80% losses and an LNG market that continues to tank.

Picture the AGM:

You intend to invest billions more money in WHAT! IN BC?

To begin BC’s LNG saga we have Martyn Brown’s declaration that the LNG deal is a disaster.

That’s not enough to alert BC that there’s a problem? How about multiple fraud, theft and money laundering investigations in France, Switzerland, the UK, the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and either Abu Dhabi or Dubai?

Recently France announced that there were two bribe recipients in the Scorpene Submarine Fiasco. PM Najib Razak. And Abdul Razak Baginda.

Baginda was the political analyst who was acquitted of the 2006 murder of Mongolian citizen Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Scorpene deal intermediary. At his murder trial Mr Baginda was not asked to testify. Recently he admitted to receiving about 30 million – to lobby a government who already employed him.

The two special forces soldiers convicted of the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder, were subordinates to then-Defence Minister Najib. They detonated sufficient C-4 to obliterate Altantuya Shaariibuu`s body. But despite this level of violence neither was required in court to explain why they killed a person neither soldier knew, or why C-4 was necessary.

About that oddly extravagant Scorpene submarine purchase… Consider the math:

• Malaysia’s population: 29.90 million (2014). GDP: $375.6 billion USD (2015)
• Canada’s population: 35.54 million (2014). GDP: $1.573 trillion USD (2015)

Canada could not, but Malaysia can afford two submarines? Vessels allegedly to be used to combat ocean-surface “piracy”?

Next, as you point out there’s PM Najib’s Saudi “donation” of nearly $700 million USD suddenly appearing in his personal bank account.

Next, the apparently unconstitutional sacking of Attorney General Gani Patail – who sources allege [and document] was about to arrest and prosecute PM Najib on multiple charges. The Attorney General’s subordinate, a Public Prosecutor, Kevin Morais, was murdered before he could complete the warrant for PM Najib’s arrest and prosecution.

Following the leak that 1MDB was in a financial crisis, billions in debt, was the rush to shut down all investigations of 1MDB.

PM Najib thus far has shut down two newspapers within Malaysia, and threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and his real arch foe – The UK’s Sarawak Report. Small wonder, because Clare Rewcastle-Brown’s articles provided an impetus for FT and WSJ articles.

An attempt by Malaysia was made to have Interpol arrest, incarcerate and deport Clare Rewcastle-Brown to Malaysia for trial [meaning likely judicial execution for Treason] Interpol did investigate and not only refused to arrest her but then informed over 150 countries to ignore Malaysian attempts to run the same scheme with them.

Here’s a government rebuttal of the Financial times broadside.

Here’s the Financial times broadside.

There’s considerably more to this story, I’ve read hundreds of pages. But perhaps a summary by a former US Ambassador to Malaysia might help. EX U.S. AMBASSADOR QUERIES NAJIB: DID APANDI TRY TO STOP SWISS PROBE ON 1MDB

Over the past few days the world press has been filled with two different – and very damaging – stories about Malaysia. The first concerned attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali’s decision to close the case on the mysterious RM2.6 billion that was deposited in Prime Minister Najib Razak’s personal bank accounts.

I say “mysterious”, because it still has never been explained who gave the money to Najib, what it was for, what they expected in return for such a huge sum, and why – if it was a “gift” to Najib and the nation – most of it was later transferred back overseas, to an unknown destination and for an unknown purpose.

Apandi also made and announced another decision, which flies directly in the face of Malaysia’s international responsibility to combat money laundering, wire fraud, and ucorruption.

Financial and law enforcement authorities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland are still investigating various aspects of the many scandals surrounding Najib – his bank accounts, purchases of US real estate by Najib family members, 1MDB’s financial transfers, and the Scorpene submarine sales.

But with Apandi’s announcement, he was apparently closing the door to mutual legal assistance or cooperation with foreign governments.

Internationally, it’s game over for Najib, John Malott, Malaysiakini, August 27, 2015:

And then there is the other Najib, the real Najib.

He is the “domestic” Najib, the man who stifles freedom. The man whose police force tear-gassed people in the streets for demanding free and fair elections. The man who has arrested scores of opposition politicians and dissidents under the Sedition Act.

He is the corrupt Najib, the man who arranged the over-priced purchase of non-functioning Scorpene submarines, and most recently, the man behind 1MDB and its missing billions.

He is the Najib who received US$700 million into his personal bank account.

He is the Najib whose wife’s many Birkin bags and multi-million dollar emerald necklaces were the subject of a three-page expose in The New York Times.

Today, thanks to the most prestigious newspapers and magazines in the world, the whole world knows who the real Najib is. Now the world understands that there is only one Najib.

And it is not the dapper, suave, reformist Najib that they believed in.

So, it is game over for Najib Razak internationally.

The author? John R. Malott was the United States Ambassador to Malaysia, 1995-1998. He has written analyses on Malaysia for the Wall Street Journal, Malaysiakini, and the East-West Centre.

At a time when multiple governments are investigating the corruption of Malaysia’s UMNO government the extent to which BC’s government has elected to play ostrich and express nothing but “What? Me Worry?” PR is amazing. Especially given the likelihood that this may cost BC taxpayers a fortune for 25 more years.

A postscript from an IN-SIGHTS reader:

Malaysian reportage is exceptionally interesting, almost epic, compared with BC’s tepid stenography, isn’t it?

Among other things I forgot to include yesterday are the implementation of laws which turn Malaysia into a future Dictatorship.

I also failed to mention both President Obama’s and the UN’s “request” to PM Najib to release Anwar Ibrahim from prison. Anwar’s prison doctor is also the man whose testimony helped put him behind bars. Anwar’s medical treatment in prison is appalling.

There wasn’t room to mention the sacking of the former PM Mahathir`s son from his elected post. Mahathir was Najib’s mentor and now is his nemesis.

Awkward, isn’t it? Is no one else in Canadian media aware of the problems caused by Najib’s leadership? If not, how is it possible that no one in BC’s government read this item, still easily accessed at the Globe and Mail…

Alleged scandals surrounding Malaysian PM could have several consequences, Iain Marlow, September 24, 2015:

Mr. Najib, who has become increasingly unpopular, leads the United Malays political party and a coalition that has effectively controlled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957 – partly through electoral gerrymandering and censorship of the media. Despite other actions that make him unfit to lead a democracy, such as repeatedly jailing his main political opponent (a former deputy prime minister) on trumped up sodomy charges, he now finds himself at the centre of an ever-expanding series of corruption probes that have brought Malaysian politics to a standstill – and also threaten to bring his pseudo-authoritarian rule to an end.

Rather strong for the notoriously deferential Globe and Mail, no?

How about this item concerning EU condemnation? The European Parliamentary Resolution On Malaysia, Sarawak Report, December 15, 2015:

Europe has woken up to the corruption and human rights abuses in Malaysia, thanks to the dedication and advocacy of brave campaigners… and also to the astonishing, headline catching abuses of Najib Razak himself over the past weeks.

13. Calls on the EU and its Member States to coordinate policies towards Malaysia, in line with the EU Strategic Framework on Human Rights, in order to encourage reform on the above issues of concern through all possible means, including in the context of the UN where Malaysia is a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-2016…

Insufficient? Add a third murder: the founder of Ambank: My Father Died For Reporting Corruption At AmBank, Sarawak Report, July 7, 2015:

I left for Moscow, around the 25th of July 2013 to attend to my business. The day before we had a family lunch at the Restaurant Ciao, at the Selangor Golf Club, right in the middle of KL. My Dad then spoke about massive corruption. He also said that they [people in power] had lost the plot in the sense that they recklessly and behind their own population’s backs raked in billions of ringgit from construction, oil & gas to defence & transportation. He made a point that its insane that they do not for one second think about the future generations, simply not…

AmBank Founder’s Son, who wants to expose Najib, gets special protection from Swiss Govt, Malaysia Chronicle, December 9, 2015:

Pascal Najadi is convinced that the current government, embroiled in several scandals, covered the assassination of his father. He is convinced that the investigation into the assassination of his father was sabotaged.

On July 29, 2013, Hussein Najadi, the founder of the Arab-Malaysian Development Bank (AMDB), was assassinated by bullets of an assassin. It was a contract executed in broad daylight in a busy street Kuala Lumpur.

In Fall of 2013 caught by the Police, the Assassin Koong Kwan Swee admitted taking 5,000 Swiss Francs equivalent in Malaysian Currency to kill the prominent banker married to a Swiss woman. For two years, Pascal Najadi, the only son of Hussein Najadi, is moving heaven and earth to ascend to the sponsors of this assassination.

In the first moments he trusted the Malaysian justice system. Today, he is convinced that the entire investigation was sabotaged to protect the Prime Minister and his entourage…

The alleged assassin? He was released from custody, never charged, and the case of Mr Najadi`s murder closed.

Someone worth quoting [and her journalistic weight in diamonds] is Clare Rewcastle-Brown.

Before I checked my email today I visited her Sarawak Report: Yak Won’t Take The Rap

Another revelation that came out from the highly informative dossier, dumped by Mr Yak before the courts was that, despite him being on what was repeatedly described as “unpaid leave” since April 2015, the bank had nevertheless being sending him monthly salary cheques of $83,000.

The cheques, instead of normal bank transfers, were a handy concession by the bank, because he could cash them abroad, where his accounts were not frozen like they are in Singapore.

Yak provided the court with copies of the cheques to show just how generous his BSI employers were (above). The documents also showed that to begin with Yak had signed an agreement to take this so-called “unpaid leave” in May and to cooperate with the bank…

Unpaid leave = $83 thousand a month!? Slick.

If our Princess Enron believed she belonged in Asia – didn’t she claim to be a Phillippina? – then changing career to a Singapore bank manager might prove exceptionally profitable when her political ship leaves port.

See for yourself. Somehow Clare provides an astonishing array of facts, figures, actual documents and well, insight. She’s also requested police protection in the UK after death threats.;.

If, from day one, BC did no more than consult Sarawak Report as a form of due diligence then the LNG Gold Rush Fantasy would already be DOA.

That Clark and Company continue to try to sell LNG?

To me, such insistence defies anything resembling professional fiduciary duty or human reason.