Evidence from Thai police could prove crucial in the ongoing investigation by the Malaysian police into the role of several prominent Malaysians behind a plot to bring down the government led by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, according to police sources.
The scheme, they said, was being executed through a media campaign aimed at attacking 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
Thai police sources said Swiss national Xavier Andre Justo had provided investigators with a detailed timeline on the conspiracy to undermine the Malaysian government put together by parties led by Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown over the last six months.
Justo, who was arrested in mid-June in Thailand, had confessed to stealing and trying to blackmail his former employer with stolen confidential data, and was sentenced to three years jail after he pleaded guilty to the charge.
In April 2011, while working as PetroSaudi International’s head of IT unit, he stole more than 90 gigabytes of data from his company’s servers and had his contract with the company terminated shortly after.
In 2013, Justo tried to extort financial gain from the information he stole to blackmail his former employers.
Those attempts failed and the 48-year-old began looking for new buyers of the information.
Isn’t this exciting?
The Malaysian Government think that they may be able to cobble enough ‘evidence’ out of the confessions of a man desperate to get out of a Bangkok jail to ‘prove a conspiracy’ to discover the truth about 1MDB.
The definition of conspiracy, Malaysia-style, is that people who agree that the country is shockingly beset with corruption do talk together about this, privately – as well as openly, which was already known by all who cared to listen.
As part of the ‘conspiracy’ it is being ‘revealed’ that journalists have dug about for information about a massive theft of public money and teased it out of sources.
Of course, journalism Malaysia-style does not allow for such audacity. The job of a journalist is to spout UMNO propaganda.
And, of course, since in this case the criminal behaviour that was being investigated by these jumped up journalists involved proving malfeasance at the highest levels of Government, then it MUST be deemed illegal.
However, the PM is just going to have to continue to put up with Sarawak Report and others digging, as his extreme, aggressive and frankly ludicrous tactics to try and defame the messengers has backfired.
Now it is not just SR who is digging around, we are joined by the world’s financial press and the financial regulators of several countries.