steadyaku47

Monday 19 June 2017

Life is Brief....


Life is brief...use it well. 

I have spent the last few weeks away from blogging to weigh the options of living my life not only for myself, but more crucial, for my wife and for those that I love - my immediate family. If truth be told I have found no answers to the questions that I wanted answered - namely, what has blogging got to do with their lives. Whether I blog or not is of no consequence to them...I blog for selfish reasons....for myself...and even if my reason is because I want to try  and do my part in making change possible in Malaysia, I know that that reason is not good enough to allow me to continue to spend many hours a day on this blog. And so for these past few weeks I have simply stopped cold turkey to blog and it felt good. 

Does that mean that I close shop and consign steadyaku47 to waft forever in the realms of cyberspace? 

In a word "NO". 

There are things that you and I will want to say...if not today, then maybe tomorrow or the week after. When we do, we need somewhere to vent those things that we want to say. You will have to find our own platform to vent...I have this blog and I will use it as and when I need to.

But no more blind obedience to any cause, to any ideas and of course to any political ideals that any one may spew out of every orifice of their self. That is all they do...cakap bukan serupa bikini....whether it be one side of the political divide or the other. In short I am putting my hands up to tell any one who reads what I write that I intend to try and write things as I see it. 

As I am fond of saying...I can write good or bad on just about anyone in politics....and in the past and in the main, I have chosen to write good about the opposition and bad about Umno and BN. That will change from now on...not because I am getting dedak from Umno or BN - no lah....I am simply had enough about the "cakap bukan serupa bikin" that the opposition now seems to have adopted as their own from Umno and BN.  

But of course....first I must find out if there is anything bad to write about the opposition!

Enough for now....it is already past midnight here in Fitzroy and it is Winter. The days are cold and the nights even more so....and I am in my sarong and T short...goodnight! 





       

Friday 2 June 2017

Young at Heart

UFC : SINGAPORE'S ANGELA LEE

Sarawak Report : Pascal Najadi - My Fury Over Najib's Lawyer Mohd Shafee Abdullah

2 June 2017


Pascal Najadi
Pascal Najadi
The son of the assassinated former chairman of AmBank, Hussein Najadi, has told Sarawak Report that he has deep concerns about the way the lawyer Mohd Shafee Abdullah controlled events after his father was shot in broad daylight in KL.
The shocking event took place just a few weeks before another huge personal payment by Prime Minister Najib was made to Shafee of RM4.3 million.
The payment was transacted on 11th September 2013, whereas Najadi was murdered on 29th July.  Once again, the money came  from Account no: 2112022011906 in Najib’s name, which was funded by money stolen from 1MDB’s subsidiary SRC.
Payment by Najib to Shafee from the 1MDB funded AmBank account
Payment by Najib to Shafee from the 1MDB funded AmBank account
Pascal Najadi, who was in Moscow when the tragedy occured, says that neither he nor his immediate family knew Shafee and no one had contacted him to be involved. Nevertheless, the lawyer mysteriously arrived at the hospital almost as soon as his father’s body was brought into the mortuary and started to take charge of events.
Photographs even show Shafee on the scene as an ambulance bearing Najadi’s injured second wife arrived, bringing Najadi to the mortuary:
Arrow points out Shafee in the background as the dead and injured arrived at hospital
Arrow points out Shafee in the background as the victims arrived at hospital
According to Najadi, the family soon found that this strange lawyer was muscling in on their situation and insisting on taking control. Pascal has testified:
Tuesday July 30 2013, it must have been lunch time or a little later in KL, my mum Heidi Najadi called me from the KLK Morgue where they have laid up the body of my late father… She asked me “there is this Dato Shafee running around rude and nervous acting as if he owns the body of dad and giving orders to all of us?!” I asked my mum, who? She said “His name is Dato Shafee..?!” I told my mum to pass this man on the phone to me.
This is my perception of this call. Dato Shafee was nervous when talking to me, he was breathing short and gave half clipped words answers to my question: “Can we wait with the burial please?” He stuttered to me: “No can not, all is in hand, I take care of all, he will be buried today, this evening…”
Pascal says he was shocked by the haste and by manner in which decisions were taken out of his family’s hands. He says a swift burial was not their custom and he had wanted to be able to fly to KL to attend the ceremony.
Shafee did not say “I am so sorry for your terrible loss….or can I help you are you OK? Where are you now? ” He said nothing of what a normal human or indeed a friend would say.
Shafee was the ad hoc burial master for the body of my late father Hussain without any reason, he even had the service paid every penny of it to make it fast and swift”,
says Najadi in his statement.

“I am taking charge”

Shafee, Scivetti and another joint foreign client on drugs charges
Shafee, Scivetti and another joint foreign client on drugscharges
Speaking to Sarawak Report Pascal Najadi says that Shafee had told the family that he had been ‘put in charge’ of matters, but he never explained by whom.
Shafee, whom he described as brusque and nervous, managed the entire funeral and all the related matters, yet Najadi says the family never received a bill from him.
An email exchange with Shafee Abdullah (copied to Tania Scivetti his legal collaborator and later wife) confirms Najadi’s claim that the lawyer had put himself in charge of events, telling Pascal “I am taking care of the funeral”.
The lawyer even swept aside the son’s request to have words read out at the funeral, which was being held before he could get to his father’s side, saying “it is impossible to read the eulogy you prepared in a Muslim funeral setting” – then, imperiously he declared “I will make sure Hussain gets the best send off” despite refusing to wait a few hours for the arrival of his son:
Curt response from a bossy stranger - the only words Najadi received in writing from Shafee Abdullah
Curt response from a bossy stranger – the only words Najadi received in writing from Shafee Abdullah
Pascal, who describes himself as having been in shock and frightened at the time, soon decided that the situation KL was not safe for his mother and himself and they fled the country, leaving much unfinished business in the process.
However, the role and the behaviour of Shafee has always bothered him, in particular the question over who had so swiftly assigned him to these duties and paid for his services?

Assigned by Najib?  If so, why?

Najadi says there is no evidence that Shafee had any prior connection to his deceased father.  Rather, he says, he later learnt that the lawyer was extremely close to Prime Minister Najib Razak, against whom his father had just made some extremely serious reports.
In the days prior to his mystery assassination Hussein Najadi had, according to his son, first made a formal complaint to the Bank Negara about information he had received about Najib’s huge private bank accounts at AmBank, where Najadi had once been Chairman.
Secondly, just days before his death, Najadi had made a police report about a threatening text to ‘back-off’ the matter, allegedly sent from within the Prime Minister’s Office.
In a written statement made in July 2015 Pascal Najadi told his lawyer:
“I went through the lifelong email archives of my late father to perhaps find a friendly or a business email between the two, I can confirm here, not one email nothing, no trace of contact. Shafee appeared like a flash out of nowhere buried my dad and disappeared into thin air, no call no nothing (!) He vanished fast and without a word like he appeared from nowhere on July 30th 2013. Never heard of the man again…. only after the killing I found out that this Shafee is the de facto lawyer for Najjib and UMNO and is the man who also was hired to put Anwar away. [Pascal Najadi, statement July 2015]
Pascal Najadi says he is now openly questioning whether Najib’s RM4.3 million payment from Najib so soon after these events may have been linked?  He says he has also noted that it was also shortly after his father’s tragic demise that Shafee was given the honour of the title Tan Sri:
“We are still puzzled why and how he surfaced on to the gruesome macabre scene taking charge of the burial. To this day today Shafee, who got promoted to Tan sri right after this horrible event, and his role are a mystery to me.”

Tania Scivetti

Pascal Najadi says that if his concerns are misplaced, then all Shafee needs to do is to give him full disclosure about his role and how all his costs were covered.  Meanwhile, there was another strange intervention, which he says has also bothered him, especially since he now realises it was also linked to Shafee Abdullah.
He had had struck a recent acquaintance, says Najadi, with another KL legal practioner Tania Scivetti. Scivetti’s practice is perhaps best known for supporting high-profile foreign drug offenders caught in Malaysia.  On a number of occasions, she has worked with Shafee to represent them and get them repatriated.
Shafee and Scivetti worked together to assist this and other foreigners who had got into trouble with Malaysian law
Shafee and Scivetti worked together to assist this and other foreigners who had got into trouble with Malaysian law
What Pascal Najadi was not aware of was that Sciavetti (a non-Muslim) was already the common law wife of Shafee Abdullah, whom she later married in the UK.  Shortly after his father’s death Tania called Pascal to offer her legal services and to help put his father’s affairs in order.
In particular, she offered to get the locks changed on Najadi’s offices and to hire a guard to prevent intruders taking documents.  The staff were removed.
Pascal said that he agreed to the suggestion, based on his acquaintance with Scivetti.  For some days Scivetti managed Najadi’s affairs and had total control of all access to his office and his papers.  Then, she ceased answering calls and terminated her services.  This was one email from Pascal, to which she did not reply:
Scivetti abruptly terminated services with the Najadis they say
Scivetti abruptly terminated services with the Najadis they say
Pascal Najadi, who claims his father’s murder has never been properly investigated in Malaysia, has told Sarawak Report that he has been left wondering if Scivetti and Shafee were in fact working together on his case, as in so many others?
If so, he wants to know who prompted them to get in touch and get busy over his father’s death and who paid?
“I want to know if Najib’s multi-million payment to Shafee Abdullah so soon after my father’s death was connected” he told Sarawak Report. “We know this money came from 1MDB so we have a right to know if it was and if so why?  If it was not connected then what was the payment for and who covered Shafee’s costs instead?

Thursday 1 June 2017

Sarawak Report : Najib's Frozen Singapore Accounts

1 June 2017


Singapore’s central bank has fined Credit Suisse and United Overseas Bank (UOB) a total of S$1.6 million ($1.2 million) for breaching anti-money laundering rules in transactions related to Malaysia’s scandal-ridden state fund 1MDB.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Tuesday it had fined UOB S$900,000 and Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) S$700,000 as it wrapped up its two-year probe into banks involved in 1MDB-related transactions, which revealed several breaches of anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and control lapses….
“These include weaknesses in conducting due diligence on customers and inadequate scrutiny of customers’ transactions and activities,” it said in a statement, adding it did not, however, detect pervasive control weaknesses at UOB and Credit Suisse….
“While the fines imposed on UOB and Credit Suisse may appear low relative to the amounts that we see imposed by U.S. and UK regulators, they are substantive by Singapore standards,” said Nizam Ismail, partner at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP, where he advises clients on financial services regulation.
Source: Najib's Frozen Singapore Accounts, Reuters

Comment

Unlike the other penalties related to this investigation, which involved accounts managed by Jho Low, his alias Eric Tan or various subsidiaries of 1MDB, MAS has kept silent on the ownership of the illicit bank accounts managed by Credit Suisse and UOB.
In the absence of further explanation, Malaysians are therefore left with only one possible conclusion, which is that these two banks were managing accounts for Prime Minister Najib Razak.  Accounts which MAS has clearly linked to 1MDB and which therefore now must have been frozen by Singapore.
A Prime Minister ought not to be protected in such a way and treated as some sort of special individual who is above the law, particularly if Singapore wishes to claim that it is a proper international banking centre, run by rules.
Deals have clearly been done, which show the hand of political interference – death to financial confidence.  On the other hand, the compromise arrived at has clearly been designed not to let Najib off the hook completely and to open the way for eventual justice in this matter.
Singapore has confirmed the money in his accounts was dirty and has punished the banks’ failure to conduct due diligence on a politically exposed figure. They will not have released this money back.
The world is effectively waiting for Malaysians to show the guts and fortitude to deal with their own villains and chuck them out – then there will be a lot of money waiting to reward them!

Sarawak Report : Najib Paid Anwar's Prosecutor RM9.5 Million From 1MDB Slush Fund WHY? EXCLUSIVE REPORT

1 June 2017


According to the documents obtained by Sarawak Report, the controversial lawyer Muhammed Shafee Abdullah was one of the biggest individual recipients of money from Najib’s 1MDB slush fund accounts.
Shaffee, who is known to be an extremely close confidante of Najib and who was controversially appointed as the public prosecutor during the appeal against the acquittal of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on sodomy charges in 2014, received two payments.
Screen Shot 2017-05-31 at 17.17.47 copyScreen Shot 2017-05-31 at 17.15.14 copy
11th September 2013 Najib paid him RM4,300,000 from his AmBank account no 2112022011906 and again on 17th February 2014 he received RM5,200,000 from the same account.  This account has been identified as having been funded by money stolen by the Prime Minister from the 1MDB subsidiary SRC, which had borrowed some RM4 billion from the civil service pension fund KWAP.
AG Apandi inadvertently confirmed that finding by waving MACC investigation papers showing the money trail into Account no 2112022011906 in January 2016, at the very press conference during which he announced that no wrong-doings had been committed and he was closing down investigations into 1MDB.
Acc no 2112022011906 as highlighted in the MACC money trail held up by AG Apandi
Acc no 2112022011906 as highlighted in the MACC money trail held up by AG Apandi
Later Apandi acknowledged the money had come from SRC, but chose to exonerate the Prime Minister because Najib had explained he hadn’t realised that this was where the millions had appeared from in his accounts.  No one has ever asked Najib (or recipients such as Shafee) for this public pension money to be returned.

What were the payments for?

Anwar Ibrahim - jailed after Shafee lead a bizarre appeal against his earlier acquittal
Anwar Ibrahim – jailed after Shafee lead a bizarre appeal against his earlier acquittal
These payments came at extremely sensitive moments relating to Shafee and Najib and provoke immediate questions about why the Prime Minister was paying this particular lawyer such very large sums of illegitimate money?
Quite apart from the illegality of the source there are also potential glaring conflicts of interest.
The RM5,200,000 received in February 2014 came just a fortnight before the Appeal Court overturned an earlier acquittal of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of alleged sodomy. Shafee Abdullah, a private lawyer, had been controversially appointed to a one-off role as the public prosecutor for this extraordinary appeal.
In the first place, for the prosecution to appeal an acquittal in a criminal case is breach of all normal court practice and should never have happened.  However, the involvement of Shafee in this untoward and plainly politically-motivated move against Najib’s most dangerous political opponent represented even further abuses of judicial process.
As Anwar’s defence team pointed out, to place someone from outside of the normal prosecution service into this high profile role at this point in the case is against established practice.  It also represented a clear conflict of interest, since Shafee himself is a known confidant of Najib.
And the conflict was worse than that, Anwar’s lawyers pointed out, because Shafee was himself a material witness, pivotal to the case for the defence, which was that Anwar was the victim of a conspiracy.  Namely, two days before the alleged victim of Anwar, Mohd Saiful, pressed charges, the student was identified as having visited the home of Najib himself to discuss the entire matter.
Najib at first denied this fact. However, when photographs were produced he admitted meeting the student, but only to discuss his ‘career plans’.  Only after the alleged victim then broke under questioning and confessed he had discussed his allegations against Anwar with Najib did the Prime Minister admit that the discussion had taken place.
Shafee Abdullah has been proven to have been at Najib’s house at the same time.  However, the lawyer claims he was not part of the meeting between the Prime Minister and the student – a meeting where legal advice might be considered an obvious priority. Shafee said he was doing something else, somewhere else in the house. Anwar’s legal team contended that to the contrary he was advising the prime minister on handling the student, who went ahead to denounce Anwar two days later (after a further secret meeting with the Deputy Head of Police).
So, why was Najib paying Shafee such a huge sum of money in February 2014, at a time that this lawyer was supposedly contracted into a public role as a special prosecutor in by far the most high profile legal case of the period – a case in which Najib had a very strong interest in the outcome and in which Shafee himself was a material witness?
The Australian barrister Mark Trowell, who acted as an observer at the trial and then wrote a book about the case, has described the entire prosecution as a gross miscarriage of justice full of “glaring anomalies”. Shafee was at the centre of it, so why was Najib paying him over RM5.2 million?
March 7th 2014 a three man Appeal Court panel found Anwar guilty, overturning the judgement of the High Court the previous year in an astounding perversion of justice (normally an acquittal can never be appealed or reversed except in exceptional cases and through a complete re-trial).

Najib’s legal fixer

Anwar naturally appealed the shocking and irregular overturn by the Appeal Court of his earlier acquittal and once again Shafee was used to prosecute the case for the government through the Federal Court.  In a short hearing in early 2015 those Federal judges upheld the Appeal Court judgement, causing no surprise in Malaysia.
What did surprise even Shafee’s colleagues was what this legal eagle did next.  He embarked on a road show justifying the conduct of the shameful trial process and continuing to villify Anwar, now in jail. Shafee even went so far as to regail his listeners with details of intimate allegations that had specifically been barred from the court itself, thereby breaking the rules again in the poorest of taste.
Shafee then sued lawyers who censured this conduct through the Bar Council for defamation, but lost his case.
Such enthusiastic support for Najib, which so plainly goes beyond the objectivity of a supposedly neutral observer betrays what has in fact been a long association between the two men.
Texts which were released on line many years ago between the two men and which have never been denied show that Shafee offered his services to the beleaguered then Deputy PM in the aftermath of the discovery of his translator Altantuya’s body and the arrest of Najib’s bodyguards and his advisor and proxy Razak Baginda for her murder.
Shafee closely represented Najib as they worked to get Baginda off the hook and put all the blame for the crime on the two bodyguards, excluding all discussion of motive from the case.  So, no wonder his bias against Anwar was raised by his lawyers, since Shafee is widely regarded as Najib’s prime legal fixer in opposition circles.
The court dismissed such concerns.  However, the glaring question as to why Najib paid Shafee nearly RM10 million in the few months and weeks before that verdict remains.