Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright & Tom Wright
Author:Tom Wright & Tom Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2018-09-18T04:00:00+00:00
In late April, as Goldman prepared 1MDB’s first bond issue, some one hundred thousand anticorruption protesters poured out into the streets of Kuala Lumpur. From the sky, the city center was awash in yellow—the color of the demonstrator’s T-shirts. For some time, anger among regular middle-class folk—teachers, office workers, lawyers, students—about everyday corruption had been rising.
The demonstrators brandished antigraft signboards; some called for electoral reform. Others held up caricatures of Rosmah, who had become the symbol of Prime Minister Najib’s kleptocratic regime. How had she paid for her jewels? people wanted to know. As the swell of protesters tried to make their way to Independence Square, a grassy area at the heart of the city, riot police blocked their way. Late in the afternoon, as the marchers pushed forward, security forces met them with tear gas and water cannons.
Suddenly, a police officer drove a vehicle into a group of demonstrators, injuring two people. The crowd reacted violently, dragging the officer out and turning the car upside down, before smashing in its windows. Scores of protesters were injured, some severely, over the next few hours. The battle lines had been drawn for elections, due the following year.
The protesters knew nothing of what Low had carried out at 1MDB. But corruption in Malaysia already was eating away at the nation’s social fabric, from vote buying by UMNO, the ruling party, at election time to the regular backhanded payments by businesses to win government contracts. While middle-class Malaysians dealt with stagnating wages, Malaysia’s elite was accruing greater wealth, and it was fueling discontent.
In 2006, a group of opposition politicians, lawyers, and anticorruption activists had started a movement called “Bersih”—the Malay word meant “clean”—seeking reforms to ensure fair elections. In 2007 and 2011 Bersih protesters, wearing trademark yellow T-shirts, had taken to the streets, clashing with police. But nothing had changed, and the Bersih organizers had called this protest as a last-ditch attempt to ensure clean elections, which were due to be held in mid-2013.
They hoped this demonstation, the largest democratic protest in Malaysia’s history, would force the government to listen. Instead, it ended in rancor and division.
Yet it was so much worse than the public knew. Low had taken graft to new levels, risking Malaysia’s financial stability. The 1MDB fund’s debt stood at a whopping $7 billion, and it had few assets to show for the huge borrowings. Most of the money had been diverted, and the fund had crashed to a $30 million net loss in its latest financial year. But most of these details were kept secret. It was even hard to get a copy of the fund’s financial report.
Prime Minister Najib had envisioned 1MDB as a way to create jobs, and as a slush fund to build his popularity with all Malaysians. Instead, it had become a cesspit of graft. With his popularity sinking, Najib soon would double down on his bet on Low, backing the 1MDB fund’s push to take on even more debt in a bid to win the upcoming elections.
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