Malaysia's government is allegedly targeting a journalist over 1MDB revelations, according to a journalist

[ASEAN NOW Content Team]

 

The editor of the Sarawak Report, a news website famed for its coverage of Malaysian corruption, claims that the UMNO-led government has resurrected a 2018 defamation action against her in retaliation for discoveries she made in a book about the 1MDB financial scandal.

The website's editor, British national Clare Rewcastle Brown, said the 2018 lawsuit was "reactivated" this year "for apparent politically motivated reasons."
The case originates from her book about the 1MDB scandal.

 

"I am clearly a top political target for members of the current government as a result of my expose of 1MDB and other crises in which they are implicated and which they are now attempting to claim was all a fiction," Rewcastle Brown told BenarNews in an email discussion this week and last week.

"Given the regime's propagation of lies, I would consider myself in danger if I were to set foot in Malaysia."

 

In August, the United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, reclaimed control.
Najib Razak, the party's former president and Malaysia's former prime minister, is on trial for money laundering and abuse of power in connection with the looting of hundreds of millions of dollars from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a state investment vehicle he founded while in government.

Najib was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison on corruption charges related to 1MDB last year, but he is now free on bail while appealing the decision.

 

Malaysian police issued an arrest order for Rewcastle Brown after she failed to appear in court for a hearing linked to the lawsuit on September 23.
Before the authorities issued the order for her arrest, she alleges prosecutors "made no effort to notify the Sarawak Report of the court hearing or the charges."

She said the warrant was part of a smear effort against her.

On Sept. 23, Rewcastle Brown was charged in absentia in a Terengganu court with criminal defamation under Section 500 of the Malaysian Penal Code.

 

She claimed that entering Malaysia would be "very risky" since "criminally convicted persons" are now part of the Malaysian administration.

UMNO, to whom she was referring, returned to power in Malaysia without being elected three months ago, after a government led by Muhyiddin Yassin fell after UMNO, one of his ruling bloc's allies, withdrew its support.

According to state news agency Bernama, the queen of Terengganu state alleged in a petition filed in a Kuala Lumpur court on Nov. 21, 2018, that a passage of Rewcastle Brown's book about the 1MDB affair may be construed to suggest that the monarch was corrupt.

 

The section of the book in question also claimed that the queen had abused her position to influence the formation of the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA), an institution that ultimately became 1MDB.

The queen also claimed that statements in the book misrepresented her as assisting fugitive financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, the purported mastermind of the 1MDB crisis.

Prosecutors in Malaysia and the United States claim that at least $4.5 billion (18.8 billion ringgit) was taken from 1MDB between 2009 and 2014, in a financial scandal involving foreign and domestic financial firms as well as high-ranking officials, including Najib.