The scandal surrounding One Malaysia Development Berhad – or 1MDB – tore Malaysia’s financial system to its core and reverberated in financial markets around the world for a decade, resulting in the jailing of former Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Many questions about the scandal remain unanswered, including who else was responsible for the billions of dollars that were siphoned out of the country. It’s a subject that Malaysian journalist, Leslie Lopez, has dealt with in his first book, “The Siege Within.”
1MDB remains a tale of cover-ups and deceit that roped in the glitterati in Hollywood, investment bankers in New York and the luxury yacht set in the Arabian Sea.
Lopez, a multi-award-winning journalist, says it’s a story that still requires closure and that too many people in power would prefer to see the biggest financial scandal in Malaysian history to simply go away.
That would also enable those who contributed to the scandal to carry on untarnished, including former central bank governor Zeti Aziz and the infamous Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho who remains an international fugitive.
“The Siege Within” also paints long-serving former prime minister Mahathir Mohamed as the chief architect of a political system that paved the way for a criminal such as Najib “to lie, cheat and steal his way to power” through a system that protected him from scrutiny and prosecution.
A fully independent commission of inquiry with legal backing would help and “The Siege Within” would be a must read for prosecutors, based on an archive built by Lopez ever since 1MDB was launched as an investment fund by Najib in 2009.
Lopez spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about his latest work and the issues still confronting Malaysia – which includes a lack of separation of powers and the absolute, unchecked authority his country’s prime ministers have enjoyed over the decades.
“The Siege Within” is also earning terrific reviews and despite Malaysia’s tricky media landscape, it is available in all major bookstores.