The Federal Court at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya. It's good to know there are institutions in Malaysia that will address at least the most blatant and obvious of wrongdoings. — Filepic/The Star
Once upon a time, while I was still a salaried worker in the early 2010s, a company visited us and talked about its tentative plans to set up a scholarship. Truth is, its presentation wasn’t really solid and education wasn’t even its core business, and eventually the proposal petered out.
One thing that I did get out of it, though, was a nice leather organiser souvenir. I used it for years, but after a certain point, it became the focus of unwanted attention. People would notice the company’s logo on the cover and ask me, “So, when did you work with 1MDB?”
Of course, this was after 1MDB achieved a degree of notoriety when officials involved in it were accused of embezzlement and money laundering in about 2014.
My memory is kind of hazy whether the “Who is Jho Low” stories hit the press first, but fortunately Netflix’s Man On The Run, a recent documentary about the 1MDB scandal, can help me remember.
I should also add there has been much debate about whether the documentary should be removed because the show is sub judice, given ongoing trials concerning 1MDB.
I find this curious, not the least because it’s difficult to truly ban something from the Internet, and because when you ask people to ban something, it just makes them want to watch it even more.
However, I don’t think it makes sense to say that this documentary gives people a negative impression of what happened with 1MDB because I was already thinking that way back in 2012. The impression I got then was that 1MDB made its money through “land deals”, where the company managed to buy land on the cheap, develop it, and then sell it on for a healthy profit.
And what exactly is meant by “develop” to raise land values in Malaysia can be anything from a full-fledged multibuilding complex, all the way down to a government announcement that a new project will start up at some point in the nebulous future.
In the years after that, the flurry of news, rumours and official explanations about 1MDB just made everything less clear. From stories of Malaysians partying with celebrities, to accusations of US$681mil (RM3.2bil at today’s exchange rates) deposited into personal accounts with no clear explanations (and then being spent on jewellery, reportedly), the feeling I got was that there was definitely something fishy going on.
Then, in July 2016, the US Department of Justice issued a lawsuit. It was the filing of civil forfeiture complaints in an attempt to recover more than US$1bil (RM4.7bil today) of assets misappropriated by 1MDB. The document also noted that US$681mil personal account deposit, identifying the account holder as "Malaysian Official 1” (MO1).
For me, that report was the final confirmation that all my suspicions over the last six years were, in fact, well-founded. I was amazed by the huge sums involved but, sadly, not really shocked by the corruption.
The thing is, in some ways corruption has become “part of the process” in Malaysia. Everything from duit kopi demanded by authorities and suggested favours to help application forms magically rise up the pile, to the understanding that proposals need to have some “wiggle room” factored into their costs.
I have long railed against the normalisation of corruption and graft in any society. It creates a belief that people get selected and achieve success not because they did well or worked hard but because they knew the right palm to grease. Which then means, why bother trying hard or doing your best, right?
The Netflix documentary also makes a point about how brazen some of the accused seemed to be in claiming nothing was going wrong, and how confident they seemed to be about getting away with it. Most impressively, the producers managed to secure an interview with former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, the aforementioned MO1.
However, I got the impression that the segment was less about the answers he was giving and more about trying to convey that he was going to eventually be successful in his appeal against his 12-year jail sentence for abuse of power.
But there’s where I believe the documentary the filmmakers wanted to make crashed into reality. The news that MO1 lost his appeal and was jailed only appears at the end as a text epilogue. The idea that the rich and powerful can get away with anything is not true.
Despite the admittedly prevalent corruption culture, and how those in power can pave their own way, the reality is that there are institutions in Malaysia and – perhaps more importantly – enough strong leadership to head them that at least the most blatant and obvious of wrongdoings are addressed.
It’s not perfect. But I think it lends weight to the argument that the government of the day (especially one with a tenuous hold on power) should consider strengthening these institutions, not directly for its own benefit but so that in the future the next group at the helm will be similarly held accountable for the decisions they make and the actions they take.
But of course, given that appeals are ongoing, perhaps my conclusions here are jumping ahead of themselves. Perhaps sentences will be curtailed, and people will be freed. All I can hope for is that it is at least done in a fair and just manner, by an institution that is trusted and transparent – certainly more so than a company that makes flashy but insubstantial presentations and gives nice leather-bound souvenirs.
In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
