The people at 1MDB had all along claimed or given the impression that Aabar BVI was part of the IPIC-Aabar conglomerate in Abu Dhabi, Kadir pointed out in his latest blog posting. (IPIC is short for International Petroleum Investment Corporation.)
“Through a series of joint ventures, capital raising exercises and global money transfers involving 1MDB, billions of dollars had been funneled to this copycat offshore company believed to be controlled by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s associate Jho Low,” he said.
He also referred to another Jho Low company, Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Limited, as a copycat. “It mimics the New York Stock Exchange-listed Blackstone Group.”
Those who followed the McDonald vs McCurry case in Kuala Lumpur in the 2000s would understand this copycat trickery more easily, he said.
Kadir said the Abu Dhabi state-owned IPIC’s statement to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) dated April 11 should be read together with the letter from a “mysterious Arab prince” and the recently issued Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) Report on 1MDB.
The PAC Report, he argued, though cautiously worded to avoid implicating Prime Minister Najib Razak directly, was sufficiently damning. “Also, to make matters worse for 1MDB and Najib, investigators from many countries are collaborating with each other to make their cases against them watertight.”
Kadir said he did not think that IPIC would openly lie to the LSE, its shareholders and the regulatory authorities in the United Kingdom and around the world through its April 11 statement.
He asked: “Who is more likely to tell a lie, the LSE-listed IPIC or the unlisted 1MDB, and hoping to get away?”
He suggested that it would be safer to believe that IPIC was being truthful in its letter to the LSE, which was broadcast worldwide, than to trust a 2011 letter purportedly from an “Arab prince” that surfaced out of the blue a few days ago.
He said there would be no reason for the government to place the Auditor-General’s report on 1MDB’s accounts under Official Secrets Act if it had nothing to hide.