2010s-in-malaysia

"1MDB is not a wealth fund as it is touted to be. Except for the RM1 million contributed by the government, the rest of the RM42 billion is borrowed money. Borrowed money cannot be regarded, or classified, as wealth. It is a liability that imposes on 1MDB, or in case of its failure, the government has to repay the interest and the principal. The sum is so huge that if the government cannot pay them (the financiers) it could be bankrupted. This has happened to Greece. The possibility of this happening imposes a heavy responsibility on the management of 1MDB and its oversight by the government. And very quickly, it became clear that the executives and board of 1MDB did not take their responsibilities seriously."

"Investors today have a choice. They have vast choice. And Malaysia, even with everything else being equal, has a challenge, because we are a small economy, and we have strength but we also have this weakness that we are relatively small. I've always maintained Malaysia has to work harder, much harder than the bigger markets. And a situation like that… when investors see something like the 1MDB fiasco, and don't understand it, they are left to question whether Malaysia condones the weak governance practices that were evident, and [they] have questions about the big institutions. It makes it difficult for us to promote Malaysia"

"Some have argued that the 1MDB scandal would have no impact on the election. I beg to differ. Yes, 1MDB alone probably won’t swing votes, but the fact that the voters will walk into the polling booth knowing that the prime minister had taken money into his own personal bank account is an important electoral factor. Otherwise, Najib’s rating would have gone back to the 60 percent level of pre-2015, and not hovering in the 30s, a recipe for disaster for Umno-BN. Whether they like it or not, both Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor are hated figures among the electorate. On the social media and political gossip circles, they are constantly ridiculed by parodies, not by the opposition but by the spontaneous public."

"What cheek and and insolence for former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak to insist that I admit that he had received an RM2.6 billion donation from a Saudi prince, when the best answer to his pathetic effort at documentary exoneration on Monday was made by the Wall Street Journal’s award-winning journalists. Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, whose exposés on the 1MDB scandal in their book Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World will hit the Malaysian bookstores next week. The pair took Najib to task for his blog post on Monday regarding how he received donations from the Saudi royal family."

"1MDB is not a perception or slander but it is indeed a case that has been proven in the United States. What is there to hide? Just admit it."