Key 1MDB journalists slam Straits Times interview with Jho Low
SINGAPORE — The journalists at the forefront of reporting on the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal have slammed a recent Straits Times interview with fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low, the alleged mastermind of the insolvent state-owned fund, as “meaningless” and “self-serving”.
Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown, 60, and Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Wright, 44, were heavily critical of the ST article, with Wright ridiculing Low’s claims as “ridiculous”.
Wright told Yahoo News Singapore, “Low has been using the media since 2015 to claim he’s only an intermediary and it’s ridiculous. He’s been charged criminally in the US and Malaysia, and should come out of hiding to face justice, not give meaningless newspaper interviews.”
On Monday (6 January), Singapore’s national broadsheet published what was billed as an exclusive email interview with Low entitled "On the run, fugitive Jho Low tells ST he was just an intermediary". The 38-year-old claimed that he was being made a scapegoat by other parties who bore more responsibility.
The article also reported that Low is “widely believed to be in the United Arab Emirates” and that he has been offered asylum by a country, apparently in Europe.
In 2015, Rewcastle-Brown was the first to report on the misappropriation of billions at 1MDB, which was founded in 2009. She told Yahoo News Singapore via email that the ST article has given an insight into Low's latest position on the trial of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
The 66-year-old is alleged to have illegally received 42 million ringgit (S$14 million) from former 1MDB unit SRC International. The former premier has denied the charges of criminal breach of trust, money laundering and abuse of power, and claimed he was duped by Low and others.
Rewcastle-Brown said in the email, “The media has regularly reported on Low’s earlier self-serving pronouncements through his own blog and hired PR outlets. Clearly the ST interview has done little more than add to that one-sided picture for what it is worth and getting the interview was no great shakes, as clearly it was merely a list of questions to which written answers were provided with no follow-ups.”
No response from Straits Times
Wright is co-author with Bradley Hope of Billion Dollar Whale, a comprehensive account of the 1MDB saga and Low’s role in it. The duo reported that up to US$6 billion was siphoned from Malaysia’s state coffers through 1MDB. The book included salacious details of the sprawling scandal linking A-list Hollywood celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, powerful figures in the Middle East, bankers in Singapore and Najib.
On Monday, Wright tweeted, “Jho Low gives pointless interview to Straits Times without answering multiple charges against him by US and Malaysian authorities. He’s still on the run in China.”
Malaysian financial publication The Edge also took issue with the ST story via an article entitled “We ask Jho Low the obvious questions The Straits Times of Singapore did not ask”. It concluded, “Stop the nonsensical spin you are doing with help from your friends in The Singapore ST. No one believes it anyway.”
Yahoo News Singapore sent queries to regional correspondent Leslie Lopez, who wrote the article, and ST Foreign Editor Jeremy Au-Yong on whether the criticism was justified and if the paper stood by the story. They went unanswered as of Wednesday evening.
‘One-sided interviews’
This is not the first time that ST has generated controversy over its coverage of the 1MDB saga.
In 2015, it published allegations by Swiss national Xavier Andre Justo, a former employee of PetroSaudi, which ran a joint venture with 1MDB.
The 52-year-old claimed that he was offered US$2 million (S$2.7 million) by The Edge owner Tong Kooi Ong in exchange for data stolen from his former employers. He met with a group of individuals, including Rewcastle-Brown, to negotiate the sale of the data.
Justo also claimed that the group told him they would modify the data in a bid to bring down Najib’s government and that they would celebrate with champagne when that happened. After handing over the data to the group, Justo claimed that he was not paid.
At the time of the report, Rewcastle-Brown called Justo’s allegations “bunkum”. Tong also issued a statement acknowledging that The Edge had “misled” Justo to get hold of the data but said the latter’s claims that the data would be tampered were false. While Tong said then that he never intended to pay Justo, he eventually paid the Swiss US$2 million in 2019 for his role in exposing the 1MDB scandal.
The ST story “I was offered $2.7m for stolen data: Ex-PetroSaudi employee Xavier Andre Justo on the 1MDB saga” went on to win an award for Singapore Press Holdings’ Story of the Year.
However, in 2018, Justo told The Edge Malaysia that his interview with ST was scripted.
Justo said he had been coached on what to confess to Thai police in order to secure his early release from a Thai prison while he was being investigated for alleged extortion. He was then told to repeat the confession in the ST interview, adding that he was told not to bring up Jho Low’s name.
Justo claimed that PetroSaudi director Patrick Mahony and British private eye Paul Finnegan were behind the plan.
Alluding to ST’s report on Justo, Rewcastle-Brown decried the paper’s history of doing what she called “one-sided interviews on behalf of Jho and his collaborators without admitting the limitations or lack of balance in their reports”.
“This episode (interview with Justo) has done nothing to uphold what had been a fairly solid reputation for a professionally run paper. They ended up being played as patsies by a bunch of crooks.”
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