By Admin
Joseph Breham, a member of a French legal team that filed complaints in a Paris court in connection with the RM3.7 billion submarines scandal, will be in Malaysia. Little by little, anything that Altantuya touched has been a disastrous consequences for the people who used her when she was alive and now those nightmares are going to eat them alive. Though badly handled by the Malaysian Judiciary with their assorted bias judges and prosecutors, the charade ended with the convictions of two special police officers seconded to PM's Diplomatic Protection Squad. Coming soon, bit by bit, all those callous oppression the people are being treated will come full circle as a few more unnatural deaths occurred amongst those who participated in this mass orgy of stripping the nation's wealth come undone. Move aside, Marcos, , move aside Suharto, you guys were so poor....
A potentially explosive scandal in Malaysia over the billion-dollar purchase of French submarines, a deal engineered by then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak, has broken out of the domestic arena with the filing of a request to investigate bribery and kickbacks from the deal in a Paris court. Najib had commissioned a huge military buildup to upgrade Malaysia's armed forces including the purchase of two Scorpene-class submarines and the lease of a third, a retired French Navy Agosta-class boat, for US$1 billion. The two submarines were designed by France's DCNS naval shipbuilder and built in partnership with Spain's Navantia. Both companies are state owned. The deal earned a commission of €114 million for a company owned by Najib's best friend, Abdul Razak Baginda, once the head of a Kuala Lumpur political think tank. In 2006, the then Indian government and the opposition NDA locked horns over alleged irregularities in the Rs 18,798-crore Scorpene submarine project.
Perimekar, a company owned by Abdul Razak Baginda, received the €114 million for “coordination and support services” – 11 percent of the sale price of the submarines. Zainal Abidin, then the deputy defense minister, told a parliamentary inquiry that such commissions were commonplace in Malaysia. No further inquiry was made as to the commission, nor was any attempt made to determine what coordination and support services Perimekar might be providing.However, it might pay to take a look at some other deals in which top French politicians were involved in, some of them along with DCN, and to ask whether all of that €114 actually went to Razak Baginda, or if some, with the complicity of Malaysian politicians, went into the pockets of their French counterparts.
Within Malaysia, the sale has been compromised by an ongoing trial and set of legal actions around the public kidnapping and private execution of Mongolian modeling student, translator, and paramour Altantuya Shaariibuu. The case took a dramatic turn when the victim was closely connected to EUR 114 million in “commission” payments to Perimekar, a firm owned by a close associate of Prime Minister Najib Razak. The monies were paid by Armaris (now DCNS) for for “support and coordination services,” a term that may bring to mind the murder of Taiwanese Captain Yin Ching-feng in connection with a bribery scandal involving Taiwan’s DCNS frigates.
Full and impartial accountability for public figures is not a prominent feature of Malaysian justice, but French Journalist Arnaud Dubus added to the pressure with a March 5/09 report in France’s Liberation, “Un cadavre tres derangeant: L’etrange affaire du meurtre d’une interprete mongole qui gene le pouvoir en Malaisie” (Page 30-31). It names very prominent names, offers details, and reveals the contents of documents the Malaysian court has refused to admit…
If the documents are true, Altantuya was murdered on the orders of Abdul Razak Baginda. Baginda is a close associate of Najib Razak, who is Malaysia’s Deputy PM and Minister of Defence, and impending Prime Minister. Baginda has been acquitted in a Malaysian court, but Razak himself has been implicated in the associated bribery deal, and Dubus’ report includes detauls of text messages Baginda was reportedly sent by Razak, which strongly imply efforts by Razak to cover up the case and interfere with police investigations.
The motive for Altantuya’s death was reportedly twofold: EUR 500,000 she wished to claim as her share of the “commission,” and the public embarrassment caused to Baginda’s marriage after she tried to collect. The kidnapping was carried out by by agents of the Malaysian Special Branch police, in broad daylight, in front of Baginda’s house, with witnesses present. Malaysian sources have not published full details, but media organizations outside of Malaysia have.
On March 16/09 the case took another turn when Malaysia’s ruling party suspended an opposition lawmaker for a year, after he called Razak a murderer and demanded that he answer questions about his role in the affair.
As is usually true in these operations, it’s the small details that matter. The entire wet operation apparently gave insufficient consideration to the payment of Altantuya Shaariibuu’s cab fare. Somewhere, a cadre of retired Bulgarian KDS professionals are shaking their heads, and wondering what’s wrong with the kids today.
There is plenty of reason to entertain that possibility. French politicians seem to have a knack for backhanders. On October 26, in a trial that centered on illegal arms sales to Angola, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late president Francois Mitterand, was given a two-year suspended sentence and a €375,000 fine for receiving embezzled funds. The court ruled that he had accepted millions of euros in "consultant fees" on the arms deals between 1993 and 1998. In the dock with him were 42 people accused of selling weapons to Angola in defiance of a UN arms embargo, or of taking payments from the arms dealers and using their influence to facilitate the sales.
Although the case has been contained for eight years in the cozy confines of Malaysia's courts and parliament, which are dominated by the ruling National Coalition, French lawyers William Bourdon, Renaud Semerdjian and Joseph Breham put an end to that when they filed it with Parisian prosecutors on behalf of the Malaysian human rights organization Suaram, which supports good-government causes.
Judges in the Paris Prosecution Office have been probing a wide range of corruption charges involving similar submarine sales and the possibility of bribery and kickbacks to top officials in France, Pakistan and other countries. The Malaysian piece of the puzzle was added in two filings, on Dec. 4, 2009 and Feb. 23 this year.
For two years, Parisian prosecutors, led by investigating judges Francoise Besset Francoise Besset and Jean-Christophe Hullin, have been gingerly investigating allegations involving senior French political figures and the sales of submarines and other weaponry to governments all over the world. French news reports have said the prosecutors have backed away from some of the most serious charges out of concern for the political fallout.
The allegations relate to one of France's biggest defense conglomerates, the state-owned shipbuilder DCN, which merged with the French electronics company Thales in 2005 to become a dominant force in the European defense industry. DCN's subsidiary Armaris is the manufacturer of Scorpene-class diesel submarines sold to India, Pakistan and Malaysia among other countries. All of the contracts, according to the lawyers acting for Suaram, a Malaysian human rights NGO, are said to be suspect. This is also the opportunity for Najib's Deputy Muhydeen Yassin (an equally tainted Umno leader from Johore) to see his Boss implicated in the Scandal and see himself sitting on the PM's Chair. However, his joy will be short lived as this scandal will bring down the ruling BN/Umno regime.
Joseph Breham, a member of a French legal team that filed complaints in a Paris court in connection with the RM3.7 billion submarines scandal, will be in Malaysia. Little by little, anything that Altantuya touched has been a disastrous consequences for the people who used her when she was alive and now those nightmares are going to eat them alive. Though badly handled by the Malaysian Judiciary with their assorted bias judges and prosecutors, the charade ended with the convictions of two special police officers seconded to PM's Diplomatic Protection Squad. Coming soon, bit by bit, all those callous oppression the people are being treated will come full circle as a few more unnatural deaths occurred amongst those who participated in this mass orgy of stripping the nation's wealth come undone. Move aside, Marcos, , move aside Suharto, you guys were so poor....
A potentially explosive scandal in Malaysia over the billion-dollar purchase of French submarines, a deal engineered by then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak, has broken out of the domestic arena with the filing of a request to investigate bribery and kickbacks from the deal in a Paris court. Najib had commissioned a huge military buildup to upgrade Malaysia's armed forces including the purchase of two Scorpene-class submarines and the lease of a third, a retired French Navy Agosta-class boat, for US$1 billion. The two submarines were designed by France's DCNS naval shipbuilder and built in partnership with Spain's Navantia. Both companies are state owned. The deal earned a commission of €114 million for a company owned by Najib's best friend, Abdul Razak Baginda, once the head of a Kuala Lumpur political think tank. In 2006, the then Indian government and the opposition NDA locked horns over alleged irregularities in the Rs 18,798-crore Scorpene submarine project.
Perimekar, a company owned by Abdul Razak Baginda, received the €114 million for “coordination and support services” – 11 percent of the sale price of the submarines. Zainal Abidin, then the deputy defense minister, told a parliamentary inquiry that such commissions were commonplace in Malaysia. No further inquiry was made as to the commission, nor was any attempt made to determine what coordination and support services Perimekar might be providing.However, it might pay to take a look at some other deals in which top French politicians were involved in, some of them along with DCN, and to ask whether all of that €114 actually went to Razak Baginda, or if some, with the complicity of Malaysian politicians, went into the pockets of their French counterparts.
Within Malaysia, the sale has been compromised by an ongoing trial and set of legal actions around the public kidnapping and private execution of Mongolian modeling student, translator, and paramour Altantuya Shaariibuu. The case took a dramatic turn when the victim was closely connected to EUR 114 million in “commission” payments to Perimekar, a firm owned by a close associate of Prime Minister Najib Razak. The monies were paid by Armaris (now DCNS) for for “support and coordination services,” a term that may bring to mind the murder of Taiwanese Captain Yin Ching-feng in connection with a bribery scandal involving Taiwan’s DCNS frigates.
Full and impartial accountability for public figures is not a prominent feature of Malaysian justice, but French Journalist Arnaud Dubus added to the pressure with a March 5/09 report in France’s Liberation, “Un cadavre tres derangeant: L’etrange affaire du meurtre d’une interprete mongole qui gene le pouvoir en Malaisie” (Page 30-31). It names very prominent names, offers details, and reveals the contents of documents the Malaysian court has refused to admit…
If the documents are true, Altantuya was murdered on the orders of Abdul Razak Baginda. Baginda is a close associate of Najib Razak, who is Malaysia’s Deputy PM and Minister of Defence, and impending Prime Minister. Baginda has been acquitted in a Malaysian court, but Razak himself has been implicated in the associated bribery deal, and Dubus’ report includes detauls of text messages Baginda was reportedly sent by Razak, which strongly imply efforts by Razak to cover up the case and interfere with police investigations.
The motive for Altantuya’s death was reportedly twofold: EUR 500,000 she wished to claim as her share of the “commission,” and the public embarrassment caused to Baginda’s marriage after she tried to collect. The kidnapping was carried out by by agents of the Malaysian Special Branch police, in broad daylight, in front of Baginda’s house, with witnesses present. Malaysian sources have not published full details, but media organizations outside of Malaysia have.
On March 16/09 the case took another turn when Malaysia’s ruling party suspended an opposition lawmaker for a year, after he called Razak a murderer and demanded that he answer questions about his role in the affair.
As is usually true in these operations, it’s the small details that matter. The entire wet operation apparently gave insufficient consideration to the payment of Altantuya Shaariibuu’s cab fare. Somewhere, a cadre of retired Bulgarian KDS professionals are shaking their heads, and wondering what’s wrong with the kids today.
There is plenty of reason to entertain that possibility. French politicians seem to have a knack for backhanders. On October 26, in a trial that centered on illegal arms sales to Angola, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late president Francois Mitterand, was given a two-year suspended sentence and a €375,000 fine for receiving embezzled funds. The court ruled that he had accepted millions of euros in "consultant fees" on the arms deals between 1993 and 1998. In the dock with him were 42 people accused of selling weapons to Angola in defiance of a UN arms embargo, or of taking payments from the arms dealers and using their influence to facilitate the sales.
Although the case has been contained for eight years in the cozy confines of Malaysia's courts and parliament, which are dominated by the ruling National Coalition, French lawyers William Bourdon, Renaud Semerdjian and Joseph Breham put an end to that when they filed it with Parisian prosecutors on behalf of the Malaysian human rights organization Suaram, which supports good-government causes.
Judges in the Paris Prosecution Office have been probing a wide range of corruption charges involving similar submarine sales and the possibility of bribery and kickbacks to top officials in France, Pakistan and other countries. The Malaysian piece of the puzzle was added in two filings, on Dec. 4, 2009 and Feb. 23 this year.
For two years, Parisian prosecutors, led by investigating judges Francoise Besset Francoise Besset and Jean-Christophe Hullin, have been gingerly investigating allegations involving senior French political figures and the sales of submarines and other weaponry to governments all over the world. French news reports have said the prosecutors have backed away from some of the most serious charges out of concern for the political fallout.
The allegations relate to one of France's biggest defense conglomerates, the state-owned shipbuilder DCN, which merged with the French electronics company Thales in 2005 to become a dominant force in the European defense industry. DCN's subsidiary Armaris is the manufacturer of Scorpene-class diesel submarines sold to India, Pakistan and Malaysia among other countries. All of the contracts, according to the lawyers acting for Suaram, a Malaysian human rights NGO, are said to be suspect. This is also the opportunity for Najib's Deputy Muhydeen Yassin (an equally tainted Umno leader from Johore) to see his Boss implicated in the Scandal and see himself sitting on the PM's Chair. However, his joy will be short lived as this scandal will bring down the ruling BN/Umno regime.
No comments:
Post a Comment