KUALA LUMPUR – 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) whistleblower Xavier Justo and wife Laura have released a book on the scandal, saying that justice still has not been served.
Rendezvous with Injustice: how a family survived hell after blowing the whistle on the 1MDB financial scandal, also contains a foreword by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In a statement on the book’s promotional website, Justo, a former Petrosaudi executive, said he and his wife were motivated to write the book because “justice has not been served and we believe lawyers acting for some of the accused are now playing for time”.
“It’s vitally important that the world doesn’t simply move on because other financial scandals are in the news,” said the Swiss national who blew the lid on the scandal that now has former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak doing jail time for one set of graft charges while facing multiple other cases related to the Malaysian state investment firm.
Justo was jailed in Thailand in 2015 for three years for blackmailing his employer, Petrosaudi, after attempting to expose the scandal.
Petrosaudi was an oil services and production company that entered into a joint venture with 1MDB to make sham investments, resulting in millions of dollars going to shell companies owned by fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho. Low is regarded as the mastermind of the 1MDB scandal and remains at large, reportedly in China.
During Justo’s incarceration, his wife, Laura, was left alone with their infant son, and the book details the intimidation and fear she and her child lived with while Justo was in prison.
“Billions stolen from a country that badly needed the money; drugs, decadence and gangster-like behaviour; twisted lawyers; the scapegoating of an innocent man; and at the centre of it all, me, a young mother alone with her child and living in fear,” Laura said on the book’s website.
Justo also said that while he had exposed the crimes involving 1MDB, it was his wife who had to expose the criminals as part of her struggle to get him freed.
He said it is still “scandalous” that “so few of those involved have had to answer for their crimes”.
Justo’s evidence, given to Clare Rewcastle-Brown, the editor of the whistleblower website Sarawak Report, would later be reported in Malaysian media as well, enough to stir public anger so that Najib’s Barisan Nasional coalition lost federal power for the first time in the 2018 general election.
The new government under Pakatan Harapan led by Dr Mahathir swiftly launched investigations into his role in 1MDB, which he oversaw as finance minister.
In July 2020, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined RM210 million on charges involving RM42 million from former 1MDB subsidiary, SRC International Sdn Bhd.
In August last year, Najib lost his final appeal to overturn his conviction at the Federal Court and began his prison sentence.
Meanwhile, in his foreword for the book, Dr Mahathir noted how the scandal’s “real perpetrators” are walking freely “along the corridors of power, unashamed and confident that their crimes would go unpunished”.
“Justo’s experience can serve as a lesson for anyone who cares about combating corruption,” Dr Mahathir said. – The Vibes, February 17, 2023
