Edge roasts 1MDB directors – but who are the real masterminds?

Many of these questions raised by the Edge have been asked before, but it is neat to have them all here, summarised in a few pages.

In some ways, the 1MDB saga was inevitable. A little snowball – a culture of lack of transparency and accountability to the public – was set in motion about three or four decades ago. Over the years, it gathered momentum, picking up scandals along the way, pummelling whistleblowers, sucking in the nation’s financial resources until finally bursting into the monster avalanche that is 1MDB today.

The supreme irony is that this snowballing culture of unaccountability began accelerating during the administration of Dr Mahathir – who today is one of the most trenchant critics of 1MDB.

Yes, the 1MDB directors were presiding over these transactions. But, as Sarawak Report, has pointed out, the directors were sometimes one step behind or not aware of the full picture; others appeared to be driving the deals. Ultimately, many want to know who the real masterminds behind this whole scheme are. These masterminds may not even be the directors, who could just be frontmen – or backroom boys, if you like.

To find out who is really responsible, it is important to set up a special high-powered independent commission, staffed by retired judges, top auditors, property valuers, power industry experts and bankers, to get to the bottom of this whole affair. Those in Bank Negara too cannot avoid being questioned over their oversight role in monitoring the large sums of 1MDB money being transferred all over the place. What about the role of the Finance Minister, who is also the PM?

Even without such an inquiry, I believe most Malaysians have made an educated guess as to where the buck really stops.