3/07/2015

Tony Pua – How to take down a SWF?




Najib is suing Tony Pua, a DAP MP from Petaling Jaya Utara and Chan Chee Kong, the owner of MediaRakyat website for defamation, for slandering him in the 1MDB controversy.  What the outcome of this legal suit is another exciting court drama in Malaysia and may drag on and gain infamy like the Anwar case.

What is important is the immediate impact of what Tony Pua and his peers had done, to bring down the 1MDB ‘sovereign’ fund. The PM Najib has ordered an investigation into the operations of 1MDB and the winding down of its activities plus the sale of its assets. The 1MDB has ‘become a hot potato for the Malaysian government. It was just too much to handle’ according to a report in the Star paper. With the fire sale, what would be left of the 1MDB would be just a skeleton with everything stripped off. Several hundred million ringgits of assets and investments just went pooped and it was all over. Not sure about the reported RM42b debt.

Such big funds are usually managed by a team of professional managers, the lucky people that got to gamble with OPMs with little responsibility and at most losing their jobs. They gamble with other people’s money, not their money, and imagine the kind of opportunities these lucky people have to line their pockets with the payments from all parties, the buyers/sellers of assets and investments, and their employers paying them good salaries plus big bonuses when the gamble was right?

And the good thing is that many of them would not be sacked even if they lost big money as long as no fraud was discovered. They became valuable assets for the expensive training fees paid for their mistakes and wrong bets. They become indispensable for the experience of losing big money.

In the 1MDB case, it was just bad luck that there were Tony Pua and the social media to expose the doubtful and questionable investments made. If all this was hidden, undisclosed, no one would be wiser. The 1MDB could even churn out financial reports after reports to show how profitable were their investments. Who is there to check on the real stuff, who is there to check and confirm that it was really making big losses and all the reports were merely cover ups?

The truth would be revealed in the investigation ordered by Najib. I bet he would assign an independent committee and not cronies to do the investigation. I bet the opposition leaders would demand to be a party to the investigation or to insist on an independent committee, not appointees of the govt. If not, then it would be no different than a kangaroo court with kangaroos doing the investigation.

There is really very big risk in the management of a sovereign fund when the money is OPM and the professional managers are employees who are also human beans and at times would behave like human beans when the temptations are sexy enough. The need for transparency cannot be overstated. Without transparency, no one really knows what is going on.

Malaysia is lucky in this sense, that Najib also believes in transparency and there is real opposition in Parliament to demand transparency. Otherwise, 1MDB would still be happily playing with OPM until the cow comes home and more and more OPM would be injected into the fund for the fun of the management and their patrons.

Tony Pua and his peers could claim one down and more to go.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I admire malaysians. They dare speak out and take avenues neccessary to voice the wrongs of govt policies.

Anonymous said...

But whatever lah, there are great advantages by being the incumbent govt. And Najib is the leader of the incumbent govt, tio bo? Tony Pua is just an opposition MP only what, although a better and stronger one and from a stronger party, than our Teochew Ah Hia and party.

And this great advantage by being incumbent is the same all over the world, not just in Matland. And u can see from other places and examples that only through a revolution can a bad incumbent be removed, along with the advantages that come with it.


Anonymous said...

In democratic western countries eg USA, there is a separation of powers between the Executive and the Judiciary. Hence the Judiciary cannot do the bidding of the Executive.

If there is no separation of powers, then the incumbent Executive can simply remove and replace the Judiciary if the Judiciary try to be "funny" with the Executive, tio bo?

Anonymous said...

What is the relationship between Singaporeans and PAP?
Is it just a business relationship?
PAP makes Singaporeans rich, we vote PAP?
PAP makes Singaporeans poor, we vote Opposition?

Catherine Lim's affective divide.
Isn't it just a fancy way of saying "business relationship"?
- PAP does not perform, Singaporeans vote them out.
- Singaporeans don't perform, PAP replaces us with Aliens.

Anonymous said...

Possible Theme Songs for SG50 celebrations:
"A Time To Say Goodbye"?
"The Final Countdown"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqYG3f4PaWc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw&feature=related

Anonymous said...

- Singaporeans don't perform, PAP replaces us with Aliens.
Anon 12:31 pm

And Singaporeans really don't have the numbers available, and also at lower cost, to perform. Boh tiok meh?

That's why PAP replaces Singaporeans with "Aliens", which have the numbers (no problem, tio bo?) and also at lower cost (also no problem), never mind some may be fake ones.(small problem lah, because there are many more genuine ones than fake ones)

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

As I said before, the shitty assets will be liquidated under debt plan.

However the culture of "let's get the money and keep it for ourselves" will still prevail in UMNO-ruled Malaysia. The ENTITLED Malay elites love their stylo-milo lifestyles, replete with European finery and overseas property portfolios.

Anwar is already in jail/ hospital. Pua is being sued by Najib---"How dare this Chinaman pechah our lobang?". Anti-Chinese bias in UMNO is quite well known and thus is no secret.

At the moment it is an entangled finger pointing circle as the guilty rush to cover their arses. However THE CULTURE of entitlement, corruption and privilege continues unabated.

1MDB will reappear in another form or associated forms and the whole shebang will start all over again.

SWF's contain shit-tonnes of money---mostly looted form private citizens and their enterprises. Since the CULTURE OF ENTITLEMENT is cast in stone, and the money constantly coming in, what do you think is going to happen?

Forget all this "transparency" bullshit. People like to delude themselves about "transparency" only after the shit has hit the fan and the money's vanished like MH370---i.e. without a trace, without an identifiable "agent".

The People of Malaysia Get The UMNO they Deserve...and since politics emerges from CULTURE, you can all rest assured that in the future, when this saga has settled down, "disappearing money" and asset write-downs will be happening all over again.

Malaysia boleh? 'bang, kalau ada duit, apa-apa pun boleh...

Bumiputra much?

Anonymous said...

Has any eunuch in Temasek informed Ho Ching that the oil and commodities market is crashing?
I worry about Temasek's investments in oil & commodities companies:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/ep-writedowns-loom-reserves-overvalued-60

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/aussie-boom-towns-go-bust-iron-ore-prices-crash-record-lows

Anonymous said...

Vote Kenneth Jeyaratnam into Parliament and he can do a Tony Pus on Temasick & GIC. When the skeletons fall out of the skeleton, CPF members will be crying father crying mother !

Anonymous said...

Investment well under water already how to sell ? Better to claim they are there for the long term. With a simple statement like that, their jobs are safe, and its OPM anyway so why worry ?