The Blair-Rewcastle multifaceted complicity to destroy 1MDB
On the 11th of January 2010, Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak made public a multi-billion dollar joint venture initiative between 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, and China’s leading power grid operator, State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC). The news did not go down well with Andrew Brown, the brother of former British premier Gordon Brown, who decided to try and dissuade the Chinese against persisting with their energy ambitions in Malaysia.
Just for that, Andrew came up with the idea of dedicating a news portal to running the gamut of conspiracy against the then Chief Minister of Sarawak, Tun Pehin Sri Haji Abdul Taib bin Mahmud. He tasked his wife, Clare Rewcastle Brown, to come up with editorials that would expose alleged acts of criminal and moral impropriety on the part of the former Chief Minister in relation to Cahaya Mata Sarawak Berhad (CMS), a flagship of the Taib Business Empire.
One thing led to another before team Rewcastle (comprising Andrew, Ms. Rewcastle and a few of Andrew’s associates) got down to registering the sarawakreport.org with Cloudfire, a web hosting and internet security firm based in the United States (US). The domain name was soon identified with Sarawak Report, a fake news portal that kicked off with an editorial accusing CMS of receiving numerous government contracts, engaging in shoddy business deals and benefiting illegally from taxpayer money.
The husband of the Editor of Sarawak Report, Andrew Brown (who retired over a year ago from his communications role at EDF Energy), is commonly known to moan to those who know him that his wife always does precisely as she likes and he cannot guide her.
Yet ‘RPK’ appears to have a wonderful and weird inside knowledge to imply the opposite. In a characteristically rambling and contorted piece of bad writing, he has come up with a baffling story to connect everyone his paymaster Rosmah doesn’t like into a global plot to make up the whole 1MDB scandal in order to tarnish the squeaky clean Najib Razak.
It is the usual ridiculous and unsubstantiated bilge that readers (if there are any genuine ones left) have come to expect.
However, he undermines the entire edifice of claptrap right at the start with the statement “Andrew Brown tasked his wife”. No self-respecting wife gets tasked by her husband… certainly not this one and certainly not Rosmah!
Nevertheless, FLOM has doubtless paid RPK for his job as usual, courtesy of used notes via the Embassy.