Speakers' Corner: Occasional contributions from readers, which do not necessarily reflect the views of Sarawak Report but may be published at the discretion of the site.

Bored By Fraud?

A few years ago posing such a question about policing and justice generally in the United Kingdom might have been seen as eccentric. Not any more. Fraud, once the preserve of the London Police forces and then passed to the “Serious Fraud Office” now seems to have been transmogrified into a non-offence. At least, if still on the Statute Book, no official takes any notice.

Too extreme? Favourite condemnation of the big business establishment. Who, of course, have everything to gain from unrestricted fraud and everything to lose if the fraud laws were again to be enforced.

And they could be. There are still there enough highly paid public servants, in the Police, in the Lord Chancellor’s department and elsewhere to enforce them. What is lacking, it seems, is political will. The Cameron administration, having been forced by public opinion into doing something (but not much) about tax evasion didn’t see, or want to see, the huge net of fraud pervading the big business world. Why would they? That’s where their money and other support comes from. London now rivals the other fraud capitals of the world in permissiveness and blind eye-itis.

From the general to the particular. It hardly seems possible that official and political Britain is totally ignorant of the massive Malaysian fraud known as 1MDB and the intimate personal involvement in that of the Malaysian Prime Minister. That has not stopped British officialdom from turning a blind eye. Of course the huge involvement in Malaysian business affairs by the City establishment has played a part in this epidemic of blindness; even extending to allowing the criminal Malaysian PM to visit London with impunity.

Those accused of ignoring Malaysian crime, and the vast influx of Malaysian capital from doubtful or criminal sources have so far taken refuge in silence. So let them answer just this one question. Why is the firm PetroSaudi still in business in London when it has been proven to have been a partner in the Malaysian 1MDB scam and to have milked some 300 million dollars from it?

For months its lawyers threatened the world press with libel suits if they printed the truth about PetroSaudi’s involvement. That intimidation eventually failed. The truth was printed and the lawyers remain silent. So where are the police. Where is the Serious Fraud office? Where, indeed, is the political will to show the world that business crime in Britain is treated as any other crime? The Cameron administration chickened out. How about yours Mrs. May?

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