What Goes On; Or Does Not?

• 24 October 2016
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It is now months since the US Department of Justice released the results of its investigation into the 1MDB scandal showing that the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and many others, had converted huge sums of money from the Malaysian Government fund to their personal use.

In addition to that a criminal complaint is pending against the Saudi/British/Swiss company which was a party to the original theft in 2009 of about one billion dollars, taking as its share some 300 million dollars, which enabled it to move from a paper enterprise without serious business to a player in oil exploitation in Venezuela.

The British authorities concerned with major fraud claim to be investigating this matter as the company, PetroSaudi, have offices in London. But nothing positive seems to have happened so far and it is beginning to appear as though, rather than looking into the case, they are looking the other way. If so why?

Much has been heard from British government sources about dealing with financial crime without the British Courts being troubled. Could it be that the UK authorities are more concerned about British business interests in Malaysia and the sale to that country of armaments than about massive financial crime involving, among others, a British company carrying on business in London? Or is that the London police, headed by a man on his way out, are too busy with really important matters like hate crime to worry about mega fraud?

Can we expect some answers on all this? Continued silence will be interpreted as confirmation that there is no intention to punish those involved who are within UK jurisdiction and also as an indication that the new UK government is as indifferent to big scale financial crime as was its predecessor?