Chasing the truth
> P. Gunasegaram and his team at Kinibiz were among the first journalists to pursue the 1MDB case long before anyone else
than we thought.”
Gunasegaram and his team at Kinibiz began pursuing the story, writing extensively about the company’s dealings, which includes an attention-grabbing three-part series.
While the team did not get hassled by the authorities for their reporting, they did get a legal letter from 1MDB (which is included in the book) stating that what they wrote in the first of their three-part series was not correct.
“We replied that we tried to get in touch with them but they were not forthcoming and so [Kinibiz] went ahead and published [the story],” Gunasegaram said.
He added that 1MDB was offered the opportunity to respond to the story but he never heard from them again.
Different journalists worked on the stories over the years, explained Gunasegaram.
“I relied a lot on information printed on Kinibiz for this book, and I thought it would be good to acknowledge that.” Hence, the joint credit for the book.
In 2015, Rewcastle Brown started covering the case in The Sarawak Report, an investigative journalism online news resource she has been operating from London since 2010. It was the first time the story had been reported outside of Malaysia.
The next year, Kinibiz closed down, but by then, other overseas media outlets had picked up on the story.
Eventually, an investigation by the United States’ Department of Justice became the final nail in the 1MDB coffin.
“It left no doubt that something had gone terribly wrong at 1MDB,” said Gunasegaram.
He then decided to put together the facts of the case in a book, just before the May 9 elections.
“The big discussion I had with the publisher was whether we can publish this book in the first place. It would have been very tough [because] the government [at the time] would have probably banned the book.”
He added that the government then had classified the Auditor General’s report on the 1MDB under the Officials Secrets Act, and no media could report on it.
So they agreed to hold off publishing the book until after the elections, but they had a Plan B in place. If the book ended up being banned in Malaysia, they would try to sell it outside the country.
“[After the elections] we worked full-speed ahead to get it published.”
Despite following the 1MDB story so closely for almost a decade, Gunasegaram was still shocked by the amount of debt that it was eventually revealed to have racked up.
“They were so audacious they thought they could get away with it. You can’t move US$30 billion (RM124.8 billion) in the world market without someone knowing about it.
“Sooner or later, you will get found out.”