Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Malaysia's Sub Scandal Resurfaces

French prosecutors edge closer to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak

The noose could be tightening on one of Malaysia’s greatest military procurement scandals, the US$1 billion purchase of French-built Scorpène submarines commissioned by then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak in 2002.

The latest developments come at a time when Najib, as prime minister, has been touring Europe, meeting with Queen Elizabeth and Pope Benedict XVI in an effort to repair an image battered by an ugly crackdown on July 9 against tens of thousands of protesters asking for reforms of Malaysia's electoral system, which is regarded as rigged to keep the ruling national coalitoin in power.

The scandal allegedly involves French politicians, the giant state-owned DCNS defense contractor and politicians and military procurement units across the world. The scandal netted a company owned by Najib’s close friend Abdul Razak Baginda, €114 million in “commissions,” according to testimony in Malaysia’s Parliament. Some of the money is rumored to have been kicked back to French and Malaysian politicians.

French investigators have been poring over DCNS records for months in connection with the larger scandal. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has declined to investigate the scandal, maintaining that the giant commission was payment for legitimate services.

“It is likely that in September we should have access to the first police conclusions from all the investigations that have taken place over the last 18 months,” Paris-based lawyer William Bourdon told Asia Sentinel Tuesday. “We know that the police seem to have obtained quite crucial documents.”

Bourdon, the leader of a team of lawyers investigating the case, is to visit Kuala Lumpur on July 20 to confer with Suaram, the NGO that has filed a complaint with French authorities over the scandal. The question in France is whether under French law an NGO can act as a complainant. That will be decided in coming days by a French judge, Bourdon said. He added that he is confident that he will succeed.

For years, Malaysian authorities have been trying to keep the scandal under the carpet. The matter broke into the open in 2006, however, with the gruesome murder of Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu, who had served as a translator for part of the submarine deal. She had been shot in the head and her body was blown up with military explosives, Her last words, according to a confession by one of her killers, was that she was pregnant. The fact that her body was blown up has led to suspicions that the killers were trying to hide evidence of who the father might be.

The French prosecutors are not expected to investigate Altantuya’s death as such. Instead, they are following the case on the basis that it is illegal to pay or take kickbacks in France. If the €114 million is found to be a kickback, the French prosecutors can act, Bourdon said.

According to Altantuya’s final letter, which was found in a hotel room after her death, she was supposed to have received a US$500,000 fee for her work. After a whirlwind courtship in which she was given thousands of dollars and whisked off to Paris and other destinations by Razak Baginda, who is married, according to testimony, Altantuya was jilted by and ended up in front of his Kuala Lumpur house, calling him a “bastard” and demanding that he come out to face her.

Shortly after that, a sedan full of Malaysian police officers pulled up and took her away. She was never seen alive again. In the letter left behind at her death, she said she had been blackmailing Razak Baginda, at that time a well-connected political analyst.

Two of Najib’s bodyguards have been convicted and sentenced to death for her murder. Abdul Razak Baginda was acquitted in a trial seemingly held to make sure top government officials’ names would not come out. He fled to the UK and has not been back to Malaysia since.

French investigators have been going through the state-owned DCN's records for months. In France, the scandal has major implications. Tied to the global sales of weaponry have been deaths and scandal not only in Malaysia but in Pakistan, Taiwan and France itself. Allegations of kickbacks being examined by French prosecutors go clear up to former French President Jacques Chirac, former Prime Ministers Dominique de Villipin and Edouard Balladur and the country’s current president, Nicholas Sarkozy in addition to an unknown number current and former French defense executives. Military procurement officials in Taiwan, India, Chile and Brazil may be involved, in addition to Malaysia.

Lawyers for the families of 11 French engineers killed in a 2002 bomb attack in Karachi were quoted in April as saying they would file a manslaughter suit against Chirac, allegedly because he cancelled a bribe to Pakistani military officials in the sale of three Agosta 90-class submarines to that country’s navy. Sarkozy was Minister of the Budget when the government sold the subs, built by the French defense giant DCN (later known as DCNS) to Pakistan for a reported US$950 million.

Prosecutors allege that Pakistani politicians and military officials and middlemen received large “commissions” with as much as €2 million in kickbacks routed back to Paris to fund Balladur's unsuccessful 1995 presidential campaign against Chirac. As budget minister, Sarkozy would have authorized the financial elements of the submarine sale. At the time he was the spokesman for Balladur’s presidential campaign and, according to French media, has been accused of establishing two Luxemburg companies to handle the kickbacks.

It is alleged that when Chirac was re-elected, the president canceled the bribes to the Pakistanis, which resulted in the revenge attack on a vehicle in which the French engineers and at least three Pakistanis were riding. For years, the Pakistanis blamed the attack on fundamentalist Islamic militants, including Al Qaeda.

L'affaire Karachi, as it is widely known in France, has been called the most explosive corruption investigation in recent French history. It may well be far bigger than just the unpaid bribes to the Pakistanis. Executives of DCNS embarked on a global marketing drive to sell the diesel-electric Scorpène-class subs, a new design. They peddled two to the Chilean Navy in 1997, breaking into a market previously dominated by HDN of Germany. Read more.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Nationalism Rules

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

What's the most powerful political force in the world? Some of you might say it's the bond market. Others might nominate the resurgence of religion or the advance of democracy or human rights. Or maybe it's digital technology, as symbolized by the Internet and all that comes with it. Or perhaps you think it's nuclear weapons and the manifold effects they have had on how states think about security and the use of force.

Those are all worthy nominees (no doubt readers here will have their own favorites), but my personal choice for the Strongest Force in the World would be nationalism. The belief that humanity is comprised of many different cultures -- i.e., groups that share a common language, symbols, and a narrative about their past (invariably self-serving and full of myths) -- and that those groups ought to have their own state has been an overwhelmingly powerful force in the world over the past two centuries.

It was nationalism that cemented most of the European powers in the modern era, turning them from dynastic states into nation-states, and it was the spread of nationalist ideology that helped destroy the British, French, Ottoman, Dutch, Portuguese, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian/Soviet empires. Nationalism is the main reason the United Nations had fifty-one members immediately after its founding in 1945 and has nearly 200 members today. It is why the Zionists wanted a state for the Jewish people and why Palestinians want a state of their own today. It is what enabled the Vietnamese to defeat both the French and the American armies during the Cold War. It is also why Kurds and Chechens still aspire to statehood; why Scots have pressed for greater autonomy within the United Kingdom, and it is why we now have a Republic of South Sudan.

Understanding the power of nationalism also tells you a lot about what is happening today in the European Union. During the Cold War, European integration flourished because it took place inside the hot-house bubble provided by American protection. Today, however, the United States is losing interest in European security, the Europeans themselves face few external threats, and the EU project itself has expanded too far and badly overreached by creating an ill-advised monetary union. What we are seeing today, therefore, is a gradual renationalization of European foreign policy, fueled in part by incompatible economic preferences and in part by recurring fears that local (i.e., national) identities are being threatened. When Danes worry about Islam, Catalans demand autonomy, Flemish and Walloons contend in Belgium, Germans refuse to bail out Greeks, and nobody wants to let Turkey into the EU, you are watching nationalism at work.

The power of nationalism is easy for realists to appreciate and understand, as my sometime collaborator John Mearsheimer makes clear in an important new paper. Nations -- because they operate in a competitive and sometimes dangerous world -- seek to preserve their identities and cultural values. In many cases, the best way for them to do that is to have their own state, because ethnic or national groups that lack their own state are usually more vulnerable to conquest, absorption, and assimilation.Read more.

Monday, July 18, 2011

PAS Barks Louder Than Its Bite

Hantu Laut

I have, in my past postings, raised the question of the incompatibility of DAP and PAS, which, needless to say, is fraught with moral ambiguity.This marriage of convenience is destined for the rocks, sooner or later.

Can theocracy and secularism sleep in the same bed?

If you don't have the fortitude to rule the roost to push through your agenda, don't even try, it makes you a laughing stock and reflect on your weaknesses.If you can't fight them join them.


PAS should drop its Islamic badge so as not to confuse the Muslims in this country.


The controversy over the state-enforced entertainment ban during Ramadan in Kedah imposed by the PAS led state government has become a thorny issue with coalition partner DAP, demanding that the state government withdraw the ban immediately.The Kedah Mentri Besar Azizan Abdul Razak issued a strongly-worded statement that the state government would not withdraw the ban.

Obviously, the mentri besar has no balls to stand by his words and the irony is DAP has only 1 assemblyman in the Kedah state assembly and yet DAP has such powerful voice over policy matters.

This is not the first time PAS gave in to DAP demands.In 2009 PAS imposed a ban on the sales of beer in convenience stores in Muslim majority areas.MBSA officers unlawfully seized beer from a 7-Eleven store in Section 8.PAS Commissioner Datuk Hassan Ali lashed out at his executive council colleague Ronnie Liu for reprimanding MBSA officers conducting the raid.

What happened next?

PAS, the lame duck, with intervention from MB Khalid Ibrahim, gave in to DAP demands. The ban was scrapped.

PAS barks louder than its bite, have no balls to defend its position.

It takes just one twit from DAP publicity chief Tony Pua asking his party to pull out of the coalition Pakatan Rakyat that gave PAS leaders the cold feet.The blanket ban was withdrawn and to save face PAS agree with DAP to confine the ban to Muslims only.

It is now clear both PKR and PAS are lame ducks, it is DAP that call the shots.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

A global culture to fight extremism

Why do transnational extremist organizations succeed where democratic movements have a harder time taking hold? Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist, asks for new grassroots stories and global social activism to spread democracy in the face of nationalism and xenophobia. A powerful talk from TEDGlobal 2011.