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In its today’s online edition, The Edge Singapore reposted the entire 24-pages-pullout of The Edge Malaysia’s special report on the 1MDB.
In the report, the Swiss national Justo – known as the giant-killer who exposed the 1MDB scandal – said the Singapore newspaper carried a ‘scripted’ interview.
The interview, given to the ST’s Bangkok based correspondent Nirmal Ghosh, was actually written by ex-PetroSaudi people, whom Justo said blackmailed him.
If what Xavier Justo is saying is true, and a scam of international proportions is now uncovered, they come with wider implications.
Was the Straits Times aware that the interview was scripted and was the paper a willing participant in the scam?
The recent interview of Justo to The Edge Malaysia was given after he visited Malaysia’s PM Mahathir Mohamad last week.
Justo was jailed in Bangkok after he was found guilty of blackmailing PetroSaudi on the 1MDB scandal.
He was later pardoned (twice) by the Thai King. He hurriedly made his way to Malaysia to meet Mahathir to tell his side of the story.
He also met with the 1MDB task force set-up by the new Pakatan Harapan government.
The Straits Times carried the interview on July 24, 2015, splashing it on its print and online editions claiming it was a world scoop.
It said it was an interview with Swiss citizen Xavier Andre Justo inside a Bangkok jail.
It was headlined “I was offered $2.7m for stolen data: Ex-PetroSaudi employee Xavier Andre Justo on the 1MDB saga”.
But The Edge Malaysia at that time questioned how the Straits Times could have access to Justo in jail when the Malaysian police did not.
In the ST interview, Justo spoke about the group to which he handed documents related to 1MDB’s transactions with PetroSaudi.
The interview made him say the group told him they intended to “modify the documents” and use them to “bring down the Malaysian government.”
The ST story was picked up by the international media.
Newspapers and TV stations in Malaysia, where the government had just clamped down on an investigation into 1MDB, happily reproduced the ST report.
They were in support of Najib’s narrative, wrote The Edge Media Group Publisher Ho Kay Tat.
"The group that Justo referred to was principally Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown, The Edge Media Group chairman Tong Kooi Ong and me,” said Ho.
In the interview to The Edge, Justo said that he was blackmailed by former PetroSaudi executives into, amongst other things, giving the interview to Straits Times Bangkok-based reporter Nirmal Ghosh, which was scripted.
In the special edition of The Edge Malaysia, the publisher wrote that he had asked about the “hidden hand” behind the ST story and the interview with Justo.
“I said it was remarkable that while Malaysian police were not allowed (at the time) to see Justo, ST’s Bangkok-based reporter Nirmal Ghosh had access to him in a high-security prison.
“ST’s foreign news editor Audrey Quek issued a statement to deny that any hidden hands were involved.
“A top Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) executive sent me a WhatsApp message to rebut my allegation and said the story was an example of “enterprising” newsgathering and that Nirmal had worked on it for weeks.”
But Justo’s denial that he was a willing participant in the interview and that the reporter had written the story from scripted materials that came from the ex-strongmen of PetroSaudi, puts SPH’s responses into question.
