By: Tan Wah Piow
The lady in red is Fortune magazine’s 49th most powerful woman in the world. She is Clare Rewcastle-Brown, investigative journalist extraordinaire.
Without her tenacious efforts in tracing the source of wealth of Malaysia’s Officer No. 1 and his cohorts, the world would not know about the multi-billion dollar theft of the Malaysia Development Fund. Through her expose, we now know about the web of financial deceits deployed to launder the stolen money from the Malaysian people.
Some of these illegal money found its way to Singapore, and various countries. Under the glare of international publicity, ‘squeaky clean’ Singapore government had no choice but to commence criminal proceeding against the rogue financial pimp Jho Low’s private bankers in Singapore.
Without Clare’s painstaking and courageous investigations, Singapore’s financial regulators would still be sleeping on their job. Some may say sleeping with an open eye. For this reason, I suggest the Singapore government ought to confer an award to Clare for her contribution towards the war against globalised money laundering. This will send a message to all corrupt politicians that there is no hiding place. It will put Singapore in good light on the international stage as an ethical financial centre.
The video recording of Clare Rewcastle-Brown’s hour long talk on The Inside Story – Investigations into Malaysian’s billion-Dollar 1MDB scandal organised jointly by SOAS Centre of Southeast Asian Studies and Monsoons Book Club will be released before the weekend.
Watch this space. Watch the lady in red.