Sarawak Report has obtained exclusive access to a copy of the controversial 1MDB Joint Venture Agreement, completed on 28th September 2009 between Malaysia’s so-called development fund, 1MDB (One Malaysia Development Berhad) and the company PetroSaudi.
The 26 page document, which has till now been kept secret, was signed by 1MDB’s then Managing Director, Shahrol Halmi and PetroSaudi Managing Director, Tarek Obaid.
Despite 1MDB’s servers having been wiped before Christmas the copy was passed to Sarawak Report by a concerned insider just days after opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was controversially jailed last week.
It at last enables concerned parties to scrutinise the true nature of this widely criticised deal, which was driven through by the Malaysian Prime Minister in his capacity as Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Board of Advisors to 1MDB.
What the document reveals is that the Prime Minister and his advisors at 1MDB (believed to include the playboy tycoon Jho Low) paid USD$1billion of borrowed public money into a venture that already carried a $700,000,000 debt in the form of a loan from PetroSaudi’s parent company to the subsidiary that was entering into the joint venture, PetroSaudi Holdings (Caymans) Limited.
Crucially, under the terms of the joint venture, agreed to by 1MDB, the Malaysian development fund had committed to pay back this whopping great loan to the parent company, PetroSaudi International, on day one of the joint venture!
