For the past seven years Sarawak Report has detailed the consequences of politcal corruption in Malaysia on the environment, civil liberties and the prosperity of the nation.  We have worked on this project as a voluntary not for profit commitment.  It was our work that exposed what has become the world's largest kleptocracy scandal, involving up to $7 billion dollars stolen from the development fund 1MDB.  Numerous banks have been already held to account and 15th June the US Dept of Justice issued a third court order for the sequestration of over $1.5 billion in assets bought with money stolen by 1MDB.  The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, has admitted he used much of this money to buy political support and to win the last election - although he claims that the $681 million that went into his own accounts came from a mystery Saudi Royal donor and not 1MDB as detailed by the joint US, Swiss, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, UK, Hong Kong and Luxembourg investigations into the scandal.

Sarawak Report has led on this massive international scandal all the way, revealing story after story both on the crime itself and the distribution of all the proceeds.  There have been numerous legal threats by various players, but so far none have sued us in the face of overwhelming evidence.  However,  Malaysia's Islamic party PAS has now taken exception to being caught up in the scandal, having broken with the opposition alliance in order to collaborate with the Prime Minister's own BN alliance at the very height of the exposures of theft from the development fund.  Sarawak Report pointed out that the PM distributes money to gain political support and that considerable largesse was noted to have been passing from his administration for the first time into PAS during this very period of intense scandal, at which point a section of the leadership chose to rupture its links with the opposition and later work with Najib instead - splitting the party's own leadership and following in the process. 

PAS's President Hadi has said he views our comments as a personal attack on his reputation in the UK, yet he is seeking to avoid placing security of costs in the UK court before we file our defence.  This forces us to pay for expensive legal support to file that defence, money we have little hope of retrieving, whether or not he continues with his case. We believe this is a politically motivated attack and that the people involved are hoping we will settle the action rather than place a defence.  They will then use that outcome, backed by BN's powerful propaganda machine to seek to discredit us.  Please help us fight this case in order to counter this the latest of so many attempts to discredit our work.