Sarawak Report: Billion Dollar Whale author should reveal source

PETALING JAYA (September 26): Clare Rewcastle-Brown, editor of Sarawak Report asks the authors of Billion Dollar Whale to reveal their source, for information contained in the book on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd financial scandal.

Rewcastle-Brown’s book titled ‘The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé’, demanded that Tom Wright, Billion Dollar Whale co-author, make public how he procured details of a transaction of US$681 million (RM2.8 billion) that involved the former prime minister Najib Razak.

According to the Sarawak Report editor, a source introduced to him by Sarawak Report has supplied the information, and Wright had reneged on his promise to credit the news portal in the book.

Having pledged to protect the source and the colleagues of the source, he had put them at risk of reprisal by reproducing the documents he received from the source on his website. 

“He also said he would continue to contact the source through Sarawak Report, and not attempt to go behind Sarawak Report’s back,” she said on sarawakreport.org.

“Far more importantly, he also promised that he would not reproduce the documents themselves on his website, because the source was fearful that showing the documents would point to who they were.

“Nevertheless, shortly after the original story, Wright did put those documents up on the WSJ website, despite that promise, causing great fear to Sarawak Report’s source, many of whose colleagues were indeed arrested shortly after, in a search for the leak. As a result, that source did not approach Sarawak Report again.”

She said there was reason to believe that “the WSJ team were able to reopen connections with that source and run more stories based on material they provided” despite Wright’s pledge not to go behind Sarawak Report’s back.

Rewcastle-Brown said that Tom Wright said: “Let’s leave out Sarawak Report, you are talking to the big boys now,” when speaking to the intermediary between the source and WSJ writers.

Information had been shared with the WSJ  “to give the story more global attention and to make it harder for Najib to ignore than if it had come out only in this Malaysia-focused blog, which was already under enormous attack from his government.”

On the Sarawak Report website, she urged for Wright and his colleagues at the WSJ to clarify if the story on Najib’s bank nalance had come directly from the source, or if the Sarawak Report had handed them the story.

“Tom Wright owes Malaysians (few of whom have access to the book) his version of how he got the Pullizter [sic] Finalist shotlisted [sic] story.”