KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 ― The attempt to discredit Sarawak Report's exposes on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) will not likely stop Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's attacks against the Najib administration, an ex-minister said, pointing out that the whistleblower site is not the former prime minister's sole information source.

Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin, a former information minister, said despite the purported campaign to use the arrest of Swiss national Xavier Justo to declare 1MDB clean, he was confident Dr Mahathir still has many other “secrets” on the troubled state-owned investment firm that he will reveal over time.

“Sarawak Report is not his only source of information,” he insisted in a blog post.

“It would be very wrong if ministers, leaders or even Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak himself think that Dr Mahathir only relies on Sarawak Report's articles to reveal the alleged abuses by 1MDB.

“As a prime minister of 22 years, everyone, especially those working closely with him, would know that he places priority on obtaining the truth in an issue that he plans on sharing for public good,” he added.

Justo's arrest in Thailand last week was front-paged in New Straits Times along with a report quoting cybersecurity experts claiming that the former PetroSaudi International (PSI) director had likely doctored documents on the firm's aborted deal with 1MDB before they were leaked to Sarawak Report.

The documents were purportedly used by the whistleblower site in one of its many exposes that many government critics including Dr Mahathir have relied on to question 1MDB's allegedly opaque deals.

In the English daily's report, an anonymous spokesman from Protection Group International (PGI) was quoted saying that documents recovered from Justo, who is under investigation in Thailand for alleged blackmail and extortion, were “incomplete, and underwent an editing process after they were removed from PetroSaudi’s systems”.

The spokesman also identified Sarawak Report, which is operated by Clare Rewcastle-Brown, as a recipient of the documents that  were “creatively selected and edited to fit a desired narrative”.

Malay Mail Online made two attempts last week to obtain a formal confirmation from PGI on the reported findings but both requests were rejected due to “client confidentiality”.

It is not known who commissioned PGI to investigate the authenticity of the documents and how the firm arrived at the conclusion that they were tampered with.

Yesterday, deputy home minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said it was only “logical” for local authorities to believe claims that the documents were doctored as they were seen to have originated from Justo.

Zainuddin, however, said it was a bad strategy for Najib's supporters to use the Swiss national's arrest to clear the prime minister's and 1MDB's name.

“Even from the start, their strategy wasn't very smart,” he said.

Instead of parking an NST journalist in Thailand to report first-hand news of Justo's arrest, Zainuddin said propagandists should have used national news agency Bernama or foreign media outfits.

Some foreign press, he claimed, “can be paid like how certain blog writers are paid”.

“It is more credible if the news (of the arrest) had not come from a paper that the general public know is controlled,” he said, referring to NST.

Yesterday, Sarawak Report urged PGI to confirm claims that their investigation on the documents that Justo purportedly leaked had been doctored by the Swiss national.

In a letter sent by Reed Smith LLP on behalf of Rewcastle-Brown, the site's lawyers sought for PGI to confirm the veracity of the quotes and to identify the individual who made the remarks.

Hundreds of millions were allegedly siphoned out from the abortive 1MDB-PetroSaudi deal in one claim, while another purported that the funds were used to help a Malaysian tycoon purchase a local bank.