KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 12 — DAP’s Lim Kit Siang reminded Datuk Seri Najib Razak today of a 2015 pledge to sue the Wall Street Journal for revealing his RM2.6 billion “donation”, telling the former prime minister that time was running out.
The Iskandar Puteri said Najib could still launch the long-promised defamation lawsuit now as the statutory limit in the US for such civil action was six years.
Lim earlier rejected Najib’s insistence that the latter has provided “proof” the money came from the Saudi royal house or that the DAP leader has accepted this.
“Najib should respond to the questions I had posed — why he failed to sue the Wall Street Journal which published the report in July 2015 that the RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account belonged to 1MDB,” Lim said in a statement.
He also pointed out to Najib that the two WSJ journalists primarily responsible for breaking the scandal wide open — Tom Wright and Bradley Hope — both rejected the “evidence” he offered to support his claim that the money came from a Saudi royal.
Wright and Hope were in Malaysia to promote their book on the 1MDB corruption scandal, during which Wright had picked apart Najib’s claim that the reported RM2.6 billion was a donation from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A source close to Najib claimed on July 5, 2015 that the former prime minister would sue the WSJ “next week”.
