[Peetwo]

Wheat from the Chaff on MH370 debris - Courtesy Duncan Steel.. :    

Was the MH370 floating debris field
detected from orbit?

Duncan Steel
2016 March 23rd

With the discovery of yet another apparent fragment of MH370 (this one at Mossel Bay, South Africa), it seems to be becoming clear that there was a large number (thousands) of objects in a floating debris field that escaped detection in the weeks after the crash. In my previous post I discussed how and why the airborne search may have missed the debris field. In the current post I will present some tentative evidence that the debris might have been detected from orbit using French satellites in a location consistent with a crash close to the 7th arc and between latitudes of about 34.5S and 38S, in a ‘gap’ in the airborne search areas. First, though, I will make some comments about the locations that are within the priority underwater search area, but (a) Have yet to be covered in that sea bottom search; and also (b) Were not covered in the airborne search.

Airborne and underwater search areas
In my preceding post I presented a map showing the 7th ping arc and the areas that had been subject to airborne search (through to 2014 April 25th). Various people have asked whether I could show also the area that has so far been covered by the sea bottom search. In the map below I do so:

Map of areas searched from the air (through to 2014 April 25; grey background areas), overlaid with the areas of the sea bottom searched through to 2016 March 3rd (pink-hatched areas; thanks to Richard Cole).

The 7th arc shown above (in a Google Earth screen grab) is that pertaining to an assumed altitude of 35,000 feet. The KMZ file for that arc is available here.

Maps showing the areas covered day-by-day in the airborne search of the ocean surface are available from various websites, such as here. The KMZ file showing all areas south of 20S that were searched from the air was put together by Don Thompson, and is available here.

The lighter rectangle and grid with peripheral latitude and longitude markers I derived from Richard Cole’s latest underwater search status report, entitled MH370 Southern Indian Ocean Search Status 3rd March 2016. From that report I took a JPG screen grab of Map 4 (‘Full Search Area’) and stretched its colours somewhat so as to enhance the red component brightness. I then georeferenced the JPG image using GlobalMapper so as to produce a GeoTIFF version, and converted that GeoTIFF into a KMZ file using MyGeoData. The resultant KMZ overlay is available here.

In the map above I have made that overlay partially transparent in Google Earth so as to enable the airborne ocean surface search areas to be seen; this is also why I found it desirable to enhance the red colouration in Cole’s map. Those interested will likely find it useful to load the three KMZ files mentioned above into Google Earth or some other virtual globe application, because that will make matters clearer as one switches between the different overlays.

As Cole noted in an annotation to his Map 4, as as seen above, the pink areas are those that have so far (through to March 3rd) been subject to the sea bottom search.

I now draw attention to the areas indicated in the following map, where I have used bright green and turquoise lines to highlight these locations. The two areas delineated with bright green lines are within 40 nautical miles of the 7th arc (i.e. the laterally-extended ATSB ‘priority search region’) but have not yet been subject to an underwater search (i.e. they are not hatched in pink in Cole’s map), except for a few passes by the underwater search ship Discovery. The significant point here is that these areas were not subject to an airborne search either, in the six/seven weeks following the loss of MH370.

A similar statement applies to the two areas indicated using turquoise lines. The priority search zone is limited to that area within 40 NM of the 7th arc drawn as far north as 35.5S. Thus those two areas are outside of the present priority search zone, and have (mostly) not been subjected to either airborne or sea bottom searches.

Map highlighting four areas (or just two, if you join the adjacent green and turquoise boxes together) that were not subject to airborne ocean surface search following the loss of MH370, and as of yet have not been subject to an underwater search. Thanks to Greg Hind for suggesting this comparison. 

The vital points here are:  (i) The area within the green and turquoise boxes represents a substantial fraction of the priority search zone, and so it would be incorrect to imagine that the underwater search is nearing completion; and (ii) The area within those boxes were not searched from the air either, and so the non-detection of a floating debris field by the airborne search crews is eminently feasible, if the aircraft did indeed crash in or near the priority search zone.

Note that in the above I have been considering only the airborne search of the ocean surface. I now turn to another type of search for floating debris: satellite imagery.

Satellite detection of floating material north of the 7th arc
Consider the screen grab shown below:


The aircraft swathes indicated within the area far south and encompassed by the yellow lines that I have drawn were flown as a result of apparent detections of floating material by Australian, Chinese, Thai and other satellites, and these were subject to many media reports and the publication of substantial numbers of satellite images. (Example reports and images: here, and here.)

All areas south of a latitude near 36S were searched from March 18 to March 27, as shown here:


Subsequently (i.e. from March 28) the airborne search was switched to the larger areas shown in grey in the preceding Google Earth graphic, lying north of 36S.

It may well be that the lack of identification of any debris that might be linked to MH370 in the southernmost region through the aircraft inspections of targets found in satellite imagery prompted the investigators to abandon satellite imagery as a viable source of information, but when the switch was made from the southern search region to the region north of 36S it appears that certain floating items in a different location were not followed up either by aircraft or surface ships aiding the search.

On that point I stand to be corrected – perhaps the items that I describe below were indeed followed up but I have missed reports indicating that they were perused and concluded not to be associated with MH370 – but readers will find the location of these floating items to be pertinent, in the light of what I wrote above about the areas within the priority search zone that were not covered in the airborne search, nor have yet been covered in the underwater search.

I am indebted to Joseph Coleman for pointing out the satellite detections in question. Joseph sent me a small section of a photograph showing this:


Eventually I was able to track down the full photograph; it can be seen here, and here, and here, and here. It is part of a slide shown in a next-of-kin briefing held on 2014 March 28 at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing, the rest of the slide indicating other areas where satellite detections of floating objects had been made.

Whilst the above positions were apparently obtained on 2014 March 23rd, the first detection of debris in that general location was made on March 21st; the following map was published by the BBC on March 23rd (i.e. before any further detections on that date might have been made public):


The above detection – that of March 21st – was apparently made using a French radar satellite, according to media reports (see here, and here, and here); see also this Malaysian Government announcement. The satellite may well have been TerraSAR-X, a joint French-German project.

Although the situation gauged from media coverage is confused, various reports indicate that the radar detection was followed up by French imaging satellites (presumably Pléiades A and Pléiades B) on March 23rd, with “122 objects” being seen. This panoply of items was presumably detected in the main around the locations of the red dots in the map below, which appeared on BBC webpages on 26, 27 and 28 March (such as here, and here, and here, and here), and perhaps others. How the four or more objects located at or around the northernmost black dot in this map relate to the other 122 is not clear.



Based on the discussion above on unsearched regions (from the air, or underwater), readers will recognise that the northernmost black dot in the above map from the BBC is in an area of some interest; and yet that is a location where there was information on floating objects detected on March 21st and the 23rd also (the slide presented at the next-of-kin briefing on March 28th gives four rather-precise geographical locations and states that the items were sighted on March 23rd). The locations given can of course be plotted in Google Earth  for comparison with the underwater priority search region, and the areas searched (or, not searched) from aircraft. Here is the region of interest:

The pins labelled F1, F2, F3 and F4 above indicate the locations of four floating items detected by means of French satellite[s] (whether radar or optical imaging is not clear to me, yet!) on 2014 March 23rd; and presumably nearby on March 21st also. A KML file containing those locations is available here.  

Whilst there are many satellite images of floating debris in the southernmost areas that are available on the internet (for example, here), as of yet I have been unable to find any of the reported ‘French’ images pertaining to the above four items (nor indeed the larger set of 122).

For the present I will say little more, except to note that the locations of these floating items – perhaps debris from MH370 – is consistent with the order-of-magnitude speed and direction (between north and northeast) of oceanic drift through to March 21/23 from a crash on March 8 somewhere within the north-of-the-7th-arc green and turquoise zones identified earlier in this post (which were not surface-searched by aircraft soon after the crash, and are yet to be sea-bottom searched).

A subsequent post will deal with drift modelling in this region by other Independent Group members.

The reader can draw his/her own conclusions as to what the above might indicate. It would be useful and helpful if the official investigators could indicate whether the locations of the four (or more?) reported floating items near 35S, 091E were searched either from the air or by a surface ship in a timely manner (i.e. before the airborne search was shifted northeastwards from March 28th, and before any floating debris field might disperse). Were the four items spotted thereabouts by the French examined, and discounted as being parts from MH370?

Even at this stage it might also be helpful if those with access to satellite imagery for the location and time in question were to re-examine their pictures. (Thanks to Annette in Australia for this suggestion.) If the four French-found objects were not followed up at the time, then a vital indicator of where MH370 went down may have been missed. However, the situation might not be irredeemable: if a plausible floating debris field were identified in such imagery obtained two years ago, then it would be close to where MH370 crashed, and to the north or northeast of the crash site by a distance which can be estimated on the basis of typical drift speeds.

 And Ben's take on that:

Study points to big miss by early MH370 search for floating debris

Ben Sandilands | Mar 24, 2016 8:47AM |



Early debris sightings by satellite and search flights

Did the early search for MH370 turn its back on obvious potential debris fields, and is the current sea floor search far from having finished its examination of the ATSB defined priority zone in the south Indian Ocean?

Those questions have added urgency with the loss three days ago of the critical synthetic aperture sonar scanning towfish when it was accidentally dropped by its Chinese mother ship in waters roughly 3650 metres deep.

Looking at a very detailed but accessible paper by Independent Group scientist Duncan Steel, which draws on some very detailed work by others on that unofficial MH370 panel, the answer to both of these question is unfortunately ‘Yes’.

There appears to have been some serious missed opportunities to follow up on potential crash debris sighted by satellites and aircraft in the weeks after the Malaysia Airlines flight with 239 passenger onboard disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 9 March 2014.

And while that can be argued as clarity with hindsight, a feature of the remaining high priority sea bed search zone are areas that were not covered in the 2014 airborne search, and have yet been covered in the underwater search.


Unsearched areas in the priority search zone, in Duncan Steel paper

Duncan Steel’s paper here contains some very useful links to tools that allow the multiple graphical displays of search areas in relation to the so called seventh arc of possible crash locations and areas currently search or awaiting scanning.

The haste with which the early MH370 search abandoned these suspect search zones in March 2014 has been the subject of various reports in the more seriously focused media of those time. In context, those were also times when everyone involved in the search professed a belief that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 would be found relatively quickly.

Those were times when the lies about the search priorities uttered by the Malaysian authorities had not been recognized for their effect in diluting the early efforts by many countries into searches deeper into the South China Sea, the Andaman Sea and even central Asia.

It isn’t known at this stage whether the lost synthetic aperture towed sonar scanning platform is recoverable. Presumably it was insured, this being a well run sea floor search, and will in any event, be replaced or restored so that all of the 120,000 square kilometres of sea bed that is of priority interest to at least two of the three search partners will have been scanned with sufficient resolution to have detected the sunk wreckage of MH370.

Fragment by shattered fragment, the parts of the missing jet have come ashore from the uncertain location of its crash into the southern Indian Ocean.

MTF...P2

[aussie500]

All the supposed debris seen in the satellite images would have been checked, either by plane or by ship, CSB Brilliant checked out the northern most black one on her way down to the southern search area, that would have been the first French sighting, it was a dead whale.
https://twitter.com/FallonTracey/status/...4262248448
The sightings further north would have been checked out by someone, they just never considered it worth telling us that they never saw anything.

What someone should do is get all the tracking data for the ships that were searching the southern area, the three Chinese war ships without tracking data were all on the east side of the lower search area, chasing the sightings made from the planes. The ships involved in the search of that southern area were.

At least 6 merchant vessels including Höegh St Petersburg and Greenery Sea
HMAS Success
Xue Long
CSB Brilliant
Kunlunshan
Haikou  
Qiandaohu

[Peetwo]

   

44 minutes
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Four Corners

State Of Fear
NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS
The investigation into the scandal engulfing Malaysia's Prime Minister and the question that led to the arrest of our reporter and cameraman. #4Corners
Broadcast 8:30pm Mon 28 Mar 2016. Published 1 day ago, available until 9:20pm on 27 Apr 2016. File size 221 MB


[/url] [url=http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/four-corners/NC1604H009S00#]

Transcript


28 March 2016 - State of Fear: Murder and Money in Malaysia
(Footage of Najib Razak walking to mosque, Kuching, Sawawak, 12 March)

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Hello, Mr Prime Minister. It's ABC Australia. I'm wondering if you can explain...

MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: No, no, no.

LINTON BESSER: ...the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account?
Mr Prime Minister?
(Police officer approaches Linton Besser)

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no. Who are you? What you trying to do?

LINTON BESSER: No. I'm- its just a press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Take, take him away.
(Footage ends)

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: That was two weeks ago in Malaysia. Our reporter Linton Besser and cameraman Louie Eroglu were arrested for challenging Malaysia's prime minister about the vast sums of money channeled into his private bank accounts.

Their arrest made headlines around the world. For two days our team was barred from leaving the country, facing charges for a crime carrying two years in prison.

Tonight we bring you their story: a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal, murders and intrigue across four continents, including Australia.

Linton Besser's investigation begins on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, with one man's attempt to bring the prime minister to justice.

LINTON BESSER: It's a seemingly ordinary day in downtown Kuala Lumpur: September 4, 2015.

One of the city's most senior public prosecutors leaves home and begins his journey to work.

He's been deeply worried about his current case. It's a corruption investigation that will rock Malaysia.

CHARLES MORAIS, BROTHER OF PROSECUTOR: Kevin was extremely stressed out on an ongoing case he was working on. And, um, he never really did talk about the case 'til the last conversation I had with him. And it's then is when he said he, um, "I am, um... you know, I can't talk much," he said, "because my phone might be bugged."

LINTON BESSER: As the prosecutor is caught in heavy traffic, his car is suddenly rammed from behind. The moment is captured on a CCTV camera.

A group of men snatch him from the driver's seat and drag him into a ute. Then both vehicles drive away.

Twelve days later, prosecutor Kevin Morais is found brutally murdered in a swamp on the outskirts of KL. He'd been forced into an oil drum that was then filled with cement.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, SARAWAK REPORT: To have a prominent public legal figure snatched from the streets and brutally murdered in such a way: um, it's perhaps a demonstration of, of what Malaysia is really like. Um, it's bizarre and terrifying: what happened to Kevin.

CHARLES MORAIS: I am 101 per cent confident that my brother was killed. It was a orchestrated attack to silence him.

LINTON BESSER: What what's your feeling about who was behind your brother's death?

CHARLES MORAIS: It was high-level government authorities: extremely high-level.

LINTON BESSER: The target of Kevin Morais' investigation was the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak. The prosecutors' case had the potential to expose the prime minister as a criminal and remove him from office.

CHARLES MORAIS: So I called Kevin and that's when he told me he was working on a high-profile case. And I said, "Really?" He said, ah, and he said, um, "These people are terrible." So...

LINTON BESSER: Who, who was he referring to?

CHARLES MORAIS: Just referring to Najib.

LINTON BESSER: Just prior to his murder, the prosecutor had helped to prepare charge sheets against prime minister Najib Razak.

The documents alleged the prime minister corruptly obtained a bribe totalling RM27 million, the equivalent of $11 million Australian, in return for organising a loan for a government-linked company - a penalty that could result in up to 20 years in prison.
(To Clare Rewcastle Brown) When you were following the money trail, how important was that document?

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, this charge sheet was the smoking gun.

LINTON BESSER: The charge sheets were sent anonymously to Clare Rewcastle Brown in London. She's an investigative journalist and the sister-in-law of former British prime minister Gordon Brown.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: The Najib administration went wild when I published that document, because they knew how dangerous it was. They were trying to shut this down: cover it up.

LINTON BESSER: The Malaysian government has charged seven men over Kevin Morais' murder, including a military doctor he was prosecuting for corruption.
But Charles Morais and others are convinced the charges are a cover-up.

CHARLES MORAIS: I believe they were involved in the killing, those people. But I'm confident the order to kill came from way... high up.

LINTON BESSER: Why was your brother Kevin Morais killed?

CHARLES MORAIS: He was, he was killed because he was investigating and he drew up the charge sheet. And, um, that why he was killed.

LINTON BESSER: Four Corners has come to Malaysia to investigate this murder and a political scandal engulfing the prime minister, Najib Razak.

Four Corners has been told that Kevin Morais' boss, the Malaysian attorney-general, planned to lay a criminal charge against prime minister Najib Razak at a cabinet meeting in July last year.

The prime minister was going to be accused of the misappropriation of public funds.
The attorney-general briefed senior officials, including the deputy prime minister, who would have had to step into the top job.

But the plan was leaked and both the attorney-general and the deputy prime minister were removed from office.

ZAID IBRAHIM, LEGAL AFFAIRS MINISTER 2008: You sack your deputy prime minister, who just wanted to know what happened. You sack the attorney-general who I believe was preparing a charge against you.

Well, this is unprecedented. I don't think we will ever have, we will ever witness this kind of massive dismantling of the institutions of government to cover up crime.

LINTON BESSER: The $9.5 million payment to the Malaysian prime minister that was being pursued by Kevin Morais is just one of many unexplained payments he has received.

His official salary is about $130,000, yet his personal bank accounts have overflowed with hundreds of millions of dollars in unexplained wealth.

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, DR., MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER 1981-2003: The amount of money involved is huge. We- It is unthinkable that a prime minister should have such huge sums of money in his own private bank, ah, banking account.

LINTON BESSER: Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's former prime minister and one-time mentor to Najib Razak, has become one of his biggest critics.

MAHATIR MOHAMAD: This is wrong. This is totally wrong. A prime minister of Malaysia should never have that amount of money in his private account. If he has, he must have been... it must have come through, ah, some, ah, undesirable activity.
(Footage of launch of Kuala Lumpur International Financial District, 2009)

NAJIB RAZAK (2009): I now officially launch the Tun Razak Exchange.
(Audience applauds. Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: The saga that has embroiled prime minister Najib began seven years ago, with the establishment of Malaysia's national wealth fund, 1MDB.
Rather than build prosperity, it's racked up debt.

TONY PUA, OPPOSITION MP: The fund has performed disastrously. I think "terribly" doesn't quite describe how the fund has performed.

Every single investment that 1MDB took has failed. It has resulted in billions of dollars of debt, which it is unable to repay. And today the Malaysian government is forced to bail out, ah, this particular, ah, entity.

LINTON BESSER: The 1MDB advisory board is chaired by prime minister Najib Razak.
In 2009 1MDB set up a joint venture with a company called PetroSaudi. The deal was brokered by a high-flying Malaysian playboy businessman called Jho Low, a friend of Paris Hilton and prime minister Najib.

Photographed together on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean were Jho Low and the prime minister. Joining them were two key PetroSaudi executives.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, that photograph was taken in August 2009: mid-August, off Monaco. Um, and what it does is: it shows the key players at the time that they met and agreed to do this deal.

So you see who's involved: you've got Jho Low; you've got, ah, Tarek Obaid of, of PetroSaudi; you've got his, his partner at PetroSaudi, Prince Turki; you've got Najib there.
And, um, what emerges from, from that a few days later is an email between Tarek and Jho Low saying, "Following our meeting and our discussions, um, I'm going to introduce you to my company and my fellow directors. And we're going to go ahead with this deal."

LINTON BESSER (to Tony Pua): It was a scam, wasn't it?

TONY PUA: The deal was in essence a transaction to enable 1MDB to siphon out at least, ah, if not more: US$1 billion of cash to parties outside of the deal, ah, for expenses that we are unaware of.

LINTON BESSER: Exactly where that money went is unclear. It's now the subject of at least four investigations across the world, probing the billions of dollars that have flowed out of 1MDB.

Last year journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown revealed US$680 million had been paid into prime minister Najib Razak's personal accounts.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, for the first time, um, there was evidence: there was proof. I mean, you talk to anyone in Malaysia and they'll all say, "Oh, the corruption. It's unbelievable. Money, politics, billions being stolen," you know.

But there was never any proof. Um, and once we had obtained that, um, i- it was electrifying. The effect was huge.
(Footage of mass demonstration in Kuala Lumpur, August 2015)

LINTON BESSER: The revelations prompted protests across the Malaysian capital. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

Despite public outrage, Malaysian investigations were shut down after the new attorney-general said the US$680 million found in the prime minister's accounts was a donation from the Saudi royal family.

MAHATIR MOHAMAD: Well, he needs to explain where he gets the money. When you move huge sums of money, there must be some record, some documentary proof of the existence of the money, the source of the money, the banks that are used and how the money is transferred by the bank to his account.

Apart from saying that, ah, it was a gift from somebody, there is nothing else to prove, ah, that, ah, it was a gift, because we need to know. Ah, the person who made the gift must be extremely rich, ah, to be able to just give away US$681 million.
(Linton Besser stands outside AmBank headquarters, Kuala Lumpur)

LINTON BESSER: The Malaysian government says Najib Razak has returned more than US$600 million dollars he received in 2013 and closed two of his accounts.

But Four Corners has established that three new accounts were opened in the prime minister's name and the money just kept on pouring in.

In June 2014, for example, the bank was notified of another 50 million British pounds that was to be wired into the prime minister's name. There were also a series of cash deposits that raised money laundering alerts here inside the bank.

A high-level source has shown Four Corners the Malaysian prime minister's bank accounts. The banking documents reveal an extraordinary and steady flow of money between 2011 and 2014.

By June 26, 2012, the bank records show deposits worth US$75 million from a Saudi prince, US$80 million from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Finance and another US$120 million from a shell company in the British Virgin Islands.

On the 21st of March, 2013, the prime minister received US$620 million from a different company registered there. Four days later, the same donor deposited another US$61 million.

By the 10th of April, 2013, the prime minister had received more than US$1 billion.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: This has to be one of the biggest kleptocracy cases ever. Um, he's a- billions of US dollars have been- gone missing and, um, the network of, um, money transfers is global. It's, it's dragged in so many, um, major financial institutions. Um, and this is why the impact of this particular case could- could be very, very far-reaching.

TERENCE GOMEZ, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA: The money is going to the personal account of the prime minister. It's hard for us to trace where this money is coming from. The fact that it's going to the personal account of the prime minister is unprecedented, too.

LINTON BESSER: Here at AmBank, the prime minister's bank accounts were held under the codename "Mr X."

The bank's founder was Hussain Najadi. His son, Pascal Najadi, lives in Switzerland, where I spoke to him via Skype.

(To Pascal Najadi) Mr Najadi, I understand that in 2013 your father told you he'd discovered large-scale corruption in Malaysia?

PASCAL NAJADI, SON OF AMBANK FOUNDER HUSSAIN NAJADI: Yes, my father has been lamenting, ah, at the lunch in Kuala Lumpur about this. And he was throwing his hands up and saying, "My God, this prime minister, ah, Najib is, is lining his pockets. They are robbing the country."

LINTON BESSER: Just five days after their conversation, Hussain Najadi was gunned down in the car park of a Chinese temple in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

PASCAL NAJADI: For us, it was clear this was not a random shooting or random murder. This was- must have been that there were, ah, high powers at hand that have been able to execute such a, such a, er, public-place execution: midday, Kuala Lumpur downtown.

LINTON BESSER: Your your father left AmBank in the 1980s. Why are you so convinced that he had become aware of the prime minister's accounts?

PASCAL NAJADI: My father was one of the old boys of that country. He has helped to build Malaysia. He helped to modernise Malaysia.

Um, and he was, ah, still in touch with, ah, personalities: talking about the old times, talking about old days. Nothing business in particular: just staying in touch with the, with, w- with the folks.

Um, when we, where we got much more clarity, um, Linton, was when we took an audio, er, er, er, witness on audio recording who confessed, or who, who was revealed to us that my father, according to this witness, went with him to, er, the central bank governor's office to complain about certain observations.
I was not aware...

LINTON BESSER: There's no evidence Hussain Najadi's death can be linked to the scandal engulfing the Malaysian prime minister. Pascal Najadi plans to appeal to the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into the murder.

Malaysia's banking regulator was told at least three times about the enormous deposits into prime minister Najib Razak's personal accounts.

Four Corners has learned that senior AmBank figures came here to the Malaysian central bank governor to warn her about Najib Razak's personal accounts, way back in September 2012.

Their report was marked "highly sensitive" and it revealed that almost $300 million had already flowed to Najib Razak from several mysterious donors overseas.

Yet the central bank governor, Zeti Aziz, merely thanked them for their report and handed it back.
(Footage of Zeti Aziz addressing Wharton Global Forum Kuala Lumpur, 11-12 March)

ZETI AZIZ, CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR: This integration process, however, has...

LINTON BESSER: Zeti Aziz is still the head of Malaysia's central bank. We wanted to know what action she took about Najib's accounts.
(Footage of Zeti Aziz leaving forum)

LINTON BESSER: Hello. Hello, Dr Zeti.

ZETI AZIZ: Yes?

LINTON BESSER: I'm from ABC Australia.

ZETI AZIZ: Yes?

LINTON BESSER: Just like to ask you a couple of questions...

ZETI AZIZ: Yes.

LINTON BESSER: ...about your role, regarding the prime minister's bank accounts. We're trying to understand why you didn't do more when you were alerted about the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into them?

ZETI AZIZ: Well, first of all I cannot discuss any individual account, including even your own account, because no central bank or regulator can look at individual accounts. But if the financial institution informed us of what they call "suspicious transactions," then we will... investigate into it.

LINTON BESSER: You were a member of the taskforce investigating, er, all, all of these issues. What, what's been the outcome o- of all of that? Is it true what the new attorney-general has said: that Najib Razak has no case to answer? Is that true?

ZETI AZIZ: I have no comment on this at this point in time. As I said: that no authority will discuss any investigation that has not been concluded.

LINTON BESSER: So who is behind the money flowing into the prime minister's bank accounts?

ZETI AZIZ: As I said, I cannot comment on this. It is an ongoing investigation.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: Accusations against prime minister Najib date back almost a decade.
The first scandal was in 2002, when Najib Razak was defence minister overseeing a $1 billion submarine deal between Malaysia and France. It embroiled some of Najib's closest confidants in allegations of kickbacks, cover-ups and another murder.

French authorities have indicted the former head of French arms firm Thales. They acted after an investigation by Malaysian anti-corruption campaigner Cynthia Gabriel into a US$108 million commission paid to a Malaysian company.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL, ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGNER: It wasn't just this payment that was of question: ah, it was a couple of other payments as well that were made that seemed murky and seemed very shady; that did not have very clear, um, ah, reasons for why, ah, the payments were made.

LINTON BESSER: The middleman in the submarines deal was a senior adviser and friend to the prime minister. His name is Razak Baginda.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: We don't know who he is, apart from him being a close associate and friend of, ah, Najib.

Ah, so I think today we are not certain if he was actually on a formal contract with the Defence Ministry, or whether he was just negotiating a very large multi-million dollar contract, only because he was the friend of Najib Razak.

TERENCE GOMEZ: The allegation is that kickbacks were given to the middle-men who negotiated the deal in France. That is the allegation. That allegation now has to be investigated properly.

LINTON BESSER: What thrust the corruption scandal into the global spotlight was another murder. This time, the victim was a 28-year-old model from Mongolia named Altantuya Shaariibuu. She worked as a translator.

It's also been alleged she was having an affair with Najib, something he's always denied.
But his adviser, Razak Baginda, was sleeping with her.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: He did admit that they were having a romantic relationship for a while. And then the events that led to her death suggested that he was trying to get rid of her.

LINTON BESSER: The model, Altantuya, wanted a cut of the money from the submarine deal.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: Interestingly, ah, her father had said that Altantuya had left a note to say that she was coming to Malaysia to pick up her share of the commission, which amounted to s- to about US$100,000.

LINTON BESSER: On October the 19th, 2006, Altantuya Sharibuu went to Baginda's house to demand money.

She was kidnapped by two Special Forces policemen. She was driven into the jungle and shot twice in the head.

Then they attached military-grade explosives to her body and detonated them.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: Altantuya was brutally murdered in 2006. Her body was blown up by C-4 explosives. And it was really, er, shocking because these explosives are normally used to bring down buildings - it's that powerful - not to, ah, blow up a body.
(Footage of press conference, 2006)

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA, FORMER ADVISOR TO NAJIB RAZAK: I... I would like to say here...

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Najib's adviser, Razak Baginda, was initially charged with ordering the murder. But he was later acquitted.

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA: ...and what I have said today to all of you... is what I told the police: er, that Dato Najib had never met the deceased.

REPORTER: How do I know?

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA: How do I know? (Laughs) It's like asking me, you know... you know (inaudible)... I know. OK? I know.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: Najib himself has always denied any involvement with the murder.
(Excerpt from Foreign Correspondent, ABC TV, 4 November 2008)

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): Really, um, there's no shred of evidence at all been presented:
Nothing in court. Nothing, nothing has been said. And in fact our, our honorary, the, the Mongolian Honorary Council has come out openly to say, look, he examined all the documents and there was nothing to connect me with, with, with the Mongolian girl whatsoever.

HELEN VATSIKOPOULOS, REPORTER (2008): So you didn't know her? She...

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): No, absolutely not.

HELEN VATSIKOPOULOS (2008): ...she did some translation work for your company...?

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have not met her at all. I do not know her at all. And how can I be linked with her?

LINTON BESSER: The allegations have dogged prime minister Najib since a private investigator, Balasubramaniam, swore a statutory declaration implicating the PM's adviser Baginda in the model's murder.
(Footage of Perumal Balasubramaniam, TV PAS, Malaysia)

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: She said she was... she knows

Ra- Najib and Razak Baginda: met, met them in Paris. She was the mediator.
(Footage ends)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Bala was a key witness, because he had been a part of the whole drama of those last few days of Altantuya's life.

B- Bala was there on that final night, during that final drama when a car drove up with two thugs and pulled, ah, Altantuya off the street and drove away with her: the last time she was seen alive. Um, and so his, his testimony was crucial.
(Footage of Perumal Balasubramianam being interviewed, archive)

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM (archive): Yeah. I know. He's Najib's br- brother...

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): But the P.I. recanted his statement and claimed in court documents he was forced by people close to the prime minister to leave the country.

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM (archive): He offered me RM5 million for me to retract the SD. Then (inaudible) asked me whether: "You are married?" I said, "Yes." "Do you love your family?" I said, "Yes."
(Footage ends)

AMERICK SIDHU, BALASUBRAMANIAM'S LAWYER: Now, to emphasise, um, their desire of getting Bala out of the country: they actually took him to a shopping centre on the outskirts of KL as well. And they met somebody that Bala recognised - and it was the prime minister's younger brother, Nazim.

And Nazim Razak said to Bala, "Now, look: if you love your family and if you're concerned about their safety, then I suggest that you follow exactly what (censored) tells you to do."

And so a combination of inducement - financial inducement - and threats to the safety of his family made him think that it was probably a good idea to leave.

LINTON BESSER: This scandal has reached all the way to Australia.

One of the model's killers has been locked up here at Villawood detention centre in Sydney's west.

Sirul Azhar Umar was convicted over Altantuya's murder and sentenced to death. But during an appeal over the case, he fled Malaysia and sought a protection visa to stay in Australia.

Sirul told his friends and family he was just a pawn in a political conspiracy.

TERENCE GOMEZ: There seems to be no reason why he should have killed that lady. The allegation is that he must have got instruction from someone senior.

He knows a lot as to why this girl was murdered. He has not told us why the girl was murdered and who he was acting for.
(Smart phone footage of Sirul Azhar Umar, published January 2016)

LINTON BESSER: Out of the blue, after months in custody, Sirul released a series of bizarre videos that announced prime minister Najib Razak had nothing to do with the model's murder.

SIRUL AZHAR UMAR, FORMER BODYGUARD TO MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER (translation): The most honourable prime minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak, was not involved at all and was not connected to the case.
(Footage ends)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: The sole purpose of the videos appears to be to use Sirul to exonerate the prime minister. I mean, he doesn't seem to be sitting there doing a video to exonerate himself or to forward his own case: he's doing it to, um, help the prime minister.

LINTON BESSER: When Four Corners arrived in Malaysia three weeks ago, we found a country transformed by fear of its prime minister.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: I think there is an atmosphere of total terror. It's an incredibly difficult situation for every individual trying to carry out their jobs.

ZAID IBRAHIM: You see, the problem with this country is that everybody's so scared of the prime minister.

LINTON BESSER: In Malaysia today dissidents are silenced, political opponents are jailed and news organisations are shut down.

But people are still finding ways to protest.

Street artist Fahmi Reza's image of prime minister Najib Razak as a clown has gone viral.
(Fahmi Reza installs poster on wall in public street)

FAHMI REZA, ARTIST: I designed the poster and posted it on my social media sites: you know, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And I received a warning from the Malaysian Twitter police, warning me for posting the poster.

LINTON BESSER: Why? What's wrong...

FAHMI REZA: And now, and now, and now this warning: I've also been investigated, um, for, for making the poster. I mean, I'm being investigated under two- there's two charges: one is under the Malays- the Communications Act; another one under the Penal Code - for this poster alone.

LINTON BESSER: Why are they cracking down on it?

FAHMI REZA (shrugs): Um, someone wasn't happy with the image and made a police report against me.

LINTON BESSER: Authorities are on the look-out for anti-government critics everywhere. Within hours, Fahmi Reza's new poster had been torn down after a visit by police.
(Linton Besser and Fahmi Reza meet again and shake hands. The poster has been removed)

LINTON BESSER: What's happened?

FAHMI REZA: Yeah, eight hours later: something like that, you know. Don't know exactly when. But when I talked to the car attendant here at the parking lot, they said the police came here at around 8pm last night, asking him so many questions about the poster: who did it, you know.

You know, this is just one more way for them to silence dissidents in this country.
(Car park attendant approaches Fahmi Reza)

ATTENDANT: You leave this, please.

FAHMI REZA: OK.

ATTENDANT: Because why:...

LINTON BESSER: Why, why, why should we leave? What's...

ATTENDANT: Because he put a stick- a poster.

LINTON BESSER: Yeah. Yes.

ATTENDANT: It's, it's against the law.

LINTON BESSER: It's against the law to put up a poster?

ATTENDANT: Yeah, yeah. My prime minister: this country's prime minister's photo: that is very bad.

FAHMI REZA: Why... why can't we as citizens express ourselves?

ATTENDANT: OK, OK. Can you hold on? I call the police now, you can talk to them

FAHMI REZA: Why do you want to call the police?

ATTENDANT: Because you did something wrong.

This is our Malaysian law.

LINTON BESSER: Right.

ATTENDANT: Yeah. We cannot say bad things about our prime minister.

FAHMI REZA: There's no law that says we cannot say bad things about the prime minister.

ATTENDANT: OK, OK, OK. I'll, I'll go and call the police.

FAHMI REZA: So you want to call the police on me?

ATTENDANT: Yeah.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: For others, the consequences of dissent are far more serious.
Khairuddin Hassan is a former senior politician from prime minister Najib's own party.
Last year he went to the UK, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong to lodge police complaints about the huge sums of money pouring into the PM's accounts.

KHAIRUDDIN HASSAN, FORMER NAJIB GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: You see, my aim: actually, my intention was to get the foreign legal enforcement authority to investigate on this 1MDB scandal.

I didn't make any new wild accusations or whatsoever. I flew abroad because I want to put it to the rules of law.

LINTON BESSER: Khairuddin Hassan was jailed for two months on terrorism charges. He was accused of sabotaging the Malaysian economy.

KHAIRUDDIN HASSAN: Well, they accused that I was trying to sabotage the economy of Malaysia. Why I am arrested, detained and charged under Terrorism Act? That is ridiculous.

I was arrested and charged under that Terrorism Act and my lawyer for the first time in history: he is arrested alongside me. A lawyer who is providing legal services to his client.

LINTON BESSER: It didn't take long for our questions to start upsetting people.
We went to a press conference starring a woman named A. Santamil Selvi.
(Footage of press conference)

RAMESH RAO, POLITICAL FIXER: This is a non-government...

A. SANTAMIL SELVI, WIDOW OF BALASUBRAMANIAM: NGO.
RAMESH RAO: ...organisation.

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Her husband was the private investigator Bala, who witnessed the kidnapping of the murdered model.
Bala died of a heart attack.

His wife Selvi has been pursuing a lawsuit, accusing the prime minister and his relatives of forcing her family out of the country for several years.

In a dramatic backflip, she has decided to apologise to the prime minister.

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (translation): My purpose here today is that I wish to apologise openly, specifically to the Malaysian prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib, and his family.

LINTON BESSER: Ah, so let me ask you this.
(A. Santamil Selvi speaks to staffer in Malay)

LINTON BESSER: Mrs Selvi, it's just so strange. Suddenly you apologise. It's- you can see why it's confusing. Sorry, I'm asking Mrs Selvi.

(Voiceover) The press conference was exposed as a sham when, within minutes, Selvi withdrew her apology and revealed she had been paid.
(To A. Santamil Selvi) Ah. So you're not apologising to Najib?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: No. And Bala's SD is (inaudible), right. It's true. OK.

LINTON BESSER: Why, Mrs Selvi, suddenly you're changing your position so radically?
Someone has come to the table with funds to help you in your difficult financial position and you've you've taken a difficult decision and one that perhaps is understandable to change your story because the political pressure was just too great. Is that right?

RAMESH RAO: No, she never changed any story here.

LINTON BESSER: Well, she's changed her story twice today already this morning?

RAMESH RAO: You see, the story… No, what, what story she change?

LINTON BESSER: Well, first: well, the the statement says she apologises to Najib. But she just said clearly: no, she's not apologising to Najib. Which is it?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (translation): I don't want to talk about anything else. (In English) OK? Sorry.
(A. Santamil Selvi stands to leave press conference)

LINTON BESSER: You, you won't answer any more questions, Mrs Selvi?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: No. Sorry, no, no more questions.

LINTON BESSER: What was the total financial offer?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: I come here for my children's education. That's all.

RAMESH RAO: Twenty thousand.

LINTON BESSER: Thirty thousand ringgit?

RAMESH RAO: Twenty.

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (shouting): Only RM20,000. I need only 20,000. But (inaudible) cannot give me the 20,000, so I come to this office. For my children's education: that's all.

Take my bag.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Can you please stop asking questions?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (shouting): No more questions, please. I come here for my children education that's all.

LINTON BESSER: The man organising the press conference, Ramesh Rao, is a political fixer who has staged similar events before.

(To Ramesh Rao) Mrs Selvi has stuck...

RAMESH RAO: What is wrong with you, eh, white man? Can you see the paper statement? I am helping these (inaudible) and all that. And you keep repeating (inaudible). I'm off.

OK? I will make sure the children get a good education. I will help them. She apologise or not: that is not my problem. But my concern: I will make sure the children get a good education. Done.
(In car park, Linton Besser approaches people seated in a car)

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): The event seemed to have been prompted by the realisation that Four Corners was asking questions. And there were Special Branch agents scattered around the building.

(To people in car) Are you Malaysian Special Branch? Why is Malaysian Intelligence here at this press conference? Can you answer some questions, sir?
(They ignore him)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: It's the sort of, um... farce that people have got used to in Malaysia: these extraordinary staged events. People retracting their evidence and clearly being paid and intimidated to do it.

LINTON BESSER: A few hours later, we heard that prime minister Najib Razak had put out a press call and we jumped on a plane.

The PM had invited the media to a rare public appearance on the island of Sarawak, where he was giving an evening campaign speech.

It was the first and only chance we had to have prime minister Najib answer our questions.
(Footage of Najib Razak walking to mosque, Kuching, Sawawak, 12 March)

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Hello, Mr Prime Minister. It's ABC Australia. I'm wondering if you can explain...

MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: No, no, no.

LINTON BESSER: ...the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account?

Hello, Mr Prime Minister. Can you explain all the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account? Mr Prime Minister?
(Police officer approaches Linton Besser)

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no. Who are you? What you trying to do?

LINTON BESSER: No. I'm- its just a press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Take, take him away. (Speaks to officers in Malay)

(To Linton Besser) What are you? Why are you? What are you trying to do?
(Linton Besser is surrounded by police officers)

LINTON BESSER: J-j- just, just ABC press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, where, where is your identity? We do not know about you.

LINTON BESSER: I-I- I'm just a pre- it's, I'm just a journalist for a press conference.
(Footage of Linton Besser in mini van, driving away from mosque)

LINTON BESSER: It's very sensitive here. We've just been questioned by the police and Malaysian Intelligence. They've have taken our passports and asked us where we were staying; ah, made it very plain we were not welcome questioning the Malaysian prime minister about the huge volumes of money pouring into his account.

LOUIE EROGLU, CAMERAMAN (off-screen): OK.

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Soon after, our van was pulled over. Cameraman Louie Eroglu and I were arrested and taken to the local police station.
(Covert smart phone footage of Linton Besser in police station, speaking on phone)

LINTON BESSER (on phone): Yeah, we are. And our lawyer's just arrived: Albert Tang.
I'm here. I've been, ah, placed under arrest at, um, a police station in Sarawak. Ah, we're waiting for some legal advice but at the moment it sounds like they're intending to charge us with, ah, obstructing a civil servant in the exercise of their duty, just for throwing a question to, ah, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak.

(Voiceover) Our passports were taken again and we were detained for six hours.

JUANITA PHILLIPS, PRESENTER (ABC TV News, 13 March): An ABC Four Corners crew was detained by Malaysian authorities overnight.

KARL STEFANOVIC, PRESENTER (Today program, Channel 9, 14 March): Things have- seem to be going from bad to worse in Malaysia?

JULIE BISHOP, FOREIGN MINISTER (Today program, Channel 9, 14 March): Well, these are matters that we are raising with the Malaysian authorities.
(Footage of Julie Bishop at press conference in Suva, Fiji)

REPORTER (14 March): A Four Corners team has been arrested, um, in Malaysia...?

JULIE BISHOP (14 March): We are deeply concerned about this. We are providing consular support to the ABC crew and we're certainly raising the issue at, ah, the appropriate level within the Malaysian government.

LINTON BESSER: Louie and I were banned from leaving Malaysia and warned we could face two years in jail.

Late on the Monday night, we got bad news.

ALBERT TANG, LAWYER (14 March): If your clients do not plead guilty, then the matter will go to trial and in which case the senior federal council may ask the court for the passports of Linton and Louie to be retained by the court.

LINTON BESSER: We were to face court the next day to hear criminal charges read against us.

But six hours later, there was a bang on my door. The authorities had suddenly changed their minds. The charges were to be dropped.
(Footage of Linton and staff in hotel room, packing equipment)

LINTON BESSER: We were free to go, but for those who live in Malaysia the crackdown continues.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: They've resorted to sheer intimidation and threats. Um, they're no longer able to rely on y- law enforcement to protect their position.
Um, so they're just letting people know: if they do cross them, ah, they'll just be met with sheer intimidation. I mean, they're pulling charges out of the air to throw at people, um, and shoving people in jail because of course under current rules you can be thrown into jail and kept there for months without, ah, a court appearance. So they're just threatening people now and int- It's very, it's very effective. It's amazing how effective it is.

LINTON BESSER: Millions of ordinary Malaysians are watching the unfolding drama with wary resignation. How long prime minister Najib Razak can hold on to power is anyone guess.

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: He has to go, because his policies are doing a great deal of harm to the country. He has undermined all the institutions of government created to make sure that the country is well run.

So all the institutions that, um, guard public interest are not functioning anymore, so that gives him almost absolute power.

LINTON BESSER (to Clare Rewcastle Brown): In any other country, a prime minister linked to so many allegations of corruption would have been impeached by now. What is it going to take in Malaysia?

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: I think that Malaysia is waiting for foreign action. I think they feel, um, disempowered; um, helpless.

Um, I think after years and years of increasing dictatorial control, ah, they no longer feel they have a democracy. There is an atmosphere of total fear amongst the people who should be taking action to see law and order enforced against Najib.

END

• - P2

[Peetwo]

   

44 minutes
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Four Corners

State Of Fear
NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS
The investigation into the scandal engulfing Malaysia's Prime Minister and the question that led to the arrest of our reporter and cameraman. #4Corners
Broadcast 8:30pm Mon 28 Mar 2016. Published 1 day ago, available until 9:20pm on 27 Apr 2016. File size 221 MB


[/url] [url=http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/four-corners/NC1604H009S00#]

Transcript


28 March 2016 - State of Fear: Murder and Money in Malaysia
(Footage of Najib Razak walking to mosque, Kuching, Sawawak, 12 March)

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Hello, Mr Prime Minister. It's ABC Australia. I'm wondering if you can explain...

MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: No, no, no.

LINTON BESSER: ...the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account?
Mr Prime Minister?
(Police officer approaches Linton Besser)

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no. Who are you? What you trying to do?

LINTON BESSER: No. I'm- its just a press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Take, take him away.
(Footage ends)

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: That was two weeks ago in Malaysia. Our reporter Linton Besser and cameraman Louie Eroglu were arrested for challenging Malaysia's prime minister about the vast sums of money channeled into his private bank accounts.

Their arrest made headlines around the world. For two days our team was barred from leaving the country, facing charges for a crime carrying two years in prison.

Tonight we bring you their story: a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal, murders and intrigue across four continents, including Australia.

Linton Besser's investigation begins on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, with one man's attempt to bring the prime minister to justice.

LINTON BESSER: It's a seemingly ordinary day in downtown Kuala Lumpur: September 4, 2015.

One of the city's most senior public prosecutors leaves home and begins his journey to work.

He's been deeply worried about his current case. It's a corruption investigation that will rock Malaysia.

CHARLES MORAIS, BROTHER OF PROSECUTOR: Kevin was extremely stressed out on an ongoing case he was working on. And, um, he never really did talk about the case 'til the last conversation I had with him. And it's then is when he said he, um, "I am, um... you know, I can't talk much," he said, "because my phone might be bugged."

LINTON BESSER: As the prosecutor is caught in heavy traffic, his car is suddenly rammed from behind. The moment is captured on a CCTV camera.

A group of men snatch him from the driver's seat and drag him into a ute. Then both vehicles drive away.

Twelve days later, prosecutor Kevin Morais is found brutally murdered in a swamp on the outskirts of KL. He'd been forced into an oil drum that was then filled with cement.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, SARAWAK REPORT: To have a prominent public legal figure snatched from the streets and brutally murdered in such a way: um, it's perhaps a demonstration of, of what Malaysia is really like. Um, it's bizarre and terrifying: what happened to Kevin.

CHARLES MORAIS: I am 101 per cent confident that my brother was killed. It was a orchestrated attack to silence him.

LINTON BESSER: What what's your feeling about who was behind your brother's death?

CHARLES MORAIS: It was high-level government authorities: extremely high-level.

LINTON BESSER: The target of Kevin Morais' investigation was the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak. The prosecutors' case had the potential to expose the prime minister as a criminal and remove him from office.

CHARLES MORAIS: So I called Kevin and that's when he told me he was working on a high-profile case. And I said, "Really?" He said, ah, and he said, um, "These people are terrible." So...

LINTON BESSER: Who, who was he referring to?

CHARLES MORAIS: Just referring to Najib.

LINTON BESSER: Just prior to his murder, the prosecutor had helped to prepare charge sheets against prime minister Najib Razak.

The documents alleged the prime minister corruptly obtained a bribe totalling RM27 million, the equivalent of $11 million Australian, in return for organising a loan for a government-linked company - a penalty that could result in up to 20 years in prison.
(To Clare Rewcastle Brown) When you were following the money trail, how important was that document?

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, this charge sheet was the smoking gun.

LINTON BESSER: The charge sheets were sent anonymously to Clare Rewcastle Brown in London. She's an investigative journalist and the sister-in-law of former British prime minister Gordon Brown.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: The Najib administration went wild when I published that document, because they knew how dangerous it was. They were trying to shut this down: cover it up.

LINTON BESSER: The Malaysian government has charged seven men over Kevin Morais' murder, including a military doctor he was prosecuting for corruption.
But Charles Morais and others are convinced the charges are a cover-up.

CHARLES MORAIS: I believe they were involved in the killing, those people. But I'm confident the order to kill came from way... high up.

LINTON BESSER: Why was your brother Kevin Morais killed?

CHARLES MORAIS: He was, he was killed because he was investigating and he drew up the charge sheet. And, um, that why he was killed.

LINTON BESSER: Four Corners has come to Malaysia to investigate this murder and a political scandal engulfing the prime minister, Najib Razak.

Four Corners has been told that Kevin Morais' boss, the Malaysian attorney-general, planned to lay a criminal charge against prime minister Najib Razak at a cabinet meeting in July last year.

The prime minister was going to be accused of the misappropriation of public funds.
The attorney-general briefed senior officials, including the deputy prime minister, who would have had to step into the top job.

But the plan was leaked and both the attorney-general and the deputy prime minister were removed from office.

ZAID IBRAHIM, LEGAL AFFAIRS MINISTER 2008: You sack your deputy prime minister, who just wanted to know what happened. You sack the attorney-general who I believe was preparing a charge against you.

Well, this is unprecedented. I don't think we will ever have, we will ever witness this kind of massive dismantling of the institutions of government to cover up crime.

LINTON BESSER: The $9.5 million payment to the Malaysian prime minister that was being pursued by Kevin Morais is just one of many unexplained payments he has received.

His official salary is about $130,000, yet his personal bank accounts have overflowed with hundreds of millions of dollars in unexplained wealth.

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, DR., MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER 1981-2003: The amount of money involved is huge. We- It is unthinkable that a prime minister should have such huge sums of money in his own private bank, ah, banking account.

LINTON BESSER: Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's former prime minister and one-time mentor to Najib Razak, has become one of his biggest critics.

MAHATIR MOHAMAD: This is wrong. This is totally wrong. A prime minister of Malaysia should never have that amount of money in his private account. If he has, he must have been... it must have come through, ah, some, ah, undesirable activity.
(Footage of launch of Kuala Lumpur International Financial District, 2009)

NAJIB RAZAK (2009): I now officially launch the Tun Razak Exchange.
(Audience applauds. Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: The saga that has embroiled prime minister Najib began seven years ago, with the establishment of Malaysia's national wealth fund, 1MDB.
Rather than build prosperity, it's racked up debt.

TONY PUA, OPPOSITION MP: The fund has performed disastrously. I think "terribly" doesn't quite describe how the fund has performed.

Every single investment that 1MDB took has failed. It has resulted in billions of dollars of debt, which it is unable to repay. And today the Malaysian government is forced to bail out, ah, this particular, ah, entity.

LINTON BESSER: The 1MDB advisory board is chaired by prime minister Najib Razak.
In 2009 1MDB set up a joint venture with a company called PetroSaudi. The deal was brokered by a high-flying Malaysian playboy businessman called Jho Low, a friend of Paris Hilton and prime minister Najib.

Photographed together on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean were Jho Low and the prime minister. Joining them were two key PetroSaudi executives.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, that photograph was taken in August 2009: mid-August, off Monaco. Um, and what it does is: it shows the key players at the time that they met and agreed to do this deal.

So you see who's involved: you've got Jho Low; you've got, ah, Tarek Obaid of, of PetroSaudi; you've got his, his partner at PetroSaudi, Prince Turki; you've got Najib there.
And, um, what emerges from, from that a few days later is an email between Tarek and Jho Low saying, "Following our meeting and our discussions, um, I'm going to introduce you to my company and my fellow directors. And we're going to go ahead with this deal."

LINTON BESSER (to Tony Pua): It was a scam, wasn't it?

TONY PUA: The deal was in essence a transaction to enable 1MDB to siphon out at least, ah, if not more: US$1 billion of cash to parties outside of the deal, ah, for expenses that we are unaware of.

LINTON BESSER: Exactly where that money went is unclear. It's now the subject of at least four investigations across the world, probing the billions of dollars that have flowed out of 1MDB.

Last year journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown revealed US$680 million had been paid into prime minister Najib Razak's personal accounts.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Well, for the first time, um, there was evidence: there was proof. I mean, you talk to anyone in Malaysia and they'll all say, "Oh, the corruption. It's unbelievable. Money, politics, billions being stolen," you know.

But there was never any proof. Um, and once we had obtained that, um, i- it was electrifying. The effect was huge.
(Footage of mass demonstration in Kuala Lumpur, August 2015)

LINTON BESSER: The revelations prompted protests across the Malaysian capital. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

Despite public outrage, Malaysian investigations were shut down after the new attorney-general said the US$680 million found in the prime minister's accounts was a donation from the Saudi royal family.

MAHATIR MOHAMAD: Well, he needs to explain where he gets the money. When you move huge sums of money, there must be some record, some documentary proof of the existence of the money, the source of the money, the banks that are used and how the money is transferred by the bank to his account.

Apart from saying that, ah, it was a gift from somebody, there is nothing else to prove, ah, that, ah, it was a gift, because we need to know. Ah, the person who made the gift must be extremely rich, ah, to be able to just give away US$681 million.
(Linton Besser stands outside AmBank headquarters, Kuala Lumpur)

LINTON BESSER: The Malaysian government says Najib Razak has returned more than US$600 million dollars he received in 2013 and closed two of his accounts.

But Four Corners has established that three new accounts were opened in the prime minister's name and the money just kept on pouring in.

In June 2014, for example, the bank was notified of another 50 million British pounds that was to be wired into the prime minister's name. There were also a series of cash deposits that raised money laundering alerts here inside the bank.

A high-level source has shown Four Corners the Malaysian prime minister's bank accounts. The banking documents reveal an extraordinary and steady flow of money between 2011 and 2014.

By June 26, 2012, the bank records show deposits worth US$75 million from a Saudi prince, US$80 million from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Finance and another US$120 million from a shell company in the British Virgin Islands.

On the 21st of March, 2013, the prime minister received US$620 million from a different company registered there. Four days later, the same donor deposited another US$61 million.

By the 10th of April, 2013, the prime minister had received more than US$1 billion.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: This has to be one of the biggest kleptocracy cases ever. Um, he's a- billions of US dollars have been- gone missing and, um, the network of, um, money transfers is global. It's, it's dragged in so many, um, major financial institutions. Um, and this is why the impact of this particular case could- could be very, very far-reaching.

TERENCE GOMEZ, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA: The money is going to the personal account of the prime minister. It's hard for us to trace where this money is coming from. The fact that it's going to the personal account of the prime minister is unprecedented, too.

LINTON BESSER: Here at AmBank, the prime minister's bank accounts were held under the codename "Mr X."

The bank's founder was Hussain Najadi. His son, Pascal Najadi, lives in Switzerland, where I spoke to him via Skype.

(To Pascal Najadi) Mr Najadi, I understand that in 2013 your father told you he'd discovered large-scale corruption in Malaysia?

PASCAL NAJADI, SON OF AMBANK FOUNDER HUSSAIN NAJADI: Yes, my father has been lamenting, ah, at the lunch in Kuala Lumpur about this. And he was throwing his hands up and saying, "My God, this prime minister, ah, Najib is, is lining his pockets. They are robbing the country."

LINTON BESSER: Just five days after their conversation, Hussain Najadi was gunned down in the car park of a Chinese temple in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

PASCAL NAJADI: For us, it was clear this was not a random shooting or random murder. This was- must have been that there were, ah, high powers at hand that have been able to execute such a, such a, er, public-place execution: midday, Kuala Lumpur downtown.

LINTON BESSER: Your your father left AmBank in the 1980s. Why are you so convinced that he had become aware of the prime minister's accounts?

PASCAL NAJADI: My father was one of the old boys of that country. He has helped to build Malaysia. He helped to modernise Malaysia.

Um, and he was, ah, still in touch with, ah, personalities: talking about the old times, talking about old days. Nothing business in particular: just staying in touch with the, with, w- with the folks.

Um, when we, where we got much more clarity, um, Linton, was when we took an audio, er, er, er, witness on audio recording who confessed, or who, who was revealed to us that my father, according to this witness, went with him to, er, the central bank governor's office to complain about certain observations.
I was not aware...

LINTON BESSER: There's no evidence Hussain Najadi's death can be linked to the scandal engulfing the Malaysian prime minister. Pascal Najadi plans to appeal to the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into the murder.

Malaysia's banking regulator was told at least three times about the enormous deposits into prime minister Najib Razak's personal accounts.

Four Corners has learned that senior AmBank figures came here to the Malaysian central bank governor to warn her about Najib Razak's personal accounts, way back in September 2012.

Their report was marked "highly sensitive" and it revealed that almost $300 million had already flowed to Najib Razak from several mysterious donors overseas.

Yet the central bank governor, Zeti Aziz, merely thanked them for their report and handed it back.
(Footage of Zeti Aziz addressing Wharton Global Forum Kuala Lumpur, 11-12 March)

ZETI AZIZ, CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR: This integration process, however, has...

LINTON BESSER: Zeti Aziz is still the head of Malaysia's central bank. We wanted to know what action she took about Najib's accounts.
(Footage of Zeti Aziz leaving forum)

LINTON BESSER: Hello. Hello, Dr Zeti.

ZETI AZIZ: Yes?

LINTON BESSER: I'm from ABC Australia.

ZETI AZIZ: Yes?

LINTON BESSER: Just like to ask you a couple of questions...

ZETI AZIZ: Yes.

LINTON BESSER: ...about your role, regarding the prime minister's bank accounts. We're trying to understand why you didn't do more when you were alerted about the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into them?

ZETI AZIZ: Well, first of all I cannot discuss any individual account, including even your own account, because no central bank or regulator can look at individual accounts. But if the financial institution informed us of what they call "suspicious transactions," then we will... investigate into it.

LINTON BESSER: You were a member of the taskforce investigating, er, all, all of these issues. What, what's been the outcome o- of all of that? Is it true what the new attorney-general has said: that Najib Razak has no case to answer? Is that true?

ZETI AZIZ: I have no comment on this at this point in time. As I said: that no authority will discuss any investigation that has not been concluded.

LINTON BESSER: So who is behind the money flowing into the prime minister's bank accounts?

ZETI AZIZ: As I said, I cannot comment on this. It is an ongoing investigation.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: Accusations against prime minister Najib date back almost a decade.
The first scandal was in 2002, when Najib Razak was defence minister overseeing a $1 billion submarine deal between Malaysia and France. It embroiled some of Najib's closest confidants in allegations of kickbacks, cover-ups and another murder.

French authorities have indicted the former head of French arms firm Thales. They acted after an investigation by Malaysian anti-corruption campaigner Cynthia Gabriel into a US$108 million commission paid to a Malaysian company.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL, ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGNER: It wasn't just this payment that was of question: ah, it was a couple of other payments as well that were made that seemed murky and seemed very shady; that did not have very clear, um, ah, reasons for why, ah, the payments were made.

LINTON BESSER: The middleman in the submarines deal was a senior adviser and friend to the prime minister. His name is Razak Baginda.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: We don't know who he is, apart from him being a close associate and friend of, ah, Najib.

Ah, so I think today we are not certain if he was actually on a formal contract with the Defence Ministry, or whether he was just negotiating a very large multi-million dollar contract, only because he was the friend of Najib Razak.

TERENCE GOMEZ: The allegation is that kickbacks were given to the middle-men who negotiated the deal in France. That is the allegation. That allegation now has to be investigated properly.

LINTON BESSER: What thrust the corruption scandal into the global spotlight was another murder. This time, the victim was a 28-year-old model from Mongolia named Altantuya Shaariibuu. She worked as a translator.

It's also been alleged she was having an affair with Najib, something he's always denied.
But his adviser, Razak Baginda, was sleeping with her.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: He did admit that they were having a romantic relationship for a while. And then the events that led to her death suggested that he was trying to get rid of her.

LINTON BESSER: The model, Altantuya, wanted a cut of the money from the submarine deal.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: Interestingly, ah, her father had said that Altantuya had left a note to say that she was coming to Malaysia to pick up her share of the commission, which amounted to s- to about US$100,000.

LINTON BESSER: On October the 19th, 2006, Altantuya Sharibuu went to Baginda's house to demand money.

She was kidnapped by two Special Forces policemen. She was driven into the jungle and shot twice in the head.

Then they attached military-grade explosives to her body and detonated them.

CYNTHIA GABRIEL: Altantuya was brutally murdered in 2006. Her body was blown up by C-4 explosives. And it was really, er, shocking because these explosives are normally used to bring down buildings - it's that powerful - not to, ah, blow up a body.
(Footage of press conference, 2006)

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA, FORMER ADVISOR TO NAJIB RAZAK: I... I would like to say here...

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Najib's adviser, Razak Baginda, was initially charged with ordering the murder. But he was later acquitted.

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA: ...and what I have said today to all of you... is what I told the police: er, that Dato Najib had never met the deceased.

REPORTER: How do I know?

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA: How do I know? (Laughs) It's like asking me, you know... you know (inaudible)... I know. OK? I know.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: Najib himself has always denied any involvement with the murder.
(Excerpt from Foreign Correspondent, ABC TV, 4 November 2008)

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): Really, um, there's no shred of evidence at all been presented:
Nothing in court. Nothing, nothing has been said. And in fact our, our honorary, the, the Mongolian Honorary Council has come out openly to say, look, he examined all the documents and there was nothing to connect me with, with, with the Mongolian girl whatsoever.

HELEN VATSIKOPOULOS, REPORTER (2008): So you didn't know her? She...

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): No, absolutely not.

HELEN VATSIKOPOULOS (2008): ...she did some translation work for your company...?

NAJIB RAZAK (2008): Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have not met her at all. I do not know her at all. And how can I be linked with her?

LINTON BESSER: The allegations have dogged prime minister Najib since a private investigator, Balasubramaniam, swore a statutory declaration implicating the PM's adviser Baginda in the model's murder.
(Footage of Perumal Balasubramaniam, TV PAS, Malaysia)

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: She said she was... she knows

Ra- Najib and Razak Baginda: met, met them in Paris. She was the mediator.
(Footage ends)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: Bala was a key witness, because he had been a part of the whole drama of those last few days of Altantuya's life.

B- Bala was there on that final night, during that final drama when a car drove up with two thugs and pulled, ah, Altantuya off the street and drove away with her: the last time she was seen alive. Um, and so his, his testimony was crucial.
(Footage of Perumal Balasubramianam being interviewed, archive)

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM (archive): Yeah. I know. He's Najib's br- brother...

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): But the P.I. recanted his statement and claimed in court documents he was forced by people close to the prime minister to leave the country.

PERUMAL BALASUBRAMANIAM (archive): He offered me RM5 million for me to retract the SD. Then (inaudible) asked me whether: "You are married?" I said, "Yes." "Do you love your family?" I said, "Yes."
(Footage ends)

AMERICK SIDHU, BALASUBRAMANIAM'S LAWYER: Now, to emphasise, um, their desire of getting Bala out of the country: they actually took him to a shopping centre on the outskirts of KL as well. And they met somebody that Bala recognised - and it was the prime minister's younger brother, Nazim.

And Nazim Razak said to Bala, "Now, look: if you love your family and if you're concerned about their safety, then I suggest that you follow exactly what (censored) tells you to do."

And so a combination of inducement - financial inducement - and threats to the safety of his family made him think that it was probably a good idea to leave.

LINTON BESSER: This scandal has reached all the way to Australia.

One of the model's killers has been locked up here at Villawood detention centre in Sydney's west.

Sirul Azhar Umar was convicted over Altantuya's murder and sentenced to death. But during an appeal over the case, he fled Malaysia and sought a protection visa to stay in Australia.

Sirul told his friends and family he was just a pawn in a political conspiracy.

TERENCE GOMEZ: There seems to be no reason why he should have killed that lady. The allegation is that he must have got instruction from someone senior.

He knows a lot as to why this girl was murdered. He has not told us why the girl was murdered and who he was acting for.
(Smart phone footage of Sirul Azhar Umar, published January 2016)

LINTON BESSER: Out of the blue, after months in custody, Sirul released a series of bizarre videos that announced prime minister Najib Razak had nothing to do with the model's murder.

SIRUL AZHAR UMAR, FORMER BODYGUARD TO MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER (translation): The most honourable prime minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak, was not involved at all and was not connected to the case.
(Footage ends)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: The sole purpose of the videos appears to be to use Sirul to exonerate the prime minister. I mean, he doesn't seem to be sitting there doing a video to exonerate himself or to forward his own case: he's doing it to, um, help the prime minister.

LINTON BESSER: When Four Corners arrived in Malaysia three weeks ago, we found a country transformed by fear of its prime minister.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: I think there is an atmosphere of total terror. It's an incredibly difficult situation for every individual trying to carry out their jobs.

ZAID IBRAHIM: You see, the problem with this country is that everybody's so scared of the prime minister.

LINTON BESSER: In Malaysia today dissidents are silenced, political opponents are jailed and news organisations are shut down.

But people are still finding ways to protest.

Street artist Fahmi Reza's image of prime minister Najib Razak as a clown has gone viral.
(Fahmi Reza installs poster on wall in public street)

FAHMI REZA, ARTIST: I designed the poster and posted it on my social media sites: you know, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And I received a warning from the Malaysian Twitter police, warning me for posting the poster.

LINTON BESSER: Why? What's wrong...

FAHMI REZA: And now, and now, and now this warning: I've also been investigated, um, for, for making the poster. I mean, I'm being investigated under two- there's two charges: one is under the Malays- the Communications Act; another one under the Penal Code - for this poster alone.

LINTON BESSER: Why are they cracking down on it?

FAHMI REZA (shrugs): Um, someone wasn't happy with the image and made a police report against me.

LINTON BESSER: Authorities are on the look-out for anti-government critics everywhere. Within hours, Fahmi Reza's new poster had been torn down after a visit by police.
(Linton Besser and Fahmi Reza meet again and shake hands. The poster has been removed)

LINTON BESSER: What's happened?

FAHMI REZA: Yeah, eight hours later: something like that, you know. Don't know exactly when. But when I talked to the car attendant here at the parking lot, they said the police came here at around 8pm last night, asking him so many questions about the poster: who did it, you know.

You know, this is just one more way for them to silence dissidents in this country.
(Car park attendant approaches Fahmi Reza)

ATTENDANT: You leave this, please.

FAHMI REZA: OK.

ATTENDANT: Because why:...

LINTON BESSER: Why, why, why should we leave? What's...

ATTENDANT: Because he put a stick- a poster.

LINTON BESSER: Yeah. Yes.

ATTENDANT: It's, it's against the law.

LINTON BESSER: It's against the law to put up a poster?

ATTENDANT: Yeah, yeah. My prime minister: this country's prime minister's photo: that is very bad.

FAHMI REZA: Why... why can't we as citizens express ourselves?

ATTENDANT: OK, OK. Can you hold on? I call the police now, you can talk to them

FAHMI REZA: Why do you want to call the police?

ATTENDANT: Because you did something wrong.

This is our Malaysian law.

LINTON BESSER: Right.

ATTENDANT: Yeah. We cannot say bad things about our prime minister.

FAHMI REZA: There's no law that says we cannot say bad things about the prime minister.

ATTENDANT: OK, OK, OK. I'll, I'll go and call the police.

FAHMI REZA: So you want to call the police on me?

ATTENDANT: Yeah.
(Footage ends)

LINTON BESSER: For others, the consequences of dissent are far more serious.
Khairuddin Hassan is a former senior politician from prime minister Najib's own party.
Last year he went to the UK, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong to lodge police complaints about the huge sums of money pouring into the PM's accounts.

KHAIRUDDIN HASSAN, FORMER NAJIB GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: You see, my aim: actually, my intention was to get the foreign legal enforcement authority to investigate on this 1MDB scandal.

I didn't make any new wild accusations or whatsoever. I flew abroad because I want to put it to the rules of law.

LINTON BESSER: Khairuddin Hassan was jailed for two months on terrorism charges. He was accused of sabotaging the Malaysian economy.

KHAIRUDDIN HASSAN: Well, they accused that I was trying to sabotage the economy of Malaysia. Why I am arrested, detained and charged under Terrorism Act? That is ridiculous.

I was arrested and charged under that Terrorism Act and my lawyer for the first time in history: he is arrested alongside me. A lawyer who is providing legal services to his client.

LINTON BESSER: It didn't take long for our questions to start upsetting people.
We went to a press conference starring a woman named A. Santamil Selvi.
(Footage of press conference)

RAMESH RAO, POLITICAL FIXER: This is a non-government...

A. SANTAMIL SELVI, WIDOW OF BALASUBRAMANIAM: NGO.
RAMESH RAO: ...organisation.

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Her husband was the private investigator Bala, who witnessed the kidnapping of the murdered model.
Bala died of a heart attack.

His wife Selvi has been pursuing a lawsuit, accusing the prime minister and his relatives of forcing her family out of the country for several years.

In a dramatic backflip, she has decided to apologise to the prime minister.

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (translation): My purpose here today is that I wish to apologise openly, specifically to the Malaysian prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib, and his family.

LINTON BESSER: Ah, so let me ask you this.
(A. Santamil Selvi speaks to staffer in Malay)

LINTON BESSER: Mrs Selvi, it's just so strange. Suddenly you apologise. It's- you can see why it's confusing. Sorry, I'm asking Mrs Selvi.

(Voiceover) The press conference was exposed as a sham when, within minutes, Selvi withdrew her apology and revealed she had been paid.
(To A. Santamil Selvi) Ah. So you're not apologising to Najib?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: No. And Bala's SD is (inaudible), right. It's true. OK.

LINTON BESSER: Why, Mrs Selvi, suddenly you're changing your position so radically?
Someone has come to the table with funds to help you in your difficult financial position and you've you've taken a difficult decision and one that perhaps is understandable to change your story because the political pressure was just too great. Is that right?

RAMESH RAO: No, she never changed any story here.

LINTON BESSER: Well, she's changed her story twice today already this morning?

RAMESH RAO: You see, the story… No, what, what story she change?

LINTON BESSER: Well, first: well, the the statement says she apologises to Najib. But she just said clearly: no, she's not apologising to Najib. Which is it?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (translation): I don't want to talk about anything else. (In English) OK? Sorry.
(A. Santamil Selvi stands to leave press conference)

LINTON BESSER: You, you won't answer any more questions, Mrs Selvi?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: No. Sorry, no, no more questions.

LINTON BESSER: What was the total financial offer?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI: I come here for my children's education. That's all.

RAMESH RAO: Twenty thousand.

LINTON BESSER: Thirty thousand ringgit?

RAMESH RAO: Twenty.

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (shouting): Only RM20,000. I need only 20,000. But (inaudible) cannot give me the 20,000, so I come to this office. For my children's education: that's all.

Take my bag.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Can you please stop asking questions?

A. SANTAMIL SELVI (shouting): No more questions, please. I come here for my children education that's all.

LINTON BESSER: The man organising the press conference, Ramesh Rao, is a political fixer who has staged similar events before.

(To Ramesh Rao) Mrs Selvi has stuck...

RAMESH RAO: What is wrong with you, eh, white man? Can you see the paper statement? I am helping these (inaudible) and all that. And you keep repeating (inaudible). I'm off.

OK? I will make sure the children get a good education. I will help them. She apologise or not: that is not my problem. But my concern: I will make sure the children get a good education. Done.
(In car park, Linton Besser approaches people seated in a car)

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): The event seemed to have been prompted by the realisation that Four Corners was asking questions. And there were Special Branch agents scattered around the building.

(To people in car) Are you Malaysian Special Branch? Why is Malaysian Intelligence here at this press conference? Can you answer some questions, sir?
(They ignore him)

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: It's the sort of, um... farce that people have got used to in Malaysia: these extraordinary staged events. People retracting their evidence and clearly being paid and intimidated to do it.

LINTON BESSER: A few hours later, we heard that prime minister Najib Razak had put out a press call and we jumped on a plane.

The PM had invited the media to a rare public appearance on the island of Sarawak, where he was giving an evening campaign speech.

It was the first and only chance we had to have prime minister Najib answer our questions.
(Footage of Najib Razak walking to mosque, Kuching, Sawawak, 12 March)

LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Hello, Mr Prime Minister. It's ABC Australia. I'm wondering if you can explain...

MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: No, no, no.

LINTON BESSER: ...the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account?

Hello, Mr Prime Minister. Can you explain all the hundreds of millions of dollars in your account? Mr Prime Minister?
(Police officer approaches Linton Besser)

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no. Who are you? What you trying to do?

LINTON BESSER: No. I'm- its just a press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Take, take him away. (Speaks to officers in Malay)

(To Linton Besser) What are you? Why are you? What are you trying to do?
(Linton Besser is surrounded by police officers)

LINTON BESSER: J-j- just, just ABC press conference.

POLICE OFFICER: No, where, where is your identity? We do not know about you.

LINTON BESSER: I-I- I'm just a pre- it's, I'm just a journalist for a press conference.
(Footage of Linton Besser in mini van, driving away from mosque)

LINTON BESSER: It's very sensitive here. We've just been questioned by the police and Malaysian Intelligence. They've have taken our passports and asked us where we were staying; ah, made it very plain we were not welcome questioning the Malaysian prime minister about the huge volumes of money pouring into his account.

LOUIE EROGLU, CAMERAMAN (off-screen): OK.

LINTON BESSER (voiceover): Soon after, our van was pulled over. Cameraman Louie Eroglu and I were arrested and taken to the local police station.
(Covert smart phone footage of Linton Besser in police station, speaking on phone)

LINTON BESSER (on phone): Yeah, we are. And our lawyer's just arrived: Albert Tang.
I'm here. I've been, ah, placed under arrest at, um, a police station in Sarawak. Ah, we're waiting for some legal advice but at the moment it sounds like they're intending to charge us with, ah, obstructing a civil servant in the exercise of their duty, just for throwing a question to, ah, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak.

(Voiceover) Our passports were taken again and we were detained for six hours.

JUANITA PHILLIPS, PRESENTER (ABC TV News, 13 March): An ABC Four Corners crew was detained by Malaysian authorities overnight.

KARL STEFANOVIC, PRESENTER (Today program, Channel 9, 14 March): Things have- seem to be going from bad to worse in Malaysia?

JULIE BISHOP, FOREIGN MINISTER (Today program, Channel 9, 14 March): Well, these are matters that we are raising with the Malaysian authorities.
(Footage of Julie Bishop at press conference in Suva, Fiji)

REPORTER (14 March): A Four Corners team has been arrested, um, in Malaysia...?

JULIE BISHOP (14 March): We are deeply concerned about this. We are providing consular support to the ABC crew and we're certainly raising the issue at, ah, the appropriate level within the Malaysian government.

LINTON BESSER: Louie and I were banned from leaving Malaysia and warned we could face two years in jail.

Late on the Monday night, we got bad news.

ALBERT TANG, LAWYER (14 March): If your clients do not plead guilty, then the matter will go to trial and in which case the senior federal council may ask the court for the passports of Linton and Louie to be retained by the court.

LINTON BESSER: We were to face court the next day to hear criminal charges read against us.

But six hours later, there was a bang on my door. The authorities had suddenly changed their minds. The charges were to be dropped.
(Footage of Linton and staff in hotel room, packing equipment)

LINTON BESSER: We were free to go, but for those who live in Malaysia the crackdown continues.

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: They've resorted to sheer intimidation and threats. Um, they're no longer able to rely on y- law enforcement to protect their position.
Um, so they're just letting people know: if they do cross them, ah, they'll just be met with sheer intimidation. I mean, they're pulling charges out of the air to throw at people, um, and shoving people in jail because of course under current rules you can be thrown into jail and kept there for months without, ah, a court appearance. So they're just threatening people now and int- It's very, it's very effective. It's amazing how effective it is.

LINTON BESSER: Millions of ordinary Malaysians are watching the unfolding drama with wary resignation. How long prime minister Najib Razak can hold on to power is anyone guess.

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD: He has to go, because his policies are doing a great deal of harm to the country. He has undermined all the institutions of government created to make sure that the country is well run.

So all the institutions that, um, guard public interest are not functioning anymore, so that gives him almost absolute power.

LINTON BESSER (to Clare Rewcastle Brown): In any other country, a prime minister linked to so many allegations of corruption would have been impeached by now. What is it going to take in Malaysia?

CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN: I think that Malaysia is waiting for foreign action. I think they feel, um, disempowered; um, helpless.

Um, I think after years and years of increasing dictatorial control, ah, they no longer feel they have a democracy. There is an atmosphere of total fear amongst the people who should be taking action to see law and order enforced against Najib.

END

•  

And what has this got to do with MH370? Well comet sums it up from off Ben's blog:

28
comet
Posted March 29, 2016 at 10:37 am | Permalink

Anyone who missed Four Corners should watch it on iView.

Here is a leadership that is obviously corrupted to the core. Billions of dollars in corrupt money changing hands.

They are willing to murder anyone who stands in the way. They murdered a government prosecutor who was working on the case, and preparing a charge list against the PM, to shut the prosecutor up. Would they be also willing to murder 239 innocent people to enable their corrupt dealings?

What was in that cargo manifest? Why is the Malaysian government not honest and clean about MH370? What other motive could the government have for this behaviour, unless their corruption involves MH370?

If nothing else the disturbing revelations in the 4 corners program should heighten all MH370 followers to the deceitful lengths the Malaysian authorities will go to in their attempts to cover-up/obfuscate any liability or potential international embarrassment...   

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”  - Lord Acton.


MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

MH370 & word association - Makes you wonder??

From off the Bump in the night thread:

Meanwhile in the Empire of the RAeS -

..Meanwhile over in the bureaucratic, trough dwelling, evil Empire of the RAeS there apparently is "nothing to see here..move along", from 'that man' via the Oz :

Harry Bradford defends ICCPM’s Airservices contract

• Ean Higgins
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
• April 1, 2016 12:00AM
  
  
  

The former RAAF test pilot dubbed the “Million Dollar Man” by Airservices Australia dissidents has hit out at his critics, denying any conflict of interest in a lucrative Airservices contract he secured...

..The move followed criticism in Senate rural and regional affairs and transport legislation committee hearings of what senators claimed were possible conflicts of interest. The committee heard that Mr Bradford, who was then a director of ICCPM, had received $1 million to act as lead negotiator on Airservices’ behalf in its dealings with Thales, the international aerospace company that has the lead contract for OneSKY.

Senators expressed incredulity that Airservices had hired Mr Bradford to perform this role when the managing director of Thales Australia, Chris Jenkins, was also the chairman of ICCPM, and alleged a possible conflict of interest.

The committee chairman, Liberal Bill Heffernan, said the dealings between Airservices and ICCPM would “not pass the public test … it sounds dodgy”...

..As revealed by The Australian, there is also discontent in Airservices circles over the fact that some executives made trips to the Paris headquarters of Thales, when Thales has a large operation with more than 3000 employees in Australia to service clients locally...

...Mr Bradford had a distinguished air force career, including flying 270 combat missions as a bomber pilot in Vietnam, and as an instructor and test pilot, and was awarded the Air Force Cross.

He was for a period a colleague of then fellow RAAF officer Angus Houston, now the chairman of Airservices.

After leaving the RAAF Mr Bradford worked in a variety of senior management roles in aerospace, including for Hawker de Havilland, British Aerospace and BAE Systems Australia. He was one of the founders of ICCPM when it was established in 2007.

Mr Bradford said ICCPM was initially set up with the support of military organisations and aerospace groups including the Department of Defence, BAE Systems and Thales, as an “altruistic” non-profit organisation to help address problems which could lead major complex projects to go wrong...

Hmm...the Thales conglomerate seems to have their sticky fingers stuck in a lot of murky (read corrupt) pies, there is even a possible link to the Malaysian PM Najib..

A case involving allegations of high-level bribery, blackmail, betrayal and the murder of a glamorous Mongolian socialite in Malaysia has resurfaced in France, only days after Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak was cleared of corruption charges at home.
French prosecutors have charged a French businessman involved in Malaysia's $US2 billion ($2.8 billion) purchase of two French-Spanish built submarines with paying illegal kickbacks to a Malaysian official linked to Mr Najib, according to the French newsagency AFP.
Mr Najib, who was defence minister at the time of the purchase, has denied any wrongdoing but the case has been the subject of hot rumours and speculation in Malaysia's social media during his seven-year rule.
The French report named Ferrari-driving Malaysian businessman Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Mr Najib's best friends and policy advisers, as the person who allegedly received the kickbacks.
While the submarine deal was being negotiated, Mr Baginda was the lover of 28-year-old Mongolian socialite Altantuya Shaariibuu who was murdered by two of Mr Najib's bodyguards in a patch of jungle in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur in 2006.
Ms Shaariibuu was dragged from a car, knocked unconscious and shot twice in the head, according to court testimony.
She had begged for the life of her unborn baby and then her body was wrapped in C4 explosives and blown up, ensuring the fetus was destroyed, along with the identity of the father.
Ms Shaariibuu, who was abducted outside Mr Baginda's house, had reportedly demanded $US500,000 to remain silent about her knowledge of the submarine deal.
French authorities who opened an investigation into the submarine purchases almost four years ago have issued an indictment against Bernard Baiocco, 72, the former president of Thales International Asia, according to an AFP report in the French language, that was translated by the Malaysiakini news website...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/troubles-resurface-for-malaysias-najib-in-europe-20160130-gmhmn0.html#ixzz44WSRDLgK

Oh but that's not 'Thales Australia', there is no association at all, 'nothing to see here move along'

Ps Hmm..wonder if Thales has/had any association with the FPDA?

Aviation Mandarin, JORN & the sleepy echidna.
 

MH370, ATC, Najib, Defence Minister, MAF, FPDA, Thales, Houston, primary radar, JORN...MH370 etc..etc

&..

Update on PM Najib's murky web of money:

Courtesy the WSJ via the Oz:

Najib Razak: probe shows millions spent on luxury goods

• Tom Wright, Bradley Hope
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal
  
  
• April 1, 2016 12:00AM
  

Barack Obama and Najib Razak play a round of golf in Hawaii in 2014.

The probe into 1MDB shows Najib and his wife spent up big on luxury goods.
[/url][url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/najib-razak-probe-shows-millions-spent-on-luxury-goods/news-story/d222b8f26448f58e1425880de92e35a2#]

On Christmas Eve 2014, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak stepped on to Hawaii’s 18-hole Kan­e­ohe Klipper course for a round of golf with US President Barack Obama. Off the fairways, another side of Mr Najib’s time in office was on display.



Two days earlier, the Prime Minister’s credit card was used to charge $US130,625 to Chanel in Honolulu, according to Malaysian investigation documents.


The credit card charge was more than Mr Najib’s entire official annual salary of $130,000.

A person at a ­Chanel store in the upscale Ala Moana Centre recalled Mr Najib’s wife shopping there just before Christmas.


The credit card was paid from one of several private bank ­accounts owned by Mr Najib that global investigators believe received­ hundreds of millions of ­dollars diverted from a government investment fund set up by the Prime Minister in 2009.


Today that fund, 1Malaysia Devel­opment Bhd, or 1MDB, is at the centre of corruption probes by authorities in Malaysia and at least five other nations.


The Malaysian investigation documents, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, contain bank-­transfer information that provides the most complete picture to date of the money that flowed through the Prime Minister’s ­accounts over a five-year period.


The majority of it, investigators say, originated from 1MDB. They show for the first time how some of the money in Mr Najib’s accounts allegedly was used for personal ­expenses.


That included $US15 million in spending on clothes, jewellery and a car, according to the bank-­transfer information, involving stores in the US, Malaysia, Italy and elsewhere.


The disclosures appear to undermine key claims Mr Najib and his allies have made, including that none of the money went towards personal ­expenses. They also detail how Mr Najib used the funds to operate a large political machine, with money flowing from his accounts to politic­ians, think tanks and lawyers during a close election in 2013.


Mr Najib, who was seen by Washington as a liberal, Western-friendly leader when he came to power in 2009, did not respond to requests for comment. He has strenuously denied wrongdoing.


A lawyer for Mr Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, declined to comment. The 1MDB fund also didn’t respond to questions.


It has denied sending money to Mr Najib’s accounts or any other wrongdoing and said it was co-­operating with probes.


In all, the documents show more than $US1 billion entered five accounts belonging to Mr Najib at AmBank Bhd, a Malaysian bank, between 2011 and last year. As previously reported, $US681m was transferred via a web of entities in March 2013, money that investigators in two countries believe originated with 1MDB, the government fund.


Investigators believ­e another set of transfers in 2014 and last year, totalling $US25m, came from an entity known as SRC International Bhd, a company that originally was controlled by 1MDB but was transferred to the Finance Ministry in 2012. Mr Najib is also the Fin­ance Minister.


After The Wall Street Journal first reported those transfers last July, Mr Najib wrote a post on Facebook saying: “Let me be very clear: I have never taken funds for personal gain as ­alleged by my political ­opponents — whether from 1MDB, SRC International or other entities, as these companies have confirmed.”


GRAPHIC: Web of money

In January, Malaysia’s Attor­ney-General cleared Mr Najib of wrongdoing, saying $US681m that entered his accounts in 2013 was a legal donation from Saudi Arabia’s royal family, and that most of it was ­returned. Mr Najib’s defenders have said any money spent in Malaysia went for polit­ical purposes, which they say is permissible. Malaysian authorit­ies haven’t commented on the other money alleged to have entere­d Mr Najib’s accounts.


The latest Malaysian investi­g­ation documents contradict the Attorney-General’s account.

They show transfers from a person in Saudi Arabia and from the country’s Finance Ministry, but they ­occurred earlier, in 2011 and 2012, and are of smaller amounts, totalling $US200m.


The Finance Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.


The documents show Mr Najib made more than 500 payments from his accounts, the bulk of them to political players. Tens of millions of dollars of such payments occurred ahead of the May 2013 elections, which Mr Najib’s party risked losing for the first time since Malaysia’s independence from Britain in 1957.


The payments from his ­accounts at this time included nearly $US7m to the priv­ate account of one of his four brothers, who is chairman of CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, a government-controlled bank. Nazir Razak, the brother, confirmed to TheWall Street Journal in a written statement that he had received the money, which he said was disbursed by bank staff to ruling-party pol­iticians according to the instructions of party leaders.


He said he believed the money originated with donations he had helped raise from Malaysian corporations and individuals for the elections. “I had no knowledge what­soever that these funds may have originated from any other source(s),” he said. “The entire amount was paid out in cash to various recipients ­according to the instructions of the party president and the ­account was closed with a zero balance.”


A spokeswoman for CIMB decline­d ­to comment.


Another transfer, of almost $US70,000, on July 4, 2014, went to the Prime Minister’s son, Norashman Najib, according to the documents. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.


The money flowing to Mr Najib’s account is only part of a much larger amount that investig­ators believe was misappro­priated from 1MDB, which raised more than $US11bn in debt, much of it from global investors.


Swiss authorities, who along with the US, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Singapore are probing the fund, say 1MDB-related losses from misappropriation could reach $US4bn.


Several investigations by Mal­aysia’s central bank, a parliament­ary committee, the country’s auditor-general, Malaysia’s anti-graft agency and police continue.


The Malaysian investigation documents show that about $US170m entered the Prime Minister­’s accounts from other offshore companies set up to look like bona-fide financial giants such as Blackstone Group LP.


Investigators in two countries are probing the origin of the money from Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners, a British Virgin Islands company, and whether any of it origin­ated from 1MDB. A spokeswoman for Blackstone Group said the US company had no knowledge of this entity.


A report on ABC’s Four ­Corners said some of the money transfers into Mr Najib’s accounts triggered internal money-­laundering alarms inside AmBank. The bank didn’t respond­ ­to requests for comment.


Altogether, $US44m from Mr Najib’s accounts was recorded as going to a company called Solar Shine Bhd.


The firm was used by the ruling party to distribute small handouts such as food and station­ery to voters around election times, according to newspaper reports and a person familiar with the matter.


Ruling party organisations and think tanks got large amounts, ­according to the documents. Attempts to locate Solar Shine were not successful.


Of the apparent personal spending, one of the most regular recipients of funds from Mr Najib’s accounts was Jakel Trading Bhd, a Malaysian luxury clothing retailer.


Between 2011 and 2014, Mr Najib transferred more than $US14m to Jakel, according to the documents. The company specialises in traditional Malay formal wear, suits, wedding attire and home furnishings. Attempts to reach Jakel were not successful.


There was an expenditure on June 28, 2011, at Signature Exotic Cars, a car dealership in Kuala Lumpur, for $US56,000.


Signature’s managing director, Daniel Lim, did not respond to a request for comment.


Mr Najib’s credit card also incurred charges of €750,000 in Aug­ust 2014 at an Italian branch of De Grisogono, a Swiss-owned jewellery store, again being ­financed from the same account as the expenses in Hawaii, according to bank-transfer information that forms part of the Malaysian government probe.


A person who works for De Grisogono confirmed the Prime Minister’s wife was a client of a branch of the jewellers in Porto Cervo, a Sardinian resort.


Mr Najib’s wife joined him for his 2014 trip to Hawaii, where Mr Obama was holidaying, which was supposed to help cement ­Malaysia’s role on a global stage.


The transaction in the Chanel store was paid for with a Visa card in Mr Najib’s name, according to the Malaysian investigation ­documents.


At first the transaction didn’t go through and Mr Najib had to call his bank to approve the charge, said one of the people aware of the shopping trip.


A spokeswoman for Chanel declined to comment.


The credit card was paid for by an account in Mr Najib’s name, documents show. That ­account had been credited with $US9m a few months earlier.


The money came from SRC International. On the day Mr Najib played golf with Mr Obama, SRC International transferred $US9m to the account via 1MDB’s corporate social responsibility arm.


The Wall Street Journal

 
MTF...P2

[Gobbledock]

Of crooks, kiss asses and conspiracies

"The Malaysian investigation documents show that about $US170m entered the Prime Minister­’s accounts from other offshore companies set up to look like bona-fide financial giants such as Blackstone Group LP".

Now, what is interesting about MH370 is
that it had Chinese engineers on board and they were employees of a Carlyle and Blackstone-owned US company with a new tech warfare patent. The patent holders are all missing or dead now, except one - Jacob Rothschild, beneficiary of the subsequent insurance payout.

So as Sunfish would say - "to put that another way", the Malaysian PM and his country are 'leading' the investigation into the MH370 disappearance, which just happened to have some very important people on board, and as a result of their 'disappearance' a large payout and patent ownership, in other words a massive financial windfall, goes to an entity (Rothschild's) whose company Blackstone has been giving hundred of millions of dollars to the Malaysian PM through the back door! Nothing crooked here folks. Not a bad lifestyle for a PM on $130k per year don't you think?

Of great concern is how the Malaysian PM and Co are directing the MH370 search! And you wonder why the search has been done in the wrong area!

And Turnbull kisses the Malaysian PM's ass, so does Julie Bishop and so does Beaker! Why?

TICK TOCK CROOKS

[aussie500]

The Freescale semiconductor theory does not hold water. Why would a company in China be entrusted with a tech war patent for the USA? And the new patent had nothing to do with any high tech war thing anyway, it was just an optimizing improvement to get more dies out of a wafer, hardly worth knocking off a plane load of people for, they were not making anything new, just wanted to more efficiently make the usual. And the patent was always owned by the company who employed the people, so Freescale Semiconductor, they are clearly the assignee on the patent. And those people were not on MH370 anyway, and as far as we know still alive and working.

Patent
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parse...N.&OS=PN/8

Some of the people listed as inventors
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ying-li-3a2b8330
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhijun-chen-...e_map-name
The others have blocked looking at their details, hardly unusual, lots do it.

[Peetwo]

The DOI - Part III

Blue Whale in the SIO??

It is strange but no one seems to be prepared to talk about the Blue Whale in the SIO, i.e. the more potential parts that keep on washing up on the SE Coast of Africa the less likely it is that the ATSB SIO search priority area is the highest probability final resting place of MH370..  

The DOI (debris of inconvenience) - Part II

From Minister Chester's 24 March press release - Examination of debris recovered from Mozambique - it is starting to become pretty obvious that the government has drawn a line in the sand on the current ATSB defined MH370 search priority area, from which they feel they cannot retreat:

“The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370,” Mr Chester said.

“That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with drift modelling performed by CSIRO and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean.

This is despite much expert opinion & well researched factual evidence to the contrary view, that the debris findings (almost certainly from MH370) on Reunion Island and the Mozambique/South African coast could not possibly have come from the SIO search priority area.

The following blog piece from Mike Chillit perfectly highlights this strange disconnection :

Australia’s Drift Model

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Mike Chillit — Leave a reply 

 

 
Despite the Chillit comment,..

"..But I have the distinct impression David and his work have been heavily influenced by the internal national politics of this search: possibly by the Abbott administration early on, but certainly now by the Turnbull administration. Mr. Turnbull seems determined to prove ATSB has been right about something all along, even if it has been mostly wrong about everything..."

..I would argue this 'passing strange' disparity with popular opinion & empirical evidence is nothing new for the Infrastructure & Transport Ministry and it's agencies.

You only need look at the Civil Aviation Act regulatory reform program, where the bureaucracy has been lording the 'mystique of aviation safety' over governments (of both persuasions) and industry for 30+ years and at a cost of $300 + million (& counting) for little to no benefit, except possibly the decimation of a vital industry..  

An update to my DOI chain of posts - It would seem that the debris will continue to keep appearing in and around the East coast of Africa & Madagascar. However as the number of possible pieces of MH370 (including what appears to be an internal piece - see HERE) keeps on adding up, the ATSB & Minister Chester still won't concede that there is an ever decreasing probability that they are searching the wrong part of the 7th Arc or maybe even the wrong sector of the IO.

I guess from the point of view of the Australian government this is somewhat understandable, for to concede they may have got it even slightly wrong would lead to further scrutiny & criticism. Which could then lead to intense international pressure to continue the search, possibly until the whole of the northern section of the Indian Ocean 7th arc is complete.

 In all these debris discovery shenanigans, theories, counter theories etc. I still have a niggling doubt about the ATSB (at least at the executive level) true hand on heart commitment to the defined and then slightly re-defined search priority area...

Maybe it is a prejudice that I carry witnessing the lies, deception and obfuscation by the Dolan led ATSB in the PelAir cover-up? Maybe it is the bizarre scenario that we all witnessed where AMSA, the SAR experts, were dumped in favour of the ATSB? - Still can't get my head around that, as the AMSA I once knew would have exhausted all possible avenues, outside theories, lines of inquiry etc. before abandoning the surface search.

Anyway the following is an example of why I have these lingering doubts.

To begin, reflecting on some of the historical articles and blogs on the debris drift theories, I happened to re-read the CSIRO blog - What does our ocean modeling tell us about the fate of flight MH370?

Graeme Harrison's reply posts very closely reflect my views on the shortcomings of the ATSB led research/actions/inactions to establish the MH370 SIO search priority area:

5 August 2015 - And further to my earlier comment, the CSIRO approach to the Reunion find of a flaperon is that this confirms our belief that the original ‘search area’ was correct.


But the contrary interpretation is that the flaperon proves that there was debris – ie the ‘whole plane’ did not land without breaking apart and thus sink as an intact-whole. But if we now accept that there was debris at the site of the crash, before it drifted away and slowly dispersed, SURELY the initial fly-overs would have spotted such floating debris? As no floating debris was spotted in the ‘SW of Perth’ corridor, the finding of any substantial piece of debris actually lessens the chance that this is the true location of the crash.


And yes, I am aware that there was a two-week delay before any search was conducted in this area, but I still suggest (in light of the flaperon find) that some debris should have been noticed in any area, before it could be described as the likely crash zone.


What should happen now is a computerised ‘pixel search’ for aluminium-reflection spectrum peaks in the Indian Ocean visual satellite data from the date of the crash till May (when the flaperon stopped on the Reunion beach). If one is to believe the capability of US and Russian satellite capabilities, there should be lots of ‘track strips’ of video as satellites passed overhead. As some point the sun glinting off such a piece of debris should have caused some glary pixels at the point of that debris at that time. Both US and Russian spy agencies should be asked to again focus their attention on any data they might be able to glean by re-examination of their satellite data as already collected. And the US needs to release clear data from Diego Garcia’s long-range radars on the night the plane disappeared, so that the plane’s other potential path along the North of the Indian Ocean can truly be ruled out. 


Sightings by a US woman sailing a yacht from India to Thailand on the night, and observers in the Maldives recorded a low-level large jet flying along the Northern Indian Ocean trajectory. There were no human observations that supported the (less populated) Southern trajectory that the CSIRO favoured, due to ‘ping delay times’, which confirmed only that either a Northern or Southern route was likely.

[/url]5th August 2015 at 7:51 pm


I think the radar type you are hoping for is “submarine search radar” where satellites of major military powers might be probing for the reflection of any metal objects at water level or not too deep below that. Given the USA and Russian preference for tracking all of their opponent’s pieces on the chess board at all times, it does seem funny that there are not logs that could be examined to ‘reverse track’ the journey of that flaperon.

I don’t believe that “being heavy” would help debris deposited near the outer-reaches of a gyre to get to “the centre of the gyre” quickly. Wouldn’t the heavier object (once given velocity by the current) be the one to ‘spin outwards’ more than lighter objects, even though the centrifugal force is low, due to low rate of spin. In other words, greater mass provides greater angular momentum.

The bigger issue would be if any component was ‘well out of the water’ acting as a sail, in terms of separating that piece of debris from the rest of the debris. But the flaperon appears to have been almost submerged or close to surface level. But after the crash research team has analysed the part, it would be useful to then ‘float it’ in tropical-temperature seawater, to see if it assumes a single natural float position, or if there are more than one such position indicated by both float tests and barnacle growth. That might give some estimates of any ‘sail effect’.

I think it is time to get Boeing to ‘offer’ a few defective flaperons that never made quality control. Then next March, they should be set adrift in various locations, including at least one at the ‘SW of Perth’ search area, and another on approach to Diego Garcia from the East. Each one should be fitted with a tethered GPS tracker and radio beacon. Then let’s see where those near-identical items travel in the Indian Ocean, from March 2016 till May 2017, to imitate the journey the original one took from March 2014 to May 2015 when it reached Reunion. Yes, the gyre is a complex system, so one will never be exactly retracing a path, but that test will certainly exclude a whole bunch of alternative starting locations. And if you want to work out how a flaperon drifts with current and wind, there is no substitute for real near-identical flaperons! Because the drift path does depend upon the object shape and buoyancy, there is no substitute for using the identical shape and buoyancy. And yes, the tracking will take a year to run, but I suspect that this will be like finding the Titanic many decades after it went missing, but without the final latitude and longitude being already known!

   

[url=https://blog.csiro.au/what-does-our-ocean-modelling-tell-us-about-the-fate-of-flight-mh370/#comment-2812]7th August 2015 at 5:03 pm


David, yes, the flaperons should be set adrift from the various trial starting points mid-March 2016, to mimic the seasonal effects of MH370’s crash in mid-March 2014. And if Boeing can provide some ‘failed’ flaperons, for the trial an air-proof bladder may need to be installed at least in one end, to prevent sinking, as it may have been sheer fluke that the ‘found’ flaperon did not sink over its journey. And if no flaperons are available, then it would be easy to mock-up some using aluminium sheeting and again install a bladder of just sufficient size to ensure against sinking. Small GPS and sat-phone could be installed in plastic box mounted on top surface. Solar panel could be installed if needed, though device only needs to log GPS once per day.


And only if no flaperons are made available, and ‘mock-up’ flaperons are deemed ‘too hard’, then using near-netural-buoyancy buoys is still worthwhile, and cheap compared to mapping sea floor.


If it was up to me, I’d start one at SW extent of current search area arc; a second at NE extent of current search area arc; a third 100km East of Diego Garcia (to see if that general area can be ruled out by current drifts over 16 months to Reunion); and a fourth half-way between the search area and Diego Garcia (to complete the model). I think CSIRO should do that modelling for the Australian search team. Then see where these items end up after 16 months afloat.


Without doing this ‘real test’, we’ll still have politicians claiming that the Reunion debris supports current search area, despite no debris having been found in that region shortly after the crash. This approach is putting faith ahead of the facts.

Brock McEwen says


15th August 2015 at 5:39 am
Here is my best attempt to compare and contrast various drift models which have been used in the past year to assess MH370 surface debris probabilities – including CSIRO’s latest. I hope it helps generate robust discussion:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yua...sp=sharing
Reply

• Graeme Harrison says
  
  17th August 2015 at 4:14 pm
  
  Excellent work Brock. I think the most telling bits of text from your summary of models are:
  
  1. “The closer the start point is to Fugro’s latest search extension, the less feasible landfall on RI [Reunion Island] becomes”; and
  2. The statement that the ‘forward drift models’ from ATSB’s latest search zone for 14 months and the ‘reverse drift models’ from the ‘given’ of a landing at Reunion show “no co-mingling”.
  
  I think what will go down in history as complete hubris is that initial claim (after the flaperon find) by authorities that a large floating part of the plane washing up on Reunion Island “is entirely consistent with” the current search zone. And Nicholas Kachel’s comment “it appears our [CSIRO] original predictions may have been on the money” is a statement of belief, not facts. If we needed those, we’d turn to religion.
  
  As I posted earlier, if anything, the Reunion flaperon find ‘mildly disproves’ the search zone, as now that we know there was floating debris, including large reflective pieces, why was none found on any initial fly-overs (even given the two week delay)? The ATSB search zones have only had credibility while people thought it credible that the plane might have sunk ‘intact’. As I also posted, this new find should trigger a ‘re-search’ of satellite fly-over visual data and radar data, to see if any field of debris can be found, now that we know there was one.
  
  And on a bigger note, I think this drift modelling discussion for MH370 will change future search protocols for any future ‘missing planes’. It has been standard maritime practice for a century that if someone is lost overboard, you immediately throw something that floats to that same location (or as close as practicable). So why didn’t the first search planes drop GPS satellite broadcast buoys as the first ‘action’ over each new search area. If one had been dropped by an early surveillance plane over the NE and SW extremes of the search arc, the ‘actual’ drift pattern could have been observed/tracked. Instead we are left arguing over models of a complex system, when we could have had ‘reality’. If, at the May 2015 date that the flaperon was first observed on a Reunion beach, those buoys were only half-way from Australia to Reunion in the Northern part of the Indian Ocean gyre, then we’d know almost for certain that the plane crashed in a more anti-clockwise location on the gyre (than the current search area). This should be a sharp reminder to ATSB RAAF search experts, and advising experts at the CSIRO to ‘take on board’ (pun intended) what ship captains have known for a century (at least): Nothing beats a floating marker!
  Reply
  • 4th September 2015 at 3:54 pm
    
    And now (a month later) on 4 Sept 2015, we have the Sydney Morning Herald reprinting a report by The Telegraph, London that “A team at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel ran extensive computer modelling of ocean currents to trace how the flaperon could have ended up on Reunion.”
    
    The German Kiel-based scientists who are experts in ocean drift are saying that the flaperon must have been ‘deposited’ about 3200km North of the current search area for it to have drifted to Reunion Island in the time taken.
    
    The SMH article is entitled “MH370 investigators ‘looking in wrong place'” and is at:
    http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-investigators-looking-in-wrong-place-20150903-gjesjl.html
    
    (though SMH articles are free to view for only some initial days after posting, thence paywall)
    
    The point of my earlier postings here a month ago were along the very same lines “MH370 investigators ‘looking in wrong place'”
    
    The article goes on to note: “Our results show that the current focus of the search south-west of Australia may be too far south,” said Jonathan Durgadoo, one of the researchers.
    
    The study found a number of possible locations for where the aircraft may have crashed. But only one corresponded to the arc of possible last positions from analysis of the plane’s satellite pings: an area of some 518 square kilometres off the south coast of Java.
    
    Separately, the barnacles found on the flaperon might indicate a more northerly crash site, but the Helmholtz Centre said its team had not been able to analyse the barnacles.
    
    While I am a huge enthusiast for what the CSIRO do in general, I again say that coming out and saying that the flaperon find confirmed the original search zone was sheer hubris. The biggest counter-argument is not the German ‘different’ drift modelling, but rather the lack of any debris originally found in the official search zone (now that we know debris did eventuate).
    
    

Understand that I have absolutely no idea what his background is or if he is qualified to comment, however as a former SAR pilot the logic and considered opinions within Graeme's posts I can very much relate. It should be remembered that the CSIRO relationship with marine SAR drift model development goes back a good many years but based on working very closely under the terms of an MoU with AMSA, not the ATSB:

In a recent media release, CSIRO’s Kirsten Lea outlines the organisation’s role in the search for the missing airliner. As it happens, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and CSIRO have a “Memorandum of Understanding”, which allows the former to request CSIRO’s help “during a maritime incident” and draw upon its technical and scientific expertise.

 
MTF...P2

[MrPeaBody]

Interesting how the CSIRO have been ignored and I guess misquoted, refer David Griffin's last update below.

28 February 2016 update: 'No step' item found on a sandbank off Mozambique
An item which appears to be a wing fragment, with NO STEP printed on it, has been found by Blaine Gibson on a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel. The item has been handed in to authorities for investigation. If it can be identified as being from MH370, this brings to two the number of items potentially usable for oceanographic back-tracking.

Unlike the flaperon found on La Reunion, however, this item is not heavily encrusted with sea life, so it has probably spent a significant length of time either weathering in the sun and/or washing back and forth in the sand at this or some other location. The time at sea is therefore possibly much less than the 716 days that have elapsed since 14 March 2014, and the path taken may have been two or more distinct segments.

The tracks of Global Drifter Program drifters arriving in the Mozambique Channel (during 1985-2015) were overwhelmingly from the east, as shown at right. Two were close to the ATSB search area 700d prior to being in the Mozambique Channel, suggesting that the 'no step' item could very well have followed a similar path. But other drifters arrived near Mozambique from very different points along the 7th arc, showing that those, too, could also be regarded as possible origins of the item.

As with the flaperon, therefore, we conclude that while the location of this finding does not cast doubt on the ATSB's choice of search area (based on the Inmarsat handshakes), it can not provide particularly strong support for it either, because the trajectories of drifting items are so chaotic.

It's probably easier to quote David's earlier comments!

[Brock McEwen]

Is the interior of this object (found Vabbinfaru, Maldives, May 31, 2015) Nomex or aluminum?  Seeking (begging for) expertise, insights, reference objects.  Potentially vital to search strategy (or exposing a lack thereof...).  HUGE thanks in advance!

[MrPeaBody]

Looks a lot like aluminium honeycomb; you can make out small pit holes along the cell structure (probably corrosion).

The second and third layers appear to carbon fibre with very little resin.  There's very little resin all over. There appears to be a rubber layer between the carbon fibre and aluminium core.

Given the following I'd say it's not an aircraft part:

1/ Aluminium and carbon fibre are not normally used together.
2/ Lack of resin and bonding of laminates is consistent with poor or no production control. Made on the cheap.
3/ The rubber layer?

[Brock McEwen]

Thanks, Mr. Peabody. Here's a quote I received from someone who seems to have done his homework:

"The first thing to notice is the short transparent red ribbons on the fractured surface. These show that the honeycomb material is nomex, which normally has a red phenolic resin coating.

"Much of the composite materials used on the B777s were manufactured by Hexcel Corp. Looking at their following website shows that their Nomex honeycombs (e.g. HRH-10) are coated with phenolic resin: http://www.hexcel.com/resources/honeycomb-data-sheets

Phenolic resins are often dark-colored from yellow to dark red: https://www.thechemco.com/chemical/phenolic-resin/

In other words, according to this person, those red ribbons are a dead giveaway.

Has this person erred in judgment, then? He appears to have arrived at a much different conclusion.

So has retired Boeing engineer Ken Goodwin, who believes it is a trailing edge flap. (https://twitter.com/KenGoodwin6/status/7...0206098433)

Not arguing: just trying to collect facts.

[MrPeaBody]

To my eyes the material is aluminium; there are some red lines as you indicate but this may be in the glue line between the aluminium sheets. The core is manufactured by bonding  aluminium sheets together and then expanding the material to produce the cells.

Look to the bottom of the image and you get the more predominant aluminium colour. Not sure if you can make out the corrosion pits throughout the honeycomb. If it were Nomex it would tend to be all orange or red in colour, not just the odd bit.

There is very little resin in the component; the layers should not be able to be torn away as they are. It's supposed to be a reinforced plastic; there's virtually no plastic. Whatever the top layer is, it's useless. On a properly manufactured piece there should be a more coherent solid structure.

The trailing edge flaps on the 777 are carbon fibre; as I mentioned carbon fibre is not normally used with aluminium honeycomb - not on aircraft anyway. The reason is the 2 materials are incompatible; the honeycomb would corrode if it encounters moisture.

Hope this helps!

[aussie500]

Yet the bit of debris we have from the tail was aluminium honeycomb, and it never fell apart as this stuff is doing apart from the damage caused by being crushed, the honeycomb is intact.


Could something cause nomex honeycomb to end up looking like the Maldives bit of debris?

[Peetwo]

For and on behalf of Michael John - One of the many long suffering MH370 followers, who are consistently probing, researching, calculating and theorising in the information vacuum that still continues to surround the disappearance of MH370 is Michael John; or MJ on social media...

Anyway MJ has requested that his theory on the riddle of the Inmarsat intercepted MH370 BFO signals be put to public; and/or expert (boffin - ) scrutiny:
 

Michael John
Shared publicly  -  5:56 PM
 
The riddle of the Inmarsat all comes down to the wobble of 3-f1 & possibly in part the issues with the plane.

The errors came with the final 2 ARC positions which I discovered are each out by just 10 degrees & 20 degrees respectively.

This can be checked & I am confident that these checks will confirm my suspicions.

So what else? Well the FMT did exist but this occured at the SDU reboot. For whatever reason Mh370 continued to fly at half velocity than it's previously recorded data track.

I know that the BFO is based on the planes position above the satellite. I also know that when the data was graphed out it was done erroneously (I am not suggesting intentionally either).

I have shown in the attached imagery how the graph should be laid out. Note after 1st turn back the data should have been recorded right to left as shown in my own graph.

Elsewise I have kept true to the data specifics. I plotted up until the 1st data stream was lost & started again at SDU reboot. All I had to do then was link the 2 & that gives us the missing data for the Malacca Strait. This can be corroborated by the military radar.

Next I used the location of my interest which is West of Banda Aceh in Northern Sumatra as a finish point. I noticed looking at the over view that my now graphed data points were a accurate match for a path in this direction.

So what went wrong & why does the data imply a flight into the SIO? It all comes down to the wobble IMO. The difference in the ARC positions is just 10 degrees. That is it. No changing any of the small numbers just adding a compensation of 10 & 20.

Again all this is shown in the attached imagery. I am 100% confident that this entire proposal will stand up to any scrutiny. As I keep painfully pointing out, the BFO (Hz) readings are exactly how they should be. It is the compensation for the wobble that has caused everything to go wrong & even that only occurs at the final 2 ARCS.

The ARC at 22.40pm should be 57.32 & the ARC at 0.10am should be 60.07. Now looking at ARC positions & my plotted map you should find that those 2 slight compensations in ARC positions accurately match the plot perfectly. What that means is that by moving those 2 ARC positions into line but not altering the actual data will make the overall sum more accurate & any discrepancies will disappear.

Couple this with my satellite imagery you have a crash/ ditch location that matches not only the data but the witness sightings & even the Curtin University sound.

Bottom line is that this is indeed the answer to Mh370.

12/04/2016
5 photos

Michael John's photos

PAIN is by nature made up of largely professional aviators/engineers and ATCOs, so we are probably not much help to MJ. However some of our readership/forum membership may be willing and able to review MJs theory...


MTF P2 

[Peetwo]

M99 inadequacy & the MH370 NOK anguish  -

Byron Bailey is back and continuing his criticism of the ATSB led SIO search, no surprises there I guess in the lead to the end of the search -

However Bailey did make some comments that were worthy of some circumspection, here is a couple of them (my bold):

..In other words, for two years the search area has been in the wrong location.

There are only two months left before the search is terminated...

..It must be tough going for the crews of the search vessels in those heavy seas and strong winds. Not for nothing are the latitudes south of 40 degrees known as the roaring forties. It is also distressing for the relatives of those who were on board MH370, some very disillusioned with the ATSB and the ­Malaysian authorities, as they have indicated to me...

 ..Who made this wrong decision..

.. Did it come down to the ATSB from above? Was it former deputy prime minister Warren Truss, under whose portfolio the search fell, or former prime minister Tony Abbott, ­desirous of cosying up to the ­Malaysian government and thus avoiding difficult questions..

..The ATSB has a somewhat chequered history.. - Massive understatement P2

..It has been criticised by pilots for its handling of the Norfolk ­Island Pel-Air Westwind ditching, where the pilot was hailed as a hero but then summarily “exe­cuted” by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the ATSB..
 P2 - Not just PelAir see here & here for ATR cover-up  

..Its rail accident investigations have been found by experts to be slow, overly lengthy and unable to establish cause, or the correct cause, and not demonstrating ­independence (see the paper Lessons from Australian Derailment Investigations by rail engineer Ross Mitchell and solicitor Adam Bisits presented to the International Heavy Haul Association, Perth, in June last year).. P2 - So the 'non-independence' carries through to the other areas of their remit   

 
However IMO the most relevant comment in the Bailey rant was this: 

..Why is this important? It concerns liability. Under the Montreal convention, payout for a death due to accident is about $200,000 but in the event of proven pilot suicide, which results in the murder of 238 innocent people and is therefore a criminal matter, the liability may be unlimited..

Again the Chicago & Montreal Convention (M99) surfaces as a possible significant issue in the bizarre shenanigans surrounding the whole tragic MH370 disappearance.

From Binger via the Oz yesterday:

Malaysia Airlines ‘insults’ MH370 families

• Mitchell Bingemann
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
• April 15, 2016 12:00AM
  
  

The family of two Australian passengers aboard the missing Flight MH370 has hit out at ­Malaysia Airlines, saying it has been demanding “ridiculous and incredibly insulting questions”, including where the plane crashed, in their compensation case.



Friends Bob and Cathy Lawton and Rodney and Mary Burrows were among 239 people on board the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that disappeared more than two years ago.

The couples’ adult children have lodged a claim in the Federal Court of Australia accusing the airline of not doing enough to prevent the Boeing 777 from flying off course and vanishing.


They are seeking more than $200,000 in compensation.


The children of the Burrows family hit out after the airline’s solicitors this week issued a 10-page letter with 53 questions ­requesting “further and better particulars” for their claim.


“Despite our best efforts to supply all of the requested information, the airline is distressing us further by asking ridiculous and incredibly insulting questions. We understand the court process allows them to ask for further particulars, but some of their questions are incredible, ­including asking us where the crash occurred and what caused the crash,” the Burrows family told The Australian.


“In our opinion, if it wasn’t for them losing their aircraft in the first place our parents would still be alive. Our parents were the victims, we fail to understand why Malaysia Airlines continue to request such information, only adding to the pain and ­confusion we have suffered …


“Although continually ass­ured by Malaysia Airlines that any claim would be straight­forward and handled quickly, this, like many statements made to us by the airline, has proven to be untrue.”


Families of the 239 passengers aboard the missing Boeing 777 had until March 8 — the two-year anniversary of MH370’s disappearance — to bring ­compensation claims against the airline.


The disappearance of MH370 falls under the Montreal Convention, which governs many air disaster claims and imposes strict liability on air carriers for injury and death caused by accidents.


Air carriers cannot defend claims assessed to be less than $190,000, but can fight higher claims if they can prove they were not the cause of the accident or that the accident was caused solely by some other party.


However, the disappearance of MH370 has made it impossible for the airline or authorities to determine the cause of the aircraft’s demise.


“Through our lawyers, we provided them with all the information they have requested, however, this was not enough,” the Burrows family said. “There was no attempt by Malaysia Airlines to settle this matter before the two year deadline for legal proceedings under the Montreal Convention, therefore, we have lodged a claim in the Australian courts. Making a claim in the court has only deepened our grief, and adds more stress.”

Which was followed by this from Joseph Wheeler:

Rights of passengers deserve more attention

• Joseph Wheeler
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
• April 15, 2016 12:00AM
  
  

Since 1944 the International Convention on Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention) has served the needs of people worldwide for safe, regular and economical air transport in a market which presently serves over three billion passengers a year.



But this foundational convention, its annexes, and the law generally betray a perplexing lack of focus on or attention to people affected by aviation and in particular passengers — let alone their rights.


Who gives them a voice?


There is no global organisation that advocates for the rights of passengers as there are for other players in the air transport world like airlines, airports, air navigation service providers and pilots.


The significance of this startling lack of voice is an international regulatory sphere that is markedly slow to respond to genuine passenger/consumer needs and wants.


While a vocal focus on “safety” is prevalent, this does not always equate with suitably rigorous action to allay genuine fears and concerns of passengers, which should inform the law.


One need only look to recent decision-making by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) on global airliner tracking to see how the concerns of passengers have taken a back seat, notwithstanding the refrain of “safety”.


On March 8, the second anniversary of the disappearance of MH370, ICAO announced that its 36-member council had adopted amendments to standards and recommended practices directed at preventing the loss of commercial aircraft experiencing distress in remote locations.


The rules will become applicable to all Chicago Convention states in 2021, and will require aircraft to carry tracking devices which can autonomously transmit location information at least once every minute in distress circumstances, have flight-recorded data recoverable and made available faster, and extend the duration of cockpit voice recordings to 25 hours from the existing two-hour recordings now retained.


These measures are designed to ensure that in the case of an accident, the location of the site will be known immediately to within six nautical miles, which facilitates more timely search and rescue and investigation of causes. It is relatively speedy regulatory work when one considers that it has only been two years since MH370 disappeared.


However, it was not that incident that prompted these changes, but recommendations made by the French BEA in 2009 after the loss of Air France flight 447. The net result is that these rules may well take nine to 12 years from the disappearance of a first full passenger aircraft in the Atlantic Ocean, followed by a second loss of a full passenger aircraft in the Indian Ocean, to legally regulate airline conduct worldwide. It is thus lamentable that the lessons highlighted by the BEA after the loss of Air France 447 weren’t implemented within the five years before Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in 2014, or that search may well have borne fruit and potentially saved lives.


All states and their regulators must act on the new amendments between now and 2021 to ensure these vital protections are implemented for the sake of all commercial air passengers.

  
Hmm...is there some fuzzy dots & dashes in there worthy of dot joining investigation? Remembering that ATSBeaker has a reputation for being the 'topcover' specialists - AIOS & the ATSB - The top-cover experts




MTF..P2

[Peetwo]

Off the Mike Chillit seventh arc blog:

This story is currently doing the rounds on the MH370 social media front:

Sunda Strait Debris: March 12, 2014


Posted on April 20, 2016 by Mike Chillit

The text that follows is nearly verbatim from a report prepared by a Tweep who spoke with the man who posted an account of a debris sighting in and near Sunda Strait on March 12, 2014. I have not been able to speak to the witnesses, nor has anyone I know personally. One or two individuals are still attempting to make contact with them. The original report claims there were 6 individuals on the sailboat, but only two appear to be the focus of the report. Here is the Tweep’s account after she conducted a phone interview of a guy who posted the information on a well maintained website that covers commercial plane crashes and disappearances. The interviewer speaks and writes English, but her first language is French and the interview may have been in French (don’t know):

I just had a phone call with [the webmaster]: We can’t contact the witnesses: they want to keep anonymity. They are not young, and didn’t take pics because they hadn’t their phone with them on the deck of their boat.

They were sailing to India via Sunda Strait. They saw debris 4 days after the disappearance of MH370 (near and in Sunda Strait). They did a report to the Australian embassy (in Indonesia?) and to China in 2014.

I don’t know how [the webmaster] heard about it. (He owns an enterprise that deices planes at Geneva airport).

They transmitted their report to the Swiss police last week. Not before, because they had not heard about their testimony since they did it. Last week, on Jeff Wise (or elsewhere) someone quoted it. Since, they have been annoyed by journos and other people.

If we want more info, we have to contact the Swiss Police, which is now in touch with Australia or Malaysia (I don’t remember).

I came too late to [the webmaster]. It was not so easy to speak with him. But at the end, fortunately he told me that he will give me other infos if he has, in the future.

He is a straight and proud guy. On his website, he publishes only official infos. I guess he doubts about the MH370 debris, but will never tell it. However he remembered me a Boeing 747 which crashed in SIO on 1987; it still lies near Mauritius, below 4000m.
As you may have guessed, I have replaced the guy’s real-life name with “[the webmaster]”.

This is my recreation of where the debris was spotted in and near the Sunda Strait. As I’ve said, it is a logical fit. Some debris from that area would likely pass through the Strait into the Indian Ocean, and from there the Mascarene Island and Mozambique Channel areas are logical / plausible end-points.



Location of debris spotted by people on a sail from Perth to Singapore via the Sunda Strait. Flight #QZ8501 went down a short distance southeast of the Strait about six months after MH370 disappeared. It was days before anything was spotted, even when investigators knew where to look for QZ8501.

The original coordinates used north latitude instead of south. It didn’t make much sense to me the way the narrative was written, so I contracted the guy who posted the information. After some checking, he agreed that he had failed to enter a negative sign for the latitude. The change moved the debris location from near the Waypoint Igari area to where you see it depicted here.

I will update this post as new information becomes available.

April 20, 2016 @ 4:30 PM EDT
[I have tremendous regard for the Tweep who is working the trenches to get this information, and do all the other things in a very busy life.]

This information is coming from (our source): Ronan Hubert, directeur du Bureau d’archives des accidents d’avion.

Tweep: I believe a report has been sent to Swiss Police. Do you know who I can contact specifically?

Ronan Hubert: The testimony of the Swiss Citizen was transmitted to the Swiss Police oft the Canton du Valais (Wallis, capital city is Sion).

Tweep: How did you come across this information? Nothing has been published in the media.

Ronan Hubert: Approximately one year after the accident, Swiss Television made a special edition about the crash and I was invited to comment. This edition is called ‘Geopolitis’. You can find it on the website of Swiss TV (RTS). Following this, the person contacted me to give me her testimony. As this testimony seemed pertinent to me, I judged interesting at this time to put it on my website. There was nothing in the medias but my website has 3,500 to 10,000 visitors daily, from all over the world. And in this file, it is not my responsibility to give any testimony to the medias.

Tweep: Is there any chance that this could be a bogus report?

Ronan Hubert: It is not a bogus report and I trust this person as there are no profit at all on this story : no money, no return, no mention anywhere, nothing. But, as I said, the debris that they spotted are maybe from a boat and nothing was mentioned on this testimony or my website that these debris were from MH370. It is maybe a simple coincidence, maybe not. But for sure, these debris that were spotted four days after the crash are now far away from this position.

Tweep: How did the family know the exact coordinates of the location?

Ronan Hubert: The coordinates were given to the passengers as they ask to the ship personnel. For other details, I invite to contact the police directly. I’m still awaiting the details of the police officer who is in charge of this file.

Many thanks to Mr. Ronan Hubert for his assistance with this critically important bit of new information.

More to come

 
The latest MC (20 April 2016) update was also verified here (in bold blue):

Crash of a Boeing 777-2H6ER into the Indian Ocean: 239 killed









Accident description

• Date & Time
  Mar 8, 2014 at 0130 LT
  
• Type of Aircraft
  Boeing 777-200
  
• Operator
  
  
• Registration 9M-MRO
  
• Flight PhaseFlight
  
• Flight TypeScheduled Revenue Flight
  
• SurvivorsNo
  
• SiteLake, Sea, Ocean
  
• Schedule
  Kuala Lumpur – Beijing
  
• c/n 28420/404
  
• YOM 14MAY2002
  
• Flight number MAS370
  
• LocationIndian Ocean, World
  
• CountryWorld
  
• Region
  
• Crew on board 12
  
• Crew fatalities 12
  
• Pax on board 227
  
• Pax fatalities 227
  
• Other fatalities 0
  
• Total fatalities239
  
• Captain / Total flying hours 18365
  
• Copilot / Total flying hours 2763
  
• Aircraft flight hours 53465
  
• Aircraft flight cycles 7525
  
• Circumstances
  
  The Boeing 777-2H6ER took off from Kuala Lumpur Airport runway 32R at 0041LT bound for Beijing. Some 40 minutes later, while reaching FL350 over the Gulf of Thailand, radar contact was lost. At this time, the position of the aircraft was estimated 90 NM northeast of Kota Bharu, some 2 km from the IGARI waypoint. More than 4 days after the 'accident', no trace of the aircraft has been found. On the fifth day of operation, several countries were involved in the SAR operations, in the Gulf of Thailand, west of China Sea and on the Malacca Strait as well. All operations are performed in coordination with China, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Philippines.  No distress call or any kind of message was sent by the crew. The last ACARS message was received at 0107LT and did not contain any error, failure or technical problems. At 0119LT was recorded the last radio transmission with the crew saying "All right, good night". At 0121LT, the transponder was switched off and the last radar contact was recorded at 0130LT.  Several hypothesis are open and no trace of the aircraft nor the occupant have been found up to March 18, 2014.  It is now understood the aircraft may flew several hours after it disappeared from radar screens, flying on an opposite direction from the prescribed flight plan, most probably to the south over the Indian Ocean.  No such situation was ever noted by the B3A, so it is now capital to find both CVR & DFDR to explain the exact circumstances of this tragic event. Considering the actual situation, all scenarios are possible and all hypothesis are still open. On Mar 24, 2014, the Malaysian Prime Minister announced that according to new computations by the British AAIB based on new satellite data, there is no reasonable doubt that flight MH370 ended in the South Indian Ocean some 2,600 km west of Perth. Given the situation, the Malaysian Authorities believe that there is no chance to find any survivors among the 239 occupants.
  
  ***************************
  
  According to the testimony of 6 Swiss Citizens making a cruise between Perth and Singapore via Jakarta, the following evidences were spotted on March 12 while approaching the Sunda Strait:  1430LT - latitude 6° S, longitude 105° E, speed 17,7 knots:  life jacket, food trays, papers, pieces of polystyrene, wallets, 1500LT:  a huge white piece of 6 meters long to 2,5 meters wide with other debris, 1530LT: two masts one meter long with small flags on top, red and blue, 2030LT - latitude 5° S, longitude 107° E, speed 20,2 knots.
  
  This testimony was submitted by these 6 Swiss Citizens to the Chinese and Australian Authorities. On April 21, 2016, it was confirmed that this testimony was recorded by the Swiss Police and transmitted to the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (STSB), the State authority of the Swiss Confederation which has a mandate to investigate accidents and dangerous incidents involving trains, aircraft, inland navigation ships, and seagoing vessels. The link to the STSB is http://www.sust.admin.ch/en/index.html.
  
  ***************************
  
  On July 29, 2015, a flaperon was found on a beach of the French Island of La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean. It was quickly confirmed by the French Authorities (BEA) that the debris was part of the Malaysian B777.  Other debris have been found since, in Mozambique and South Africa apparently.
  

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

DOI Update: Two days ago via IB Times...

Flight MH370 Search Update: Mozambique, South Africa OK Search In Their Waters After Debris Discoveries

By Julia Glum @superjulia On 04/23/16 AT 4:33 PM
A Malaysia Airlines plane is seen on the tarmac at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 12, 2014. Photo: Getty Images

South Africa and Mozambique gave approval this week for Malaysia to check their waters for debris possibly linked to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, also known as MH370. But transport minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that investigators weren't immediately sending over a team, according to Bernama. 

"Both countries will assist us to find [the plane], and they will inform us if more debris have been found," he said.

Multiple pieces of would-be wreckage have turned up in the African countries in recent months. Authorities with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the hunt for the missing plane, confirmed Tuesday that two items found in Mozambique -- a segment from a flap track fairing and a part of a horizontal stabilizer panel -- were "almost certainly" from MH370. A third item, discovered last month in South Africa and potentially belonging to the missing Boeing 777's engine, was still undergoing analysis.

Liow acknowledged the "rather high probability" that the evidence was from MH370 but mentioned how difficult it would be to definitively confirm it. "This is not like [a] flaperon, which can be immediately verified upon because [a] flaperon has serial numbers," he said, referencing the only piece of confirmed debris in the case so far. "The debris that were found did not have serial numbers."

Also this week, Malaysian officials confirmed they would meet with representatives from China and Australia in June to decide the future of the search for MH370, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

More than 100,000 square kilometers of the 120,000-square-kilometer underwater search area have been scanned, according to a recent operational update from the Australian bureau. Without new, credible information "that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft, Governments have agreed that there will be no further expansion of the search area," the update read.

MH370 is thought to have crashed in the Indian Ocean on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

What a bullshit statement - LIOW: "This is not like [a] flaperon, which can be immediately verified upon because [a] flaperon has serial numbers,"

That's not how I recall it - MH370 investigation: French investigators confirm flaperon is from missing plane - even then because of the lack of information forthcoming from the French there is an element of doubt about the flaperon providence...

MTF...P2

[aussie500]

Well they can be immediately verified as coming from a Malaysian airlines B777 which is just going to have to do, no matter how much some of us might want something more specific. Any creatures or biofouling on the debris is not going to be 2 years old, because it probably only started growing once the debris got near land, or near warmer water. And most of the things with numbers on the flaperon had been ripped off, but still the French are not about to say it was from some other Malaysian Airlines plane.

The debris does not match with the MH17 wreckage and 9M-MRN made in the same year as MRO is in storage, still intact as far as we know. The French are not going to be wanting to inspect every Malaysian airlines B777, most of them are gone for spare parts. Now the French get their hands on some debris from inside MH370, a tour of MRN might be handy, just to see where it might belong, inspect a plane exactly the same. Cross of all those boxes for lawyers, and conspiracy theorists.

I am happy with it as it is. I think the reason why we have only got easily recognizable debris is, people might not be picking up the more ordinary stuff, they might not think is from MH370. Because there has to be a lot more debris, unless there are a lot of cetaceans and fish with stomach aches caused by eating inedible bits of plane.

[Brock McEwen]

Thanks for all who contributed to the Vabbinfaru debris assessment. The likelihood the core of this item is in fact Nomex appears to be growing. A slab of MH17 debris photographed by Jeroen Akkermans shows dark red Nomex honeycomb filled with yellow potting compound. Its view from the sheared side bears a striking resemblance to the view from the sheared side of the Vabbinfaru piece - suggesting to me the strong possibility that this is in fact dark red Nomex filled with white potting compound.

Here's a link to both a jpeg and a pdf summarizing the argument that the Vabbinfaru debris is at least worth a much closer look. The jpeg is of higher resolution; the pdf has live links to verify sources. The Nomex comparison appears in the middle of the "montage":

https://twitter.com/Brock_McEwen/status/...0532109313