THERE was no agreement between Wall Street Journal journalist Tom Wright and Sarawak Report founder Clare Rewcastle-Brown on sharing information or sources in exposing the 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal, said Wright today.

“There was no agreement between us on how we should report together or anything like that,” said the author of The Billion Dollar Whale.

Wright said this in dismissing Rewcastle-Brown’s claims that he had broken a pledge not to reproduce the information he received from a source which was given to him by her.

“Our reporting processes were completely independent from the Sarawak Report’s,” he said of Rewcastle-Brown’s claims that he had put the source and the source’s colleagues at risk of reprisal.

Wright clarified that Rewcastle-Brown may be referring to documents he had posted online regarding wire transfers into former prime minister Najib Razak’s accounts.

“There were two people who were detained who worked at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission as part of the (government’s) crackdown.

“Remember, after information of the US$681 million (RM2.8 billion) got leaked, Najib fired his attorney-general, fired his deputy Muhyiddin (Yassin), and suspended The Edge’s publishing licence,” he said.

“This has nothing to do with the documents I posted online. Rather, they (BN) did not want this information to come out.” he said.

Last month, Rewcastle-Brown demanded that Wright explain how he obtained the details of a US$681 million bank transaction involving Najib for the book.

She poured scorn on Wright’s book, saying she was the one who first broke the 1MDB scandal and gave the WSJ reporters her contacts.

In a lengthy post on Sarawak Report, she shared chapter 23 from her book, The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose, detailing exchanges between her, her sources, and WSJ reporters Wright and Simon Clarke.

The excerpt, said Rewcastle-Brown, challenged the Billion Dollar Whale authors’ claim that “insiders in the 1MDB investigation approached them”.

“I just wanted the truth to come out. Now, I’m moving on.” – October 7, 2018.