PRIME Minister Najib Razak’s historic meeting with United States President Donald Trump has been the focus of the media, specifically the US press, but for reasons unlikely to please both controversy-laden leaders.

In stark contrast to local media’s glowing reportage of the meeting in Washington, leading American news outlets have been taking lightly veiled pot shots, with one major media outlet tagging the event as Trump “meeting another scandal-ridden, golf-loving leader”.

In its online article overnight, American magazine Newsweek said both Trump and Najib “have a lot more in common than a shared love of golf”.

“While the Trump administration is currently under investigation for allegations relating to Russian hacking of the 2016 election, Najib is currently embroiled in a scandal that sees the US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigating the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) banking scandal,” it said.

“But it is likely that the two scandal-wracked leaders will avoid the large elephant in the room,” it said of their meeting yesterday.

As much as both Najib’s and Trump’s office have tried to direct media attention to the signing of trade deals between the two leaders, the prime minister’s link to the 1MDB investigations – the biggest foreign kleptocracy probe in the US – continues to dog him.

CNN’s headline announced that “Trump meets Malaysia leader under investigation by his Justice Department”, while Reuters wires declared that “Trump, Malaysia’s Najib talk about trade and security, not scandal”.

UK media outlet the Independent was a little less subtle in how it perceived the meeting, declaring in its headline that “Donald Trump welcomes authoritarian Malaysian PM Najb Razak to White House despite major corruption probe”.

Bloomberg alluded to reports that Trump has called Najib his “favourite prime minister” with a headline declaring that the US President would “meet favourite premier as Malaysian fund probe deepens”.

Trump’s invitation to Najib has drawn scathing criticism from the US media because of the DoJ probe into whether Najib diverted more than US$1 billion from 1MDB to his own bank accounts.

The DoJ announced in June that prosecutors have filed forfeiture complaints seeking US$540 million in assets.

US prosecutors a year earlier had filed similar complaints seeking more than US$1 billion in assets alleged acquired by Malaysian officials and their associates through misappropriating money from the government-owned fund. The total value of assets sought stands at nearly US$1.7 billion, the DoJ said.

The 2016 complaint alleged that more than US$730 million of what seemed to be 1MDB money was ultimately routed to the personal bank account of “Malaysian Official 1,” a thinly veiled reference to Najib. – September 13, 2017.