THE editor of Sarawak Report wants the authors of Billion Dollar Whale to reveal the source of their information for their book on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd financial scandal and the man allegedly behind one of the boldest swindles in Malaysian history.

Clare Rewcastle-Brown, who also recently published a book on 1MDB, called The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé, demanded that Tom Wright, Billion Dollar Whale co-author, explain how he obtained the details of a US$681 million (RM2.8 billion) bank transaction involving former prime minister Najib Razak for the book. 

She made the claim that the information was from a source introduced to him by Sarawak Report, and that Wright had not only reneged on his promise to credit the news portal in the book, but had also broken a pledge not to reproduce the documents he received from the source on his website, putting the source and the source’s colleagues at risk of reprisal.

“He also said he would continue to contact the source through Sarawak Report, and not attempt to go behind Sarawak Report’s back,” she said on sarawakreport.org.

“Far more importantly, he also promised that he would not reproduce the documents themselves on his website, because the source was fearful that showing the documents would point to who they were.

“Nevertheless, shortly after the original story, Wright did put those documents up on the WSJ website, despite that promise, causing great fear to Sarawak Report’s source, many of whose colleagues were indeed arrested shortly after, in a search for the leak. As a result, that source did not approach Sarawak Report again.”

However, she said she had reason to believe that “the WSJ team were able to reopen connections with that source and run more stories based on material they provided” despite Wright’s pledge not to go behind Sarawak Report’s back.

She said the intermediary between the source and WSJ writers was told, “Let’s leave out Sarawak Report, you are talking to the big boys now”.

Rewcastle-Brown said Sarawak Report had shared the information with the  WSJ  “to give the story more global attention and to make it harder for Najib to ignore than if it had come out only in this Malaysia-focused blog, which was already under enormous attack from his government.”

She urged Wright and his colleagues at the WSJ to clarify whether they had got the story on Najib’s bank balance from the source who had contacted him directly or did Sarawak Report hand them the story. –  September 26, 2018.