A year in denial, WSJ finally admits funds indeed came from Saudi Arabia - PMO

In regard to a recent allegation by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) concerning the funds which were deposited into Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's personal bank accounts, the prime minister’s office (PMO) has issued a statement on the issue.

Below is the statement in full:

"Today, for the first time, the Wall Street Journal has been forced to admit that at least some of the funds donated to the Prime Minister came from Saudi Arabia.

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For nearly a year, the WSJ denied that the funds came from Saudi Arabia, and attacked all those who suggested otherwise.

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This included the Attorney General who, after reviewing the exhaustive investigations and examining all the evidence – including wire transfers and interviews with the Royal Family – confirmed that the funds were a donation from the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia.

Neither the confirmation from lawful Malaysian authorities, nor the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, nor reputable outlets such as the BBC and Daily Telegraph, was enough to make the WSJ stop their attacks or denials that any of the funds had come from Saudi Arabia.

This exposed the bias in the WSJ's reporting, and made clear that their coverage was not driven by an impartial desire to cover the facts. Instead, their reporting was based on false information they were willingly fed by Tun Mahathir's Anti-Najib Campaign.

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Maybe it's their embarrassment that stops them accepting the facts in full. Namely, as the Prime Minister has always maintained, the funds were a donation from Saudi Arabia – as the evidence shows.

However, today is a small step towards the WSJ admitting that they have been wrong all along – and that they were wrong to base their reporting on unnamed and anonymous sources who have never been revealed and may not even exist.‎‎‎"