Washington has pulled its last troops out of Iraq. Asia, which buys most of the oil Iraq sells, should not mistake that for freedom.

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For decades, the idea of an overland connection between China and Iran existed more on paper than in practice. Freight trains did occasionally make the journey across Central Asia, largely using infrastructure inherited from the Soviet peri…

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Singaporean courts have become a battlefield where commodities trading companies are suing each other for billions of dollars. Multiple creditors have sued Radiant World Corporation, a Singaporean metal and mineral trader, with a US fund accusing Radiant of possibly committing the biggest commodities fraud since the Enron scandal in 2001, when US energy firm Enron suffered one of the biggest US bankruptcies with US$63.4 billion in assets. In turn, Radiant and its associate companies have sued Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss commodities trading and mining company.

Radiant’s website states, “Radiant World and ten other companies have commenced proceedings in the Singapore courts against Glencore International AG and associated companies, arising out of a commercial relationship spanning more than a decade. The claims, which include claims for damages exceeding US$2 billion.”

“Radiant World rejects, in the clearest terms, the allegations of wrongdoing that have been made against it and the companies associated with it,” its website added.

Glencore retorted in a statement on September 15, “Radiant World and Sapphire Minmetals have alleged that they have claims against Glencore for substantial amounts. These claims are meritless and we will contest them vigorously. We have incurred losses and been exposed to risks by Radiant World companies and will take appropriate action.”

“Glencore has confirmed evidence that these companies sent falsified invoices and contracts as well as fabricated emails, which they fraudulently claimed to have received from Glencore personnel, to a number of financial institutions,” the London-listed firm alleged.

“We take these issues seriously and are conducting a review of our historic business activities with Radiant World, Sapphire Minmetals and associated companies. We have stopped doing business with these companies and have exited all obligations,” Glencore added.

In a judgment of the Singapore High Court on September 25, Judge Kristy Tan said, “I do not accept (Radiant World’s) argument that its claim against Glencore for approximately US$2 billion…. should be regarded as a realisable asset. It is pure speculation as to how the claim will fare and that it will be “resolved within 12 months”.”

Tan placed Radiant under the judicial management of several executives of KPMG, a Big Four accounting firm.

“There is an urgent need for interim judicial managers to investigate the Company’s affairs in the light of the prima facie pattern of fraudulent conduct on the part of the Company’s management that has been seen,” Tan explained.

The Singapore High Court judgment concerned a lawsuit by Mizuho Bank against Radiant.

Three statutory demands have been made against Radiant, which it has not satisfied within three weeks thereafter, Tan noted.

On August 17, Mizuho, a Japanese bank, served a statutory demand for US$97.3 million on the company.

On August 21, Deutsche Bank, Singapore Branch (“DBSG”) served a statutory demand for US$102.6 million on the company.

On August 14, Intesa Sanpaolo (“ISP”, an Italian bank) served a statutory demand for US$126.15 million plus interest on the company.

“ISP’s experience prima facie comports with and contributes to the prima facie pattern of fraud seen in Mizuho and DBSG’s experiences with the Company,” Tan said.

On July 30, two of the world’s largest commodities trading companies, Vitol and Cargill, announced they had halted all business with Radiant, said a report by Control Risks, a UK risk consultancy, on September 28. “This was based on concerns that the Singapore-based trading house had provided allegedly falsified trade documents and invoices to its creditor banks.”

In the judgement, Tan noted, “It is again telling that the Company has avoided addressing the specific details of fraud provided by DBSG in respect of the Vitol Transactions and Glencore Transaction.”

Singapore Police, the US Justice Department and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced they were probing transactions related to Radiant, according to Control Risks’ report. Multiple banks froze accounts held by Radiant, while trading houses halted their transactions with the firm and civil lawsuits were filed against Radiant in Singapore by Mizuho and a Singapore trade finance platform, Incomlend, the report added.

In late September, court filings revealed six creditors held a combined US$870 million exposure to Radiant, said Control Risks’ report.

One of the largest frauds in commodities trading since Enron?

On September 14, Mariner Atlantic Multi-Strategy, a New York fund, filed a criminal complaint with the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office in Switzerland for fraud and money laundering against Radiant World Corporation SA (Radiant’s Geneva-based subsidiary), Radiant’s founder Pinkesh Nahar and other parties.

Mariner has requested a criminal investigation, searches of premises in Geneva, and the seizure of bank accounts and assets in Switzerland, said a US court document filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 29.

According to the US court document, Mariner has requested the New York court to permit Mariner to obtain documentary discovery from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Clearing House Interbank Payments System for use in the legal proceedings in Switzerland.

On June 26, Mariner entered into an agreement with Radiant World Corporation, the Singaporean company, and Radiant World Holding Limited, a related Hong Kong company, under which Mariner made available to these two firms two revolving credit facilities totaling US$50 million. On June 30, Radiant made four drawdown requests totaling US$48.6 million.

“However, after the funds were released, Mariner learned that Radiant systematically had falsified commercial documents in order to simulate transactions and thereby obtain financing from international lenders, including Mariner, through fictitious trades,” Mariner alleged in the US court document.

Several of Radiant’s purported counterparties were entities controlled by Nahar, Mariner alleged. “The scale of this blatant fraud is considerable: the value of the fraudulent invoices issued as collateral could reach US$1 billion, which would make it one of the largest frauds in the commodities trading sector since the Enron scandal.”

“This is just the latest in a series of scandals centred around document fraud involving commodities traders in Singapore,” said Control Risks’ report.

In 2020, a crash in global oil prices exposed two significant trade finance frauds, leading to the spectacular collapse of oil trading companies Hin Leong Trading and ZenRock Commodities, Control Risks’ report cited. Hin Leong’s founder, O.K. Lim, confessed to having concealed over US$800 million in futures losses and directing the forgery of trade documents to secure US$3.85 billion in credit from over 20 banks, while secretly selling off the oil pledged as collateral. Around the same time, ZenRock collapsed under more than US$600 million in debt, after lenders discovered the firm had used fabricated documents and round-tripping transactions to repeatedly pledge the same cargo to different banks.

In 2023, Singapore-headquartered Trafigura uncovered a US$577 million deception, Control Risks’ report cited. The commodities giant discovered that thousands of shipping containers, which had been documented as holding high-grade nickel, were filled with low-value carbon steel, scrap metal and rubble.

“These incidents showed that even the world’s most sophisticated trading desks remain vulnerable to physical substitution fraud when they rely on paper documentation for cargo that is non-existent, substituted or double-pledged,” Control Risks’ report said.

Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.

When Nguyễn Thành Nam released In Conversation with Thanh: A New Account of the Light in April, Vietnam’s state media fell in line. Twenty official outlets, including major Communist Party mouthpieces, coordinated their praise. Nam, a former CEO of telecoms giant FPT (now half-owned by the Ministry of Public Security), is now a lecturer on Hồ Chí Minh ideology at Hanoi’s VinUniversity, a non-profit institution established in 2018 by Vingroup. The book appeared to be an approved project, a dialogue between Thanh, a Gen Z college student indifferent to history, and her teacher Thành, who embodies Nam’s own life story, through which the journey of Hồ Chí Minh, founder of the Communist Party of Vietnam, gradually unfolds.

But less than two months later, the orchestrated celebration turned into complete erasure. After a handful of Facebook users accused the book of distorting history and disparaging “the Father of the Nation”, state outlets that had championed it quietly removed their praise in unison. By July, Nam, the chief promoter of his book, Trần Việt Anh, and three publishing officials faced charges under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code, accused of “Making, storing, distributing or propagandizing information, documents, or objects aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam State.” If convicted, each could face up to 20 years in prison. Nam reportedly admitted that much of the content in the book was false, expressed regret, and apologized to readers.

Human Rights Watch called on Vietnam to drop all charges and release those arrested over the publication and promotion of the book. It is perhaps rare for the organization, which had reported 160 political prisoners still locked up in the country, to call for justice for a group of regime-friendly propagandists.

“For the Communist Party leadership, even a book about their founding father written for young people can be deemed a threat to the party’s monopoly on power,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The case sends a chilling message to Vietnam’s intellectual class: no author, no matter how wealthy, politically connected or institutionally protected, is safe if they stray from approved orthodoxy, not even in service of the regime’s own heroes. Yet to dismiss Nam’s book as pure propaganda oversimplifies its actual contributions and potential “threats.”

The wrong author

The aftermath was swift and severe. Nguyễn Quang Thiều, chairman of the Writers’ Association and head of the state-owned Vietnamese Writers Publishing House, a former police official, was expelled from the Communist Party. The Publishing House was fined VND 100 million ($3,900) and suspended from operations for two months. In addition, the Publishing House must recall and destroy all copies of the book. It also must return the “illegal” profits obtained from the violations, amounting to VND 424 million.

The Ministry of Public Security’s formal allegations were damning: the book “distorts the history of revolution, the political lines and policies of the Party and State; insults President Hồ Chí Minh, general Võ Nguyên Giáp and many other Party and State leaders.” But these charges obscure the deeper transgression.

Nam was previously awarded a Certificate of Merit by former Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc for exemplary achievements in “studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s thought, morality, and style during the period 2016-2019,” and was honored by the Central Propaganda Department in 2019. He had reportedly invested VND 1 billion in publishing this 300-page book. Yet the first real transgression was Nam as the author. Within Vietnam’s tightly controlled publishing system, authorized Ho Chi Minh biographies are often designated to be written by very red writers. Nam, a mathematician by training and an entrepreneur by profession, became the first author of his kind to write about the revered leader. Even Nam’s current affiliation with Vingroup, one of Vietnam’s largest conglomerates, offered no shield.

Nam’s inspiration came from Ho Chi Minh: A Life, a 2000 biography penned by former US State Department Foreign Service officer William Duiker. Duiker’s work is widely regarded as the first comprehensive, major Western biography of Hồ to draw on extensive archival research conducted in Vietnam. Nam had enjoyed the book so much that he even translated it into Vietnamese. The treatise was cited verbatim numerous times in Nam’s book. The teacher character even urged his student to find anecdotes of Hồ’s love life in the book, an absolute taboo given the official narrative that Hồ remained single and selflessly sacrificed everything for the country all his life.

Nam broke with the convention by referring to Hồ by his various names across different periods: Nguyễn Sinh Cung, Nguyễn Tất Thành, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, etc., rather than exclusively as “Uncle Hồ,” the official honorific. This seemingly small choice reflected a larger methodological commitment to treat Ho as a historical figure subject to normal scrutiny rather than as a quasi-religious icon. The book’s Gen Z-friendly tone and language have been equated with the trivialization of Hồ’s image. Nam presented Hồ as admirable but imperfect, a down-to-earth but dignified figure. It is a portrait that allows readers to recognize Ho’s genuine achievements without placing him on an untouchable pedestal.

Pro-democracy activist Nguyễn Quang A interpreted the book as an example of “soft propaganda” and the repercussions on Nam as a top-down attempt to “monopolize the worship” of political leaders. The message sent to Vietnam’s intellectual class was unmistakable: even those who adore the heroes the Party loves are not free to love them thoughtfully. Even propaganda can be considered seditious if it deviates from the approved narrative.

Dangerous nuance

What truly alarmed the authorities was not only Nam’s alleged disrespect toward Hồ, but rather the intellectual pluralism the book embraced and even encouraged among young people. The book examines Vietnam’s past with nuance and reference to different sectors rather than conformity to traditional textbooks. Such balance is, by Vietnamese state standards, heretical.

The book’s timeframe goes from the French invasion in 1858 to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to Vietnam in December 2024. The leaders of the Nguyễn dynasty (1802 – 1945) emerge not as pure villains but as complex historical actors. The book acknowledges their role in enabling the French invasion while crediting their dedication to national sovereignty, a characterization that diverges sharply from the villainy and cowardice portrayed in Party-centric histories.

More tellingly, the book addresses American support for the Viet Minh during the anti-Japanese resistance of World War II. Historical records and declassified documents confirm that the US military did assist Hồ’s forces against Japanese occupation, though no formal alliance was ever established. Hồ himself, in the war’s early stages, believed that only the United States had the capacity to help Vietnam achieve independence. The Communist Party of Vietnam has never publicly acknowledged this fact.

The book also treats South Vietnamese leaders with unprecedented fairness. Rather than depicting them as mere foreign puppets, Nam presents Bảo Đại and Ngô Đình Diệm as leaders possessing their own vision and agency. Moreover, he notes that the South’s land reforms and market-oriented economic policies achieved “considerable high growth rates in 1955–1963” – a comparison that implicitly questions the superiority of the Communist path. Such statements would never appear in state-approved textbooks.

Darker chapters also surface throughout Nam’s narrative. He discusses land reform injustices, the brutal Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm literary and intellectual movement of the 1950s, South Korean participation in the Vietnam War and the atrocities committed, the reeducation camps that imprisoned former Southern officials without trial, the exodus of boat people fleeing Communist rule, and the rupture with China following reunification, etc. All are subjects the regime prefers left unexamined, or examined only through the lens of approved Party interpretations.

The book’s true offense was not disrespect toward Ho Chi Minh. Nam is a genuine admirer, someone who had organized ceremonies in Hồ’s honor and reportedly spent a billion dong publishing this book and thus promoting his legacy. His crime was allowing Hồ the complexity and humanity that the regime demands be denied him. The book presents Hồ as a polymath and patriot who “encouraged critical inquiry,” a characterization that, ironically, suggests young readers should engage with history the way Hồ himself supposedly did.

The broader campaign

This case comes at a time of systematic tightening of state control over historical narrative. The National Assembly passed an amended publishing law in late August – approved for implementation in 2027 – that explicitly aims to “rein in the distortion of historical facts.” Also this year, politicians who championed liberal arts education were denounced as “posing a threat to the Party’s ideological foundation, losing its grip on the younger generation.”

In educational settings, where students are expected to respect teachers unquestioningly, Nam’s dialogue format was already revolutionary. Students and teachers engage as “equal inquirers,” examining Vietnamese history together rather than having it transmitted downward from the Communist Party as received truth. But more provocatively, the conversations introduce complexities that Party-controlled textbooks have so far systematically excluded.

Nam also recounted his giant enterprise’s little-known political involvement. In 2019, he helped fulfill Võ Nguyên Giáp’s wish to organize a formal ceremony to honor soldiers who fell in the border war with China, a corporate gesture that would not be encouraged by the Communist party.

“Having contributed to organizing an event that was somewhat considered sensitive at the time, it remains one of the most moving memories from the early days of our work at FPT”, wrote Nam.

Vietnam’s Communist Party does not actually seek honest discourse about its founding father or its history. It seeks monopoly control over the narrative and absolute uniformity, not understanding. Deviation, no matter how respectfully framed or authentically motivated, is treated as ideological subversion.

Now fear grips Vietnam’s publishing industry and the reading public. Pirated copies of Nam’s book circulate online and in secondhand bookstores, treated as contraband the way banned books have been treated throughout history. Even Nam’s considerable institutional protection—his ties to Vingroup, one of Vietnam’s largest conglomerates and a company politically untouchable in most respects—offered no shield against state punishment. Nam’s own fate remains uncertain; imprisonment remains a real possibility.

From strategic partnership between to the effects of natural disasters and climate phenomena, the past week brought developments with implications across Asia.

Here are some of the stories we published in recent days, covering political, economic and security issues worth keeping an eye on.

Some of these stories are widely available for free, while most are exclusively available to our paying subscribers. Your subscription help us continue our reporting and independent journalism. Thank you for your support.

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Southeast Asia could face a double energy shock over the coming months as a strengthening El Niño threatens hydropower generation just as the region struggles with elevated and volatile imported energy costs due to energy supply disruptions from the on-again and off-again closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The …

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The recently concluded Veer Guardian 2026 air exercise between India and Japan, which ended on Sept. 22, marks a capstone moment in the defense ties between the two countries.

This upgraded bilateral exercise is a significant step forward from earlier times, when Japan and India cooperated primarily at the coast guard level.

The curren…

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There was much friendliness and mutual respect between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during Xi’s recent visit to Washington. But beneath the bonhomie lie both ongoing rivalry and deals t…

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Indonesia is once again scrambling to respond to a string of disasters that have swept across the country, from floods and landslides in Sumatra and earthquakes in East Nusa Tenggara to forest and land fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

In a c…

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Vietnam’s new Strategic Partnership with Canada is ambitious. The Joint Statement issued on September 24 covers everything from trade, digital technologies and energy to defence, security, justice and people-to-people ties.

The breadth i…

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Indian modern art sales took a gigantic leap this week when an auction at the Mumbai- based Pundole gallery moved the star focus from the traditional top names like M.F.Husain and S.H.Raza to indigenous art with an exceptional large work by Jangarh Singh Shyam being sold for a record hammer price of Rs18 crore. That is approximately $2.15m, including Pundole’s (generous) 15% buyer’s premium, just over seven times a $303,000 record set for the artist just five days earlier at Saffronart in Mumbai, which beat a $91,000 sale at Pundole in 2023 and far exceeded prices around $30,000 or far less in earlier years.

Shyam is probably India’s most famous indigenous artist. He belonged to the central Indian Gond tribe and lived in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

He was a flute player and painted traditional motifs and scenes using natural pigments on the walls of Patangarh, his hill-top village, until he was discovered in the early 1980s by Jagdish Swaminathan, an established artist whose works have also figured in the recent auctions.

While his records are an unexpected breakthrough for indigenous art, the $2.15m is of course not large compared with South Asian auction records that are currently heading towards $20m for prominent Indian artists including the Mumbai-based Progressives group. M.F.Husain topped the Pundole auction with a striking 48in x 24in oil on board (below) titled Red Girl that sold for a hammer price of Rs65 crore ($6.7m), thirteen times the top estimate of Rs5 crore.

Shyam belonged to the Pardhan Gond community that had strong musical traditions. Bards told stories that preserved the myths and genealogy of Gond rulers and their people.

As Shyam’s works this week show, the Gond artists transfer these stories onto canvas and paper, portraying scenes, real and imagined, from their lives in India’s jungles and forests, weaving tales that combine their tribal gods and animals such as tigers, leopards and deer with birds, snakes, trees and people.

Villagers in Patangarh and elsewhere continue to produce intriguing works that are available at modest prices in India, while more sophisticated works are increasingly listed in art auctions for thousands of dollars. International museums including the Guggenheim in New York and the Chicago Cultural Institute have examples of Shyam’s work, and Mumbai’s annual art fair in November will feature tribal and folk art.

Shyam’s story began when Swaminathan introduced him to acrylic paint and then, seeing his talent, took him to Bhopal, the state’s capital, where he was assembling local artists at a cultural centre called Bharat Bhavan. Shyam’s art developed sufficiently for him to be invited to Japan, where he was on an artist’s residency when he tragically died in 2011 by suicide, age 39.

“Jangarh has left his footprints and legacy in the history of Indian contemporary art,” says Alka Pande, a leading curator, who has written a book about him. “He brought alive the magic of his ancestral village of Patangarh and initiated a style of painting which has come to be known as the Jangarh Kalam. The prices of the Jangarh Kalam at the recent auction is a tribute to his creative genius”.

Both the Pundole and Saffronart record breakers are unusually large. Saffronart’s work, showing birds removing insects from the backs of cows, is 66in x 43in.

The untitled Pundole work, depicting a spirit figure with snakes and birds in a tree, is significantly larger at 91in x 69in and has spectacular colours. Both works are acrylics on canvas, painted in 1999, and they both originated in Japan, where many of Shyam’s works are located from his time there.

“The complex composition reveals the artist’s ability to paint to any scale. His patterning and technique is varied across the composition and shows his experimental nature and his skill and versatility as an artist,” says Rob Dean, a director of Pundole auctions.

The Pundole painting has never appeared before at an auction. It was estimated at Rs4 to 6 crore, and bidding on Sept 24 seemed to hesitate around Rs7 to 9 core, but then went ahead with three bidders narrowing to two, rising by a crore with each bid till one bidder gave way and it was sold for a hammer price of 18 crore. It was won by the collector with paddle 1730 who also bought a Swaminathan marble sculpture of a white owl and a bronze water buffalo by Somnath Hoare.

There was less bidding for the Saffronart record Shyam that came at the end of its auction and went for Rs2.88 crore ($303,158) including the premium against a Rs2 to 3 crore estimate.

The Pundole auction also had three other paintings by Shyam which were sold well above estimates, and a striking 32in x 44in oil on canvas from Swaminathan’s Bird, Tree and Mountain Series that sold for Rs5 crore (including premium) against a top estimate of Rs3 crore ($315,790). The catalogue said his style of presented “natural objects in intangible landscapes glowing with luminous colours”.

Records were set for many artists during the current season’s South Asia auctions with Christie’s sales totalling $22.57m on September 16 in New York, and Saffronart reaching $23.01m in New Delhi along with $3.3m in a two-day online sale. Pundole led the pack with $27.87m.

These results come at a time when collectors in the diaspora, as well as in India, have substantial funds and are looking for new types of art. “Buyers are moving on at a time when there are fewer top artists’ works available for auctions, and when art is becoming recognised as something that maintains its value through generations,” says Dinesh Vazirani, Saffronart’s co-founder and ceo.

The stars of Christie’s New York auction were the Progressives’ F.N. Souza, along with Ganesh Pyne who dominated Christie’s £18,91m ($25.37m) London auction last November with works from a Calcutta tea company’s collection.

Souza’’s Woman with Lamp (1949) was the top lot fetching $2.3m (including premium), almost four times its high estimate, and his Building in Trafalgar Square (1955) which made $1.1m. Ganesh Pyne’s The Slave at $1.2m went for more than four times its low estimate. There were also two Jagdish Swaminathan’s with hammer prices of $ 120,000 and $280.000. Christie’s set eight world records during the sale.

Souza also led at Saffronart with a remarkable record breaking Rs15.6 crores ($1.6m) for a work on paper – a brightly coloured 21in x 13in gouache titled Hanuman the Monkey God, (1965)

These top sales are sure to continue. Sotheby’s has its usual autumn auction in London next week including two small mid-1990s Shyam line drawings (below) offered as one lot with a £4,000-£6,000 estimate – and, rather irrelevantly given this week’s records, a “no reserve” tag.

Indian Gonds, especially Shyam, are clearly artists to watch.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s South Asia correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant. He is the author of IMPLOSION: India’s Tryst with Reality

From China’s political and development ties with Southeast Asia to territorial disputes and agreements, the past week brought developments with implications across Asia.

Here are some of the stories we published in recent days, covering political, economic and security issues worth keeping an eye on.

Some of these stories are widely available for free, while most are exclusively available to our paying subscribers. Your subscription help us continue our reporting and independent journalism. Thank you for your support.

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Pakistan and China formally launched their Boundary Joint Commission in Islamabad on September 16-17, activating a mechanism provided for under their 2013 Agreement on the Boundary Management System but left dormant for more than a decade. The commission will deal with seemingly mu…

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Southeast Asia has become one of the most consequential arenas to witness the shifting balance between Chinese and American influence play out. Home to approximately 700 million people an…

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For nearly three decades, the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the hilly southeastern region of Bangladesh, have carried a contradiction at the heart of Bangladesh’s peace process: an agreement formally ended a long a…

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The background to Malaysia’s East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project, due to begin operations in January, is widely known among Asia watchers. The proposal had been worked on for decades as an important development driver designed to connect the mainly agricultural areas on Malaysia’s east coast with the more urbanised west coast region, and also Port Klang at the exit of the Malacca Strait facing the Indian Ocean and potential export markets beyond.

In mid-2016, the project was due to go out to tender after the cost was estimated by the East Coast Economic Region Development Council to be in the region of RM30 billion (just over $10 billion dollars at current rates). However, then Prime Minister Najib Razak had other priorities at that time, as it marked the height of the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal, by then fully in the public eye following a year of exposures and reporting kicked off by my online site, The Sarawak Report. Asia Sentinel was one of the key regional media that kept running with a story that was eventually picked up globally.

Extraordinary theft

Najib, now sentenced to 15 years in prison, had only himself to blame for the situation, given he had authorised the wholescale looting of the fund, which he had set up under his sole control in his simultaneous role as Minister of Finance. One Malaysia Development Berhad, to give its full name, was allegedly designed to borrow money to drive development, however its real purpose was to fund political patronage. Moreover, Najib’s co-conspirators, including his informal fixer, the young Chinese Malaysian, Jho Low, siphoned off hundreds of millions for themselves and were indulging in headline-catching ostentation. By this point, the fund’s debts stood at RM11 billion, of which over RM5 billion had been outright stolen by Najib and his collaborators.

On July 20, 2016, a year of denials from the Malaysian government that 1MDB’s mounting debt was due to poor governance, let alone grand larceny, came to a humiliating juncture. On that date, the US Department of Justice took the groundbreaking step of initiating its first major asset seizure by its new Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Unit, freezing over $1.7 billion of property deemed to represent the laundering of stolen money from 1MDB in the United States. This included the rights to the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, a bombardier jet, two Beverley Hills Mansions and New York apartments belonging to Najib’s stepson and to Jho Low, the key proxy and fixer behind the fund.

Malaysia was dumbfounded. Najib, clearly identified as “Malaysian Official One” in the DOJ filing, continued to deny all, however he was on a major hook over the debts that needed repaying. The original scenario, mapped out by his advisors from Goldman Sachs, had been to float the fund and encourage the public and pension funds subject to influence by his own Ministry of Finance along with government-linked companies to inject much-needed cash to plug the holes in 1MDB’s accounts. The floatation could no longer survive such publicity. Tim Leissner, the Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia boss, is now also imprisoned in the United States for the role he played in raising $6.5 billion dollars in Goldman Sachs bonds for 1MDB, of which around half went into the pockets of Najib, Jho Low, himself and a dozen other fund managers and officials from the Gulf.

In a corner, Najib had sent Jho Low to China to explore a bailout from Beijing. This was to prove rapidly successful. However, the relief came with major strings attached, including the delivery of the East Coast Rail Link into the orbit of China’s Belt & Road initiative, bypassing the original tender, at a 100 percent mark-up.

China and Najib

The full story behind China’s extraordinary collaboration with Najib and Jho Low in their attempted cover-up of the 1MDB theft – by stealing further billions of dollars from the Malaysian people and then laundering it back into the fund – has only been possible to fully piece together over time. It forms the substance of my new book The China Contract, which has ironically coincided with a closed-door settlement of key outstanding issues between the two countries relating to that mutual participation in a shameful episode. In my book, I reveal that summit negotiations between the two countries last year resulted in China waiving an outstanding debt owed by Malaysia of some $3 billion in return for a pledge to not include Chinese state companies and banks in the ongoing quest for reparations from firms caught up in facilitating the world’s largest recorded kleptocracy.

I received my first inkling of what was going on almost immediately. Just one week after the DOJ press conference, I was leaked a copy of an extraordinary document that mapped out the deal. The document outlined in precise detail the terms agreed by Jho Low following meetings with the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) in Beijing days before.

The ECRL would be removed from public tender and converted into a Chinese Belt & Road project funded through loans from China and constructed by Chinese companies. In return, China would facilitate a project inflation theft by Najib whereby the cost would be doubled to RM60 billion, half of which would then be laundered back to 1MDB to pay its debts. The document spelled out 1MDB’s debt repayment schedule over the next five years and specified the method by which Chinese banks and Chinese companies would channel the money out of the project.

My publication of this scoop rightly resulted in more scandal for Najib and more denials. Nonetheless, in November of that year, the prime minister flew to Beijing to sign off on the project along the very same terms. Moreover, he tied Malaysia into a wider Belt & Road Treaty that involved important realignments in defense and further major infrastructure, including two oil pipeline projects that conveniently allowed for 88 percent of the projected $2 billion cost to be delivered upfront to the Chinese contractor with no strings attached. The money would be immediately raised as a loan from China’s Exim Bank (at a rate of interest that amounted to a total debt of $3 billion, which I suggest represents the sum that was recently settled). Yet the construction of these pipelines was barely started, and the project was later scrapped after Najib was ejected from office by an angry electorate in 2018. The mystery as to where that money went would only later emerge from a separate source entirely – it was an astonishing exercise in money laundering and forms a core part of the book.

The cost of the ECRL itself was immediately re-negotiated by the incoming government headed by ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohammed. However, Malaysia could not disentangle itself altogether from the terms of the contract and will continue to owe the debt for a further 20 years following the start of the payback period, which has been delayed to the start of operations at the beginning of next year. Significantly, China is contracted to remain as the co-operator of the railway, marking the enormous strategic significance of the new overland transport link that will allow China to bypass the major bottleneck formed by the Malacca Strait from the South China Sea.

Malaysian political corruption had thus provided a major opportunity for China to meet its declared strategic objectives. Had Najib remained in power, he (and his country) would have continued to have been compromised to China’s advantage by this guilty deal.

Audacious guilt

Ironically, as detailed in The China Contract, the grubby path by which so many billions were laundered through this project lay through a second entirely bogus Belt & Road project constructed by Jho Low with the help of his collaborators at SASAC, this time in the Gulf. This supposedly $8 billion initiative in Kuwait, set up during the same period in 2016, acted as a façade by which money was funneled from Chinese state construction companies through the Gulf state by companies owned by the son of the then prime minister to be the local “facilitator.” My eventual source would be the sheikh’s business partner who became horrified by the scale and criminality of the operation and did time in jail for speaking out. Eventually, the Kuwaiti authorities acted on the information, once the government had changed; the sheikh and his co-conspirators have also been convicted and jailed.

Jho Low remains at large, and perhaps the most extraordinary twist at the end of this story of skullduggery at the top of governments involves the United States itself. 1MDB money was funding influence-mongering from the start and once China got involved, Jho Low was soon putting millions into the pocket of a key ally connected to President Donald Trump (who was naturally pardoned by the president after pleading guilty).

Only this July was it revealed that Jho Low’s brazen attempt to secure a presidential pardon from Trump had reached a final stage. His was among 250 names on a list of proposed pardons to mark the 250^th anniversary celebrations of American independence that was reported to be sitting on the president’s desk. The story got out and the pardon was never signed, meanwhile I learned that a similar plan had been simultaneously discussed (apparently in person) between Jho Low and Chinese negotiators during settlement talks in KL.

How the fraudster managed to conserve sufficient sums from his participation in 1MDB’s thefts and how he manages to remain seemingly protected while hiding out in China is another significant issue that I have explored. I have concluded it makes perfect sense in the context of the financial secrecy of the west and China’s own interests. To me, the 1MDB cover-up represents the ultimate case study in how Belt & Road corruption has worked to extend Chinese interests. The level of theft and illegal activity deliberately orchestrated by Chinese officials and economic entities to advance strategic objectives is both staggering and informative.

Clare Rewcastle Brown is a British environmental and anti-corruption journalist and activist who uncovered the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal. She is the author of “The China Contract: The Inside Story of the World’s Biggest Financial Scandal… and How It Was Covered Up,” due out in November 2026.

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The People’s Republic of China has consistently utilized military pressure and gray-zone tactics against regional neighbors and global powers since its founding in 1949. Foreign countries that threaten Chinese sovereignty could be framed as adversaries, and the PRC’s offensive action could be deemed as necessary and defensive countermeasures, argues a new book on China written by India’s former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale.

In his recently published book, China’s Wars: The Politics and Diplomacy Behind its Military Coercion (Simon & Schuster India), Gokhale, who has roughly four decades in the Indian Foreign Service, examines the strategic calculations behind Beijing’s decision to wage war or use force, based on case studies from the 1950s to modern confrontations. Gokhale retired as India’s Foreign Secretary in 2020, having also served as India’s Ambassador to China from 2016 to 2017.

The author, whose previous works on Chinese statecraft include The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India, examines how China uses domestic politics, statecraft, ideological doctrine and information operations to build a diplomatic cover, while also looking at when and why China may turn to military coercion in future geopolitical crises.

In this exclusive interview with Asia Sentinel, Gokhale talks about China’s regional ambitions; the tactics deployed against its neighbors, particularly India; how China employs a “talk and fight” approach, creating new military facts on the ground while dragging out negotiations on the altered status quo, leveraging AI and big data to its strategic advantage; and why he believes India should stay vigilant while strengthening its informational and cyber capabilities to breach China’s firewalls.

Edited excerpts:

Q. Why do you think China’s enhanced military and strategic capacities are a cause of concern for its peripheral and proximate neighbors, even though it has not engaged in a major war since the late 1970s?

A. The People’s Republic of China views itself as the primary power in the Indo-Pacific and at the apex in terms of the power hierarchy in this region. It expects other states, big or small, both partners and rivals, to accept the PRC’S dominant position, and to accommodate its concerns and interests without question. Non-acquiescence to Chinese demands for reasons that might be intrinsic to the other regional states is not viewed from the perspective of the other state. Consequently, the PRC interprets such actions or activities as a challenge or a threat. Its assertive and, some say even aggressive behavior over the past two decades is, therefore, a cause for concern, especially when its comprehensive national power is rapidly outpacing that of other states in its proximity.

In what ways do you think China’s past conflicts with India can provide insights into its coercive methods, and how might those lessons shape the way we understand future India-China confrontations?

Since the beginning, the preferred modus operandi of the People’s Republic of China to secure its territorial objectives vis-à-vis India has been to create new facts on the ground and to thereafter attempt to legalize the new status quo through negotiation. They play a long and deceptive game through the careful deployment of historical, legal and psychological methods, such that the changes are subliminal and gradual and the other state hopes to restore the status quo through negotiation without risking an escalation. A number of methods are used by the PRC to delay the resolution of the problem they have created, such as through simultaneous action both on the ground and at the negotiating table, until the ground situation has changed in their favor. If, by then, the other state is unwilling to submit, the PRC does not hesitate to use force to pursue its objective.

You write in the book that the PRC bets on the asymmetric advantage it has already created on the ground through force, in order to deter an adversary from using military means to regain lost territory. Does this logic also apply to China’s recent conflict along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with Indian troops in Ladakh?

Yes. These methods, and others elaborated in my book, are used in situations of both conflict and military coercion below the threshold of conflict such as the incidents along the LAC since 2013.

You note that “how and when China will deploy force in pursuit of its claims in the future” is a legitimate question in the minds of Indian strategists and thinkers. How worried, in your assessment, are India’s strategic thinkers and defense community about the possibility of China using military force in future conflicts against India?

India aspires to have stable and predictable relations with the People’s Republic of China. Every government in India has made specific efforts to resolve the boundary question to little avail. China professes a desire to resolve the boundary dispute peaceably, but retains leverages that speak to its possible longer-term objective of seizing territory. This includes recent provocations such as the renaming of towns and places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the activation of the Sino-Pak Joint Boundary Commission to exercise jurisdiction over integral parts of the territory of the Indian Republic. India’s strategic community remains hopeful that China will abide by its commitment to finding a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement through negotiations, but remains vigilant against potentially hostile acts, and is preparing itself accordingly.

You write that for the PRC, “fighting and talking” go hand in hand, and that political warfare and battlefield combat are deeply intertwined in its strategic culture. What can India learn from a neighbor so adept at combining military pressure with political and informational tools to achieve its objectives?

The PRC’s use of discourse power (narrative-shaping) is one of its strengths. As part of its “three warfare” strategy, China is deploying the use of big data, artificial intelligence and other new digital technologies to enhance its penetration into the social fabric of its rivals in order to influence or transform the cognitive capabilities of entire social groups. The methods include perception-molding, altering historical memory or questioning the framing of an issue in ways that cause the population to question its own leadership. India will need to develop its own set of informational tools to both counter PRC discourse power, and to penetrate the internet and cyber firewalls in order to take the information war to the domestic population in China.

What has your lifelong interest in, and study of, China taught you, especially about the complexities of China’s relations with India?

It has made me aware of the deep gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the People’s Republic of China, and of the pressing need to encourage young scholars to do research in new fields that will provide Indians at large with a balanced view of China. I see my books as a small contribution to this national effort.

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