☕️ 1MDB: USD248 mil siphoned to fund Najib's stepson's movie production, real estate, gambling expenses

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

Data breaches have dramatically increased, with 646 cases reported in 2023, marking a staggering 1,192% rise from 50 cases in 2022. As of September 2023, the Digital Ministry recorded 427 data breaches, according to Minister Gobind Singh Deo. To combat the sale of government data on the Dark Web, the Ministry has implemented cyber threat detection and monitoring measures, including an active monitoring centre led by CyberSecurity Malaysia's Pre-Emptive Services and Technology Division, which oversees suspicious Dark Web activities. Wonder if this is because of the public’s awareness of data breaches or just an increase in actual cases.

Since 2020, police have successfully resolved 96% of missing children cases, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail informed Dewan Rakyat. Out of 3,847 cases reported from 2020 until September, 74% involved girls. On average, 770 children go missing annually, equating to two cases per day. The majority of missing children were aged 13 to 15, making up 54% of the cases, while 37% involved those aged 16 to 18.

Unemployment in the US film and TV industry reached 12.5% in August, though many believe the true figure is higher due to ineligibility or exhausted benefits. After a decade of booming business, the industry hit a major slowdown beginning in May 2023 with the onset of the writers' strike. US productions were down by 40% in the second quarter of 2024 compared to 2022, with global productions also falling by 20%, resulting in fewer new films and TV shows being produced. Are YouTubers to be blamed?

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

A new citizenship bill passed the Parliament floor
After months of deferment and a few rounds of Parliamentary Special Select Committees, the amendments to the citizenship law finally voted yes by the majority of Lower House’s members, 206 yays, one nay, and 14 absent, to be exact. With the passing of this new law, now children, born abroad to Malaysian mothers married to foreign spouses will be granted automatic citizenship. In 2022, then-Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin told the Parliament that his ministry received 4,870 citizenship applications by children born overseas to Malaysian mothers since 2013. Only 117 (2.4%) of those applications have been approved back then.

During the voting of the new citizenship law, only Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman opposed the bill due to some valid reasons: children of permanent residents may not get automatic citizenship, the shortened window to register the citizenship of stateless Malaysians from 21 to 18 years old and the possible nullification of citizenship for foreign wives that leave a bad marriage.

Your Daily Corruption News

• MACC uncovered RM600,000 in a raid on a rented house of the suspect in the sand mining concession case involving the Selangor Menteri Besar Incorporated (MBI). With nine houses raided so far involving this case, the total sum seized so far amounted to RM6 mil.

  Due to the case mentioned above, the domino effect has started and MACC is now investigating 20 development projects initiated by the Selangor Government, that has even a hint of corruption stink to it. Hopefully, more rotten apples fall down the tree as this group of people are the ones collectively holding back the development of this country.

• In the civil suit by 1MDB and its associated companies against Riza Abdul Aziz, lawyers of 1MDB argued that USD248 mil of the company’s monies were siphoned to finance the movie production of the former PM Najib Razak’s stepson. Apart from using the money for making movies, it was alleged that the money was also being spent away to purchase real estate, movie memorabilia and to pay for gambling expenses. Previously in 2020, in a separate criminal case, Riza was granted discharge not amounting to an acquittal (DNAA) for money laundering involving USD248 mil linked to 1MDB funds. Perhaps, when he somehow dos get away with everything, maybe he could join his step-sister in MATRADE or his step-brother at the Olympic Council of Malaysia.

Another day, another doctor lost
Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told the Parliament that his ministry is investigating another death of a medical officer in Seberang Jaya Hospital, Penang, reportedly linked to overworking and alleged bullying. The deceased doctor, Dr Ch’ng Hooi Ping was found dead in her car and the official cause of death is the presence of fluid in the lungs. Ch’ng’s family claimed that she was overworked up to the point she needed to serve 30-hour on-call duties.

Concerning the death of a pathology specialist Dr Tay Tien Yaa at the Lahad Datu Hospital in August, Dzulkefly assured that the findings of the independent special task force on the incident will be revealed to the public. The task force that was created on October 10 has been given a three-month mandate to get to the bottom of Dr Tay’s death and the bullying allegation surrounding Dr Tay’s apparent suicide.

Shorts

• Although Malaysia says kumbaya when Chinese vessels visited Penang recently, however, we are not naive. Apart from the intention to build an air force base near the Bintulu airport, Putrajaya will also build a naval base in Bintulu to solidify its response against any aggressions in the South China Sea, including from China. The naval base will be ready by 2030 and will complement the country’s existing naval bases in East Malaysia - Labuan, Teluk Sepanggar and Sandakan.

• According to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Mosti), Malaysia needs RM85.7 bil in research and development (R&D) investment to achieve the goals set in the National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (NSTIP) 2021-2030, which are gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) to 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 and 3.5% by 2030. At the moment, our GERD-to-GDP ratio is at 1.0%. Israel is the country that has the highest GERD-to-GDP ratio at 5.56% while Malaysia’s ratio is in the same bandwidth as Egypt, Serbia and Slovakia.

• Forget about rundown shop lots and homestays, now eateries and food courts around Jalan Pudu and Jalan Loke Yew are the new hotspots for prostitution activities, as per the Federal Territories Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa. Quite smart actually, it can be advertised as R&R - ‘relax’ and replenish (eat).  Zaliha also added that KL Strike Force, an superhero team enforcement body under her ministry, has raided 209 premises linked to prostitution activities since May.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

How Israel deceived its way into attacking Hezbollah
An investigation by Reuters has recently revealed that Mossad, Israel’s equivalent to CIA or MI6, had managed to “fool” Hezbollah with a meticulously planned sale of thousands of weaponised pagers that exploded in Beirut last month, killing 39 people and wounding more than 3,400 including civilians who are women and children.

The agents who built the pagers designed batteries that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive invisible to Hezbollah’s X-ray inspections, which was connected to a strip of highly flammable material that acted as a detonator.

Part of Mossad’s plan to make it a more convincing product was to create fake online stores, pages and posts that deceived Hezbollah’s due diligence. They sold it under an existing, renowned Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo, who apparently was also clueless about the products but managed to put it “on sale” on their site after manipulations by an internal staff.

It was said that Hezbollah did notice that the battery was draining faster than expected, but it did not trigger any further concerns. All this shed light on the execution of a years-long operation that had struck unprecedented blows against Israel’s Iran-backed Lebanese foe and pushed the Middle East closer to a regional war. The Lebanese authorities have condemned the attacks as a serious violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Tension between nations:

1. India hits out Trudeau as its rift with Canada deepens

   The relationship between India and Canada continues to plunge to a new low — the India Ministry of External Affairs yesterday said that Canada had presented “no evidence whatsoever” to support its “serious allegations” that Indian government agents had targeted Canada-based Sikh separatists, including naturalised Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar who was murdered in Vancouver in June 2023. Accusing PM Trudeau as “cavalier” or indifferent, they also said that his behaviour had caused damage to their ties. Trudeau had accused India of making a “horrific mistake”, alleging Nijjar’s murder as part of an extensive Indian operation to systematically target Sikh dissidents inside Canada campaigning for an independent Khalistani state. India continues to reject these claims, claiming that it is part of a strategy of smearing India for “political gains”.

2. North Korea declares South Korea “hostile”

   North Korea has declared its neighbour a “hostile state” and made a show of blowing up sections of its road and railway links with South Korea — a 60-metre-long stretch of road and rail along the east and west sections of the inter-Korean border. North Korea’s Ministry also said that it would take further measures to “permanently fortify” the border. Its leader Kim Jong Un said that reunification with South Korea was no longer possible and the constitution should be changed to define its neighbour as a separate “hostile” country. Last week, North Korea threatened South Korea after accusing it of operating propaganda leaflet-carrying drones over Pyongyang. South Korea, on the other hand, seems to still remain “calm” and urges its neighbour to “exercise restraint and not act recklessly”. The Koreas are technically still at war after the 1950s Korean War ended without a peace treaty.

TSMC is optimistic on its outlook as its 3Q profit surges 54%, thanks to AI boom
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, said that it expects strong growth in its business to be sustained, as it reported a forecast-beating 54% jump in quarterly profit due to soaring demand for chips used in AI.

The company reported earlier on Thursday a net profit of TWD325.3 bil (RM43.39 bil) for the quarter that ended Sept 30, its highest for any quarter, compared with the TWD300.2 bil predicted by an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 22 analysts. TSMC, Asia's most valuable publicly listed company, said that their third-quarter (3Q) revenue rose 36% year-on-year to USD23.5 bil, better than the previous forecast of USD22.4 bil to USD23.2 bil. The company last week announced third-quarter revenue in Taiwan dollars, coming in at TWD759.69 bil. TSMC also said that it expects capital expenditure for this year at slightly higher than USD30 bil (RM128.81 bil), compared with a previous forecast of USD30 bil-USD32 bil, as it races to expand production.

TSMC’s customers include tech giants Apple and Nvidia, who also benefited from a surge towards AI across a spectrum of industries.
View: TSMC 3Q2024 earnings report.

Looks like the AI frenzy still has legs to run. NVIDIA hit another all-time high last night, valuing it around USD3.42 tril, behind Apple’s market cap of USD3.53 tril. Here’s a story of a Malaysian investor who 10x his money investing in NVIDIA.

Shorts

1. Guyana is giving USD2,000 to every household as oil supercharges its economy

   Guyana, a small country (view on map) with only 800,000 people, is giving out USD2,000 to every household, thanks to the discovery of an estimated equivalent of 11 bil barrels of oil off its coast since Exxon began its operation in 2015. Exxon forecasts the country will produce about 1.3 mil barrels a day once the company's six projects are online in 2027. That amount rivals Qatar's current output and would rank Guyana among the world's 20 largest oil producers. President Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana said that the money handouts aim to reduce Guyana's economic disparities and relieve financial stress on locals. It will inject the Guyanese-dollar equivalent of USD287 mil of disposable income into the economy.

2. US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established a 'click to cancel' rule to ban subscription traps

   The US FTC will be enforcing a new “click to cancel” rule, which will make it easier for people to end subscriptions and force companies to make subscription sign-ups and cancellations equally straightforward. Businesses, including retailers and gyms, will also have to get consent from customers before renewing subscriptions or converting free trials into paid memberships. It’s due to come into effect in around six months' time. FTC has so far taken legal action on companies who use these sneaky methods, including giants like Amazon and Adobe.

3. One Direction star Liam Payne dies after falling from 3rd storey balcony
   Former member of the much-loved boyband One Direction, Liam Payne has died at the age of 31, after falling from the balcony of the hotel he was staying in Argentina. His body was discovered after the emergency response team arrived, following distress calls from the hotel receptionist who was worried about his safety. The hotel reported “a guest” thrashing the entire room, under heavy influence from too many drugs and alcohol, and asked for help to intervene. Payne had risen to global fame as part of a boyband created in the X Factor TV show in 2010, along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. PM Anwar Ibrahim unveiled his first Budget, back in 1994. As we spend this weekend debating with our friends and family what’s fair and what’s not in Budget 2025, what do you want out of next year’s budget? Reply our email and tell us!

2. What does the red X stand for? PMX. Haha, jokes aside — Ministry of Finance shares the actual reason why the Budget is always marked with a big red X.

3. A dog was spotted on top of the Great Pyramid of Giza by a paraglider. What if the dog marked its territory there? Previously, people were allowed to climb the pyramid but is now illegal, and offenders face a penalty of at least one month’s imprisonment.