00:00A new book claimed that Swiss national Xavier André Justo had sought Dr. Mahathir Mohamed's
00:07intervention to recover payment promised to him for helping expose the 1MDB scandal.
00:13In 2015, Justo, a former Petro-Saudi international IT executive, pleaded guilty in a Thai court
00:19to blackmail, extortion, and peddling data stolen from his employers.
00:25After his release from a prison under a royal amnesty, journalist Leslie Lopez claimed that
00:29Justo's promised fee of $2 million USD was refused because he had confessed to stealing
00:35Petro-Saudi's data.
00:37In The Siege Within, Lopez wrote that Justo had presented himself as an aggrieved whistleblower
00:41to Mahathir, the newly-installed prime minister after the 2018 general election.
00:46The book claimed that Mahathir had assured Justo that he would look into the matter.
00:50However, Lopez said Justo's paymasters were concerned that they would be incriminating
00:55themselves by making the payment.
00:57As a result, it was decided that Justo would begin presenting himself to the public as
01:01the whistleblower of the 1MDB scandal, with the financial settlement sorted out eight
01:05months later.
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