(July 16): Sarawak Report founder and editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown has dismissed new claims by Barisan Nasional (BN) that the whistleblower website published forged documents on 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), saying that the editor who made a “confession” video on the matter never worked for the London-based site.

The new claim, revealed by BN's strategic communications director Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan yesterday, is centred on Lester Melanyi, said to be a former editor with Sarawak Report.

But Rewcastle-Brown said Melanyi had never worked for the website, although he had worked for another initiative of hers, the independent radio station Radio Free Sarawak, in London.

Melanyi was named as the man who made the video confession in a police report lodged by Ramesh Rao Krishnan, the president of Pertubuhan Minda dan Sosial Prihatin (PMSP), a BN-friendly NGO, in Petaling Jaya yesterday morning.

This police report was then used by Rahman to urge for swift police investigations.

Rahman had also urged Interpol and Scotland Yard to question those related to the alleged forgery before the evidence is destroyed.

When asked to comment on Rahman's claim, Rewcastle-Brown told The Malaysian Insider that Ramesh Rao is believed to have met Melanyi and made a video of his supposed "confession”.

In the video, he claimed that Sarawak Report and Malaysian opposition leaders worked together to forge documents about 1MDB before the website published its exposes on the debt-laden fund.

But Melanyi had never written a "single word" for the site, Rewcastle-Brown said, despite claims by Rahman that the former had been an editor there.

Melanyi is in fact a former editor of Sarawak Tribune, a Bornean newspaper which had been suspended after it published controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in 2006, she said, and he had resigned from the paper over those cartoons.

Rewcastle-Brown said she met Melanyi when he worked with her for Radio Free Sarawak outfit, which was used to expose alleged corruption by former Sarawak chief minister Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud and his family.

That, however, was five years ago.

"I have not met him for a good number of years," Rewcastle-Brown said, adding that Melanyi was likely "paid" for the video confession he had reportedly made.

"I assume someone paid him for this."

Rahman, in the press conference held at the Housing, Local Government and Urban Well-Being Ministry yesterday, also said to have sighted an e-mail by Rewcastle-Brown in which she purportedly admits to forging the documents after staying up "night after night".

But this communication, Rewcastle-Brown said, came about after Melanyi contacted her two weeks ago regarding the forgery and tampering allegations, which first surfaced after the arrest of former PetroSaudi executive Xavier Andre Justo in Thailand.

To Melanyi's questions, Rewcastle-Brown had replied sarcastically about "forging" the documents, which Lester had published and later cited in Ramesh Rao's police report.

"No one has been able to bring a shred of evidence to disprove anything that Sarawak Report has written on this matter for several weeks.

“If there was anything, Najib and PetroSaudi, who all have huge sums of money, would have gratefully sued me," she said.

Several weeks ago, Xavier's arrest was immediately linked by Putrajaya to tampering and forging of 1MDB documents used by Sarawak Report.

It proceeded to reprimand local media agencies, including The Edge, for allegedly using these tampered documents and citing Sarawak Report.

1MDB, a state investment arm established in 2009, sits on a RM42 billion debt and is also tied to allegations that some of its funds were used by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to be transferred to the latter's own personal accounts in 2013.

Najib has denied the allegations and threatened legal action against Wall Street Journal, which had published the expose.

Sarawak Report previously published exposes linking 1MDB's money trail to Malaysian tycoon Low Taek Jho, among others. – The Malaysian Insider