The wife of the Sultan of Terengganu has issued her demand for the cash awarded to her by the Malaysian courts of RM435,000 against this site and also a printer and distributor in KL whose businesses would be threatened if unable to pay.

This judgement owed to an initial error in the book The Sarawak Report (published in 2018) that cited the ‘wife’ of the Sultan rather than the ‘sister’ of the Sultan in the sentence corrected below:

 “Jho was also friendly with a key player in Terengganu, the sister of the Sultan whose acquiescence was needed to set up the fund, and he later cited her support as having been crucial to his obtaining the advisory position.”

The error was immediately acknowledged and corrected and an apology made that it was the sister and not the wife who had known Jho Low. However, a demand for a payment of RM300 million was sent to the three defendants if the Sultanah was not to proceed with her action.

The editor of Sarawak Report maintains the statement was not defamatory, most particularly given the sister of the Sultan plainly did nothing wrong in making such an introduction. The matter was touched on in the book in that it formed part of the series of events at the Terengganu Investment Authority that later led to the formation of 1MDB (the federal development fund at the heart of the narrative).

The High Court had likewise ruled that the judge could see no defamatory meaning in the sentence. However, the Sultanah pursued an appeal and the Appeal Court, in a transformative interpretation of how meaning should be decided, concluded that some readers with the benefit of hindsight of Jho Low’s later crimes might come to conclusions that would lower their opinion of the subject.

That interpretation holds chilling implications for those seeking to write about matters of public interest in Malaysia. The Appeal Court also held the author responsible for remarks made by members of the public on third party media sites about the litigant after the suit was launched (there had been no public comment about the litigant in advance of the suit).

The Federal Court declined to hear the case, ruling that the wife of the Sultan has as much right “as any member of the public” to pursue an expensive libel suit. However, in rejecting the further appeal the Federal Court nonetheless conceded that “the significance of the [Sarawak Report] book cannot be underplayed” in terms of exposing matters of public interest.

The wife of the Sultan complained while giving testimony in court that Sarawak Report had used her ‘name’ in the above sole reference in order “to sell the book” which covers the author’s years-long (unpaid) investigation and expose of the world record kleptocracy of the 1MDB scandal.

The author has engaged in this Malaysian litigation, even though the book was written in English and published in the UK, to keep in solidarity with the local businesses who were also targeted owing to Malaysia’s oppressive publication laws. We have found no British legal authority of the view this case could likely have succeeded in London.

Sarawak Report is therefore immensely grateful to the very many Malaysian citizens who have already over the past few months clubbed together to raise the lion’s share of the money to be paid to the wife of the Sultan and to those who have pledged to raise the rest.

We are sad this burden has been placed yet again on ordinary Malaysian people who have struggled to support freedom of the media to expose crimes such as 1MDB and to write about matters in the public interest.  Malaysia should be proud of its hardworking citizens who have supported Sarawak Report and the country’s own free media in its brave role in holding criminality in high places to account – criminality which has held the country back.

The wife of the Sultan has said that she will donate this money that has been raised by citizens in her country to support needy Muslim charities in her state.  Given the wealth of Terengganu and its royal household demonstrably great, we hope it will further match this sum raised by ordinary Malaysians in their own disbursement to such good causes.