Read Xavier Justo's full written confession at #KLChronicle

26 June 2015, Bangkok Remand Prison  

On Friday the 26th of June 2015, I hereby confess to my full involvement in, and responsibility for, the offences for which I am charged. They are the attempted blackmail and attempted extortion of PetroSaudi. I make this confession of my own free will and accord without any pressure, duress or outside influence. I do not wish to have a lawyer present. 

I fully admit my criminal behaviour and accept my guilt in these matters. I just want to set the record straight and apologise to those who I have wronged. I have conspired with others and further admit offenses of theft of data, handling stolen goods, selling stolen data and IT equipment to third parties and attempting to launder the proceeds of sale. My only motivation for selling the data that I stole was for monetary gain and I never considered myself a whistle-blower. 

I worked at PetroSaudi from March 2010 to April 2011. I had two different roles while I worked there. I headed up the IT function and I was also executive administrator of a couple of group companies. I had this job due to my previous administrative roles and my longstanding friendship with Tarek Obaid, PetroSaudi’s CEO. These roles gave me privileged access to PetroSaudi’s confidential data and IT systems.

In March 2011, it became clear that my employment with PetroSaudi would be terminated. I started to worry about how I would provide for myself and family if I didn’t have a job and decided that I needed to protect my financial security. I felt that the best way to do this was to use my access to PetroSaudi’s IT systems to take as much data and information as I could. I didn’t do this because I thought PetroSaudi had done anything wrong. I never saw any wrongdoing while I was at PetroSaudi or afterwards. I did it because I knew the data was important to the company and confidential and I thought I might be able to sell it. 

I accessed the data by breaking into my colleagues’ computers and making bulk downloads of whatever I could find onto portable hard drives and memory sticks. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular – just as much data as possible to have the maximum chance of it being valuable. I took this data knowing that I was committing a criminal offence. In total I stole about 90 GB of data which included emails, documents and other material. This was done over several days during March and April 2011. 

In early April my contract was terminated and I signed a Settlement Agreement with PetroSaudi. The Settlement Agreement was negotiated by my lawyer and PetroSaudi’s lawyer and contained normal terms requiring me to return data and property and respect confidentiality. I also received a settlement payment based on my salary and my notice period and recognising my friendship with Tarek Obaid. Shortly before signing my Settlement Agreement (original payment to Justo was a settlement agreement and not the first blackmail as some people believe) I downloaded all of the contents of my PetroSaudi computers and drives onto other portable drives that I took from PetroSaudi’s IT stores. I then returned the original IT equipment to give the impression I had handed back all data and equipment. 

However, I kept the drives onto which I downloaded all of that data. I admit that all of these actions also breach my Settlement Agreement in addition to my attempts to blackmail PetroSaudi and to sell and transfer the data. 

I understand that I will have to pay back all of my settlement payment to PetroSaudi and realise that I am liable to pay damages to PetroSaudi under my Settlement Agreement as a result of my actions. 

In July 2013 I contacted Patrick Mahony and demanded 3.5 Million Swiss Francs for the return of the stolen data. Over the next 5 months I sent further emails to Patrick Mahony demanding money otherwise I would sell the stolen data to other interested parties, though at this point I hadn’t contacted anyone else. I knew that releasing this huge amount of confidential data would damage PetroSaudi. 

I met with Patrick Mahony at the Shangri La Hotel in Bangkok in October 2013 where I verbally threatened him that if PetroSaudi did not pay me for the stolen data I would sell it to others 1 and cause damage to PetroSaudi. Patrick told me that PetroSaudi hadn’t done anything wrong and there was nothing in the data I stole that would suggest wrongdoing. PetroSaudi refused to pay. 

When the blackmail didn’t work I tried to find a buyer for the data and after a while was contacted by Clare Brown. This was in May or June 2014. I know that she is a journalist with Sawarak Report and a relation of Gordon Brown, a UK former prime minister. I met Clare Brown in Bangkok about 10 days after she contacted me. She told me that anything I had involving PetroSaudi’s transaction with 1MDB would fetch a good price and agreed she would facilitate the sale of the stolen data to others. 

She promised me I would make at least a couple of million from this sale. During the next six months I kept regular contact with Clare Brown. She tried a few buyers including the entourage of Anwar Ibrahim but wasn’t successful. 

In Feb 2015 Clare arranged a meeting at which she was present with Tong Kooi Ong and the editor of one of his newspapers Mr Ho Kay Tat. The meeting took place in the Fullerton Bay Hotel in Singapore. During this meeting I agreed to sell all of PetroSaudi’s stolen data to Tong for the sum of 2 million USD. I originally asked for 3 million USD and this was negotiated down to the two million. 

We only discussed the content of the data at a very high level as they said they were only interested in the 1MDB transaction and I hadn’t worked on it. So I showed them I had a lot of documents and emails from the 1MDB transaction but I couldn’t explain how the documents worked, or what they meant, and I couldn’t give them any background to the transaction. Tong and Clare told me that the material would be used to attack the current Malaysian Government and the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. 

They didn’t explain to me how they would do this, they just said they wanted some original documents and emails to build a story around. Clare said that as long as I could give them genuine documents, the contents of those documents didn’t matter because she would do the rest.  I didn’t know what she meant by that. 

Tong stated he didn’t want to involve the Saudis or PetroSaudi which was important to me. He said that this was an internal Malaysian matter only. He asked Clare to write an article based on the stolen information and for him to proof read the article before publication. 

Clare agreed to do this. However, subsequently this proved to be a lie. It was agreed by Tong that I would hand him the data at this meeting and he would pay 2 million USD the following day. 

Then I gave Ho Kay Tat PetroSaudi’s stolen data contained on a stolen hard drive. Tong’s IT team who were present took it off him checked the data and copied it for Tong. I handed a second hard drive to Clare Brown. A few days later Clare informed me that the copy was corrupted and I sent her a further copy on a memory stick using DHL to London. 

We met again in Singapore a few days after that to discuss the data some more and finalise payment. One or two days after that second meeting I opened a BVI trust in Singapore and tried to open a bank account at DBS Bank to receive the payment. However DBS refused to open the account. Tong told me that he would transfer the money to this account using his UOB Bank account in Singapore, he was unable to do this as DBS refused my account. 

I opened an account in Abu Dhabi asking Tong to pay the money to this account using whatsapp. He refused claiming that Jho Low has too many interests in the region. I then offered my Justo-Consulting in Hong Kong for payment, again using whatsapp. Tong refused to pay claiming it has my name which was a risk. I did not put the money in my Swiss account because of the growing story around the Malaysian/ PetroSaudi situation. In fact I closed the account and moved the money to Koh Samui to my wife for safety. 

Tong then offered to pay me by cash if I travelled to Singapore, this would be done of several trips. I declined this option fearing detection at airports and exposing myself to arrest. 

The latest proposal was to pay me using Clare Brown. We all agreed to do this. It would involve Tong paying her the 2,000,000 USD in the UK and her paying me a monthly amount disguised as a consultancy fee via the Sarawak Report. She proposed that I opened a news desk for the South East 2 Asia Region for which she would first pay me 350,000 USD, followed by a further 1,250,000 USD later. 

She told me that she had asked her UK lawyers to set this up and I was waiting for payment when I was arrested. I am aware and fully acknowledge that this would constitute money laundering. 

However, so far I have received no money. I still have copies of PetroSaudi’s data which I’m storing in Koh Samui. It’s stored a Samui Storage and I authorised the Royal Thai Police to recover and seize this. Also stored are the whatsapp conversations I had with Clare, Ho Kay Tat and Tong and they are kept on a USB stick. It’s in a black suitcase made by Tumi and in their company safe. 

I accept my dishonesty and greed. I would like to sincerely apologise to Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony for the harm stress and anxiety I caused them as individuals. I would like to apologise for my criminal behaviour to the...

LSS: LEAKED: Written Confession of Xavier Justo - http://limsiansee.blogspot.my/2015/09/written-confession-of-xavier-justo.html?m=1