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1.
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REPORTED BY THE SUN DAILY
PETALING JAYA, September 1, 2015:
Sarawak Report (SR) founder Clare Rewcastle-Brown has denied receiving any funding from very powerful people in Malaysia as per Lester Melanyi's claim.
In an immediate response to Melanyi's accusation, Clare said Radio Free Sarawak (RFS) is largely funded by a reputable European foundation which focuses on rainforest issues and that she sustained her web hosting costs for both sites from that source.
"We also receive a steady and welcome stream of mainly small donations from people who support our work through our site's donation page, and those dozens of small donations add up very helpfully to cover some of the expenses we have incurred," she told theSun.
"For the past year, I have received a salary for my work at RFS and SR, which has fallen below the level of taxable income in the UK. Prior to that I worked on the project entirely unpaid for over four years," she added.
On Melanyi's call for her to show her Sarawak Report accounts, she said: "We publish our accounts the normal way and these are available at Companies House [The NINE QUESTIONS Panel requests that Sarawak Report publish these records, simply to avoid practicing double standards. A direct hyperlink is also helpful]." (Companies House is the United Kingdom's registrar of companies and is an executive agency and trading fund of the British Government.)
She also confirmed that she had not fabricated any documents and pointed that Melanyi's accusations were also baseless.
"Lester has not provided a single shred of evidence to back his nonsense claims compared to the detailed research that I have undertaken for years on the problems besetting Malaysia," she said.
She added that Melanyi was also only a volunteer in RFS for four months, but was released from the team after the 2011 state elections because "he was idle and deceitful and I learnt he was also working for a third party who was trying to spy on our operation".
"He knows that I was not being paid at that time and it is ironic that the person who has made money out of Sarawak Report has been Lester Melanyi, who never wrote a single word of any of it.
"This is because he is the one who is now accepting ill-gotten bribes to defame me and my blog, having had nothing to do with even RFS for years," she added.
Melanyi, who was former Sarawak Tribune editor, claimed today that Clare was receiving funding from very powerful people in Malaysia.
"She keeps talking about money that people say went into the prime minister's account, but never talks about the money she receives.
"Why? If Clare is such a believer in transparency, she should provide the Sarawak Report accounts and show us where her funding comes from.
"But she cant do this because if she did, we would find out who her real boss is," he said in a statement.
- Amar Shah Mohsen('Clare denies receiving funds from Malaysia.' - The Sun Daily, September 1, 2015)
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The NINE QUESTIONS Panel notes that on the three occasions that Clare describes her sources of funding, the explanations seem consistent, until we examine them closely.
1. EPISODES / CLARE AND CULLEN – THE DO-SI-DO
"Clare told 16×9 she has received no money from Malaysian politicians and that
her donors are 'all non-politically motivated Europeans'."
- Global News Canada, December 2, 2011
2. EPISODES / CLARE AND CULLEN – THE DO-SI-DO
"The funding for her radio, she says, comes primarily from a single “European philanthropist” who wishes to remain anonymous; listeners also send donations through the website."
- Foreign Policy, March 13, 2013
3. CURRENT / CLARE'S FACELESS DONORS–MORE DOUBLE STANDARDS
"Clare said Radio Free Sarawak (RFS) is largely funded by
a reputable European foundation which focuses on rainforest issues.
We also receive...mainly small donations from people...through our site's donation page."
- The Sun Daily, September 1, 2015
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RELATED (1)
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[1: FOCUS / CLARE'S CONTRADICTIONS–THE FORKING OF THE TONGUE – "[Lester Melanyi] also claimed that BMF, a non-profit conservation group, paid him money, which was banked into his account by Rewcastle-Brown, to edit the articles." - The Straits Times, July 21, 2015]
Note that she is basically admitting to having more than one "European donors", with one of them the sole backer of Sarawak Report's sister organisation, Radio Free Sarawak. The questions that arise now are, how many exactly, what are their names, and what is the name of the foundation that is sponsoring RFS?
Surely, their request for anonymity and Clare honouring her bargain of silence, is in direct contradiction to her opportunistic calls for deeming it fit to condemn others for the things she is by now doing out in the open, although with the help of anonymous donors.
"For the past year, I have received a salary for my work at RFS and SR,
which has fallen below the level of taxable income* in the UK.
Prior to that I worked on the project entirely unpaid for over four years".
- Clare Rewcastle Brown, September 1, 2015
*Taxable income is cumulative, and unless Clare Rewcastle Brown can show that she is not drawing money from anything else, it is reasonable to suspect that Clare is simply not declaring this suspected additional source of income.
"Yes, we are associated with the opposition."
- Clare Rewcastle Brown, March 13, 2013
Below are samples that prove that Clare Rewcastle Brown is clearly paid to misinform and produce lies for the benefit of the opposition parties, at the behest of wealthy European donors.
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RELATED (1)
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[1: CURRENT / CLARE REWCASTLE BROWN'S INTERVIEW ON CHANNEL NEWSASIA REGARDING THE WARRANT FOR HER ARREST – "The Prime Minister has now finally had it announced through the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission that that was not anything to do with 1MDB money, which actually certainly I and I don’t know of any investigative reporters who said it was." - Clare Rewcastle Brown - Channel NewsAsia, August 5, 2015][1A: 'SENSATIONAL FINDINGS! PRIME MINISTER NAJIB RAZAK’S PERSONAL ACCOUNTS LINKED TO 1MDB MONEY TRAIL - MALAYSIA EXCLUSIVE' - Sarawak Report, July 2, 2015]
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The NINE QUESTIONS Blog will return with more facts.
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