Mahathir said in May he was awaiting a response from Goldman Sachs before deciding whether to take legal action against the bank over “too high” fees on 1MDB bond sales. Malaysia had already announced criminal charges against Goldman in December, accusing the lender of misleading investors when it knew that funds raised from the $6.5 billion bond offer it arranged would be misappropriated. The bank said it will defend against the allegations.
Mahathir disagreed he was sending a message to the U.S. by taking China’s side on certain issues. It’s “free speech,” he said. “I don’t like the old idea of cooking something up in the West and then asking us to accept them. China is a bit more sensitive to our feelings.”
On the resumed multi-billion dollar rail project, he said: “We were able to renegotiate the terms of the contract. It is quite obvious that the contract was overpriced.,” he said. The government considered dropping the project altogether “but did not want to pay huge compensation on it.”
The project will now cost 44 billion ringgit ($10.7 billion) instead of the original 65.5 billion ringgit, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office in April.
The construction strategy for the Orca and other drones is to engineer a new “upgradeable,” multi-mission drone able to quickly integrate new technology and payloads as they emerge. This technical platform could, in key instances, obviate the need for the Navy to build new undersea drones in the future. The concept, when it comes to application, could involve newer, upgraded sonar, networking systems, new weapons and countermine technologies.