It is a childish lie. It is all part of a misdirection campaign by Malaysia to avoid admitting to the courts, and to the Malaysian people, that successive governments have known the true situation.

Malaysia has known who we are for years. The Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs even invited us to Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian Government paid us by annual check, made out individually to each of us. We still have the checks.

To be fair, Attorney General Tommy Thomas, while refusing to concede anything helpful, didn’t play this level of ridiculous game. And what is more, he knew that the other lies were childish too. In his memoir he states:

The often given, unofficial explanation is that Malaysia stopped the payments because of the armed incursion in 2013 into Lahad Datu in Sabah. However, there appears to be no evidence linking the Sulu claimants who were receiving the annual compensation from Malaysia with the armed invaders of Lahad Datu. If the Malaysian government had such evidence, the prudent course would have been to file an action in the High Court of Sabah at Kota Kinabalu against the Sulu claimants (all of whom were known to our embassy in the Philippines where the annual payment was disbursed to them), seeking an order of the Sabah Court that because the Sulu claimants were personally and directly involved in the Lahad Datu invasion they had forfeited their right to receive future payments and that the 1878 Grant had ceased to operate. If that had occurred, the government’s action to cease payment would have received judicial imprimatur. Regrettably, this option was not exercised by those in charge in 2013.

Malaysia has known forever who it had paid. It wrote checks. And we are individually identified in all the litigation. Minister Azalina knows, but clearly isn’t bothered by the embarrassment of a Malaysian Minister lying to the international press.