Mahathir, Malaysia’s new prime minister, turned 93 this week, while his wife is a sprightly 92. But his impending century has not lessened his determination to expose the corruption of his predecessor, Najib, and Najib’s extremely unpopular wife, Rosmah.
The whole country has been agog at the details emerging during the search of their home.
So far, 116.7 million Ringgits has been found in cash, which is nearly £22 million – a lot of it stuffed into handbags … and what handbags!
This woman has 272 Hermes Birkin bags alone, worth over £10 million. Apparently they were all gifts from well-wishers, although whether they were already stuffed with money when she received them, or whether she stuffed them herself at a later date is unclear.
But Hermes bags are cheap compared with Bijan bags (the yellow one on the right in this picture), as I’ve learnt from the newspapers. I’d never heard of them before, but now I know that they’re so exclusive that their shop is ‘by invitation only’ and the diamond-encrusted bags are upwards of $100,000 (US). But I expect that Rosmah only has one for sentimental reasons … Bijan is Najib spelt backwards.
And it doesn’t stop at handbags –
– and if a diamond-encrusted watch doesn’t do it for you, how about some diamonds without the watch –
Anyway, my thinking is that they’ll need to sell all this booty to recoup some of the government money that disappeared into Najib’s personal bank account, so I shall be scouring Chinatown for a sale of cheap, second-hand Hermes bags.
So, would anyone else like one while I’m there?