Clare Rewcastle Brown

“I discovered the Internet. I started seeing how much company information was out there - they didn't think it would be accessible to a middle-aged journalist sitting in her kitchen in England.”

“Exposing the world's biggest financial heist, the so-called 1MDB scandal, turned out to be an adventure in more ways than one.”

“My mother would drag me to remote clinics to show the indigenous Dayaks what a healthy baby should look like.”

“I must try to do something. I'll never forgive myself if I don't try.”

“I have vivid memories of leaving North Borneo at 8, and I remember the vast canopy of rain forest.”

“I think people knew why I was doing what I was doing. They knew I wasn't part of an interest group. And, in a way, by attacking me, the Malaysian establishment identified me as someone who was principled and prepared to stand up to them.”

“Prime Minister Najib had continuously denounced me as an enemy of the Malaysian state and accused me of spreading Fake News.”

“If a government is overreacting in this way and treating you as such a dangerous threat, then you know that you are doing your job.”

“I'm fairly practiced at squirreling out stories and sources - I talk to people; I ask people if they know anyone worth talking to.”

“I soon realised the state rulers were being protected by the federal government who relied on these rotten boroughs to deliver their vote.”

“English is still the unifying language in Sarawak and I use my blog and broadcasts to expose the outrageous deforestation which has seen 95 per cent of Sarawak's rainforest cut down and replaced by logging and palm oil plantations which have enriched Taib and his family.”

“As I found myself in the thick of the biggest investigative story of my career, I suffered state-backed computer hacking of my systems. Myself and my family were stalked by private security companies; my house was under surveillance.”

“A super rich elite have emerged thanks to the lack of law and order, and thanks to the lack of jurisdiction over the transfers of international wealth.”

“I grew up as this rather lonely European kid living in the east Malaysian jungle.”

“The people I spoke to who were worried they would be killed for talking to me are now all ministers in the government. This is a major, major breakthrough. You have democracy actually working, the return of the rule of law, in an area of the world which was really tipping into the night.”

“In the end I got a major newspaper in South East Asia to buy a whistleblower's account for a ludicrous bunch of money. Off I toddled, published the story, which the newspaper didn't dare do in the end and then of course I was unleashed into a rollercoaster of denial and backlash.”

“Having grown up on Sarawak, a Malaysian state on Borneo, I had become increasingly incensed by the seemingly mad and wanton destruction of the world's third largest and most biodiverse rainforest, the Borneo Jungle.”

“My investigations have indicated that Taib and his family have a property empire in Canada, the US and the UK. Funds have been generated by Taib selling off rainforests with some of the money going through the British Virgin Islands.”

“Fake news was manufactured to the tune of millions of dollars in an attempt to discredit my story.”

“I disapprove of the analysis that Jho Low was special and that he pulled off something amazing, because I think he was just one of many.”