Soros 'involved' in currency attacks
Soros 'involved' in currency attacks
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says he is convinced that American billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros is the prime force behind the recent currency assault on Malaysia and several other Southeast Asian countries.
"We have definite information that Soros is involved. Of course he is not the only one... But he started it. He had this idea that by applying pressure on Thailand and Malaysia he could prevent Myanmar from joining ASEAN," Mahathir asserts in an interview with the U.S. Fortune business magazine for the Sept.8 issue which is out on the newsstand this week.
Mahathir believes that Soros' aim is to punish Malaysia for its support of Myanmar's ruling military junta, the State Law and Order Council, the anti-democratic activities which Soros' New York-based Open Society Institute opposes.
But Mahathir told reporters in Kuala LUmpur on Saturday he does not want to meet American financier Soros.
World Bank officials were reported as saying on Friday that the bank would arrange a meeting between Soros and Mahathir, who will be attending a World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting in Hong Kong in September.
"I will go to Hong Kong, but I don't have any wish to meet him," Mahathir told reporters.
"I have never given the World Bank any mandate to arrange anything," said Mahathir. The World Bank-IMF meeting is scheduled for Sept. 20-25.
The Malaysian ringgit, the Philippines peso, the Indonesian rupiah, the Thai bhat, and other Southeast Asian currencies have fallen the past seven weeks.
In Hong Kong Soros has denied involvement in embattled currency markets in Southeast Asia and has said he believes stability will return soon, a newspaper reported yesterday.
"As for our activities in Southeast Asia, we have recently bought some Indonesian rupiah," Soros said in answer to written questions from the Sunday Morning Post.
The newspaper also quoted the billionaire, who has been accused of playing a role in the plunge in major regional currencies in recent weeks, as saying stability would return "soon" and that some units might be due for a rebound.
"If anything, the pendulum has, in some cases, swung too far in the opposite direction," he said when asked if the region's currencies were still overvalued at current levels.
Soros also said he did not believe market pressure would break the local dollar's peg to the United States dollar.
"I am convinced that the peg will not be severed under duress," he said. He also added that those who had moved against the Hong Kong dollar were "not going to get rich".