Clare Rewcastle Brown (born 20 June 1959) is a British environmental and anti-corruption journalist and activist who uncovered the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.

[4][5] Her father, Patrick John Rewcastle, served as the head of special branch in Sarawak and later, following independence, as the Superintendent of the Royal Malaysia Police in Sabah.

[8] In 2006, during a visit to Sarawak for an environmental conference, Rewcastle Brown was approached by local journalists and activists to bring public attention to issues related to deforestation in the state.

[19][20] On August 1, 2015, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, addressing UMNO delegates, criticized foreign interference in Malaysia’s affairs, implicitly referring to Rewcastle Brown.

She queried whether some of the money from 1MDB, the whereabouts of which was unclear, might have been invested in the movie and spent on the lavish living of Jho Low and Najib’s notoriously extravagant wife, Rosmah Mansor, and his family.

On February 28, 2015, in collaboration with The Sunday Times, the Sarawak Report published an exposé revealing the misappropriation of $1.83 billion from 1MDB through a supposed joint venture with a shell company called PetroSaudi.

[27][28] They implicated Najib Razak and Jho Low, leading to increased measures by the Malaysian government against Rewcastle Brown, including the issuance of an arrest warrant and the blocking of her website.

[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] Rewcastle Brown continued to investigate and report on 1MDB, revealing that billions were misappropriated from Goldman Sachs-managed bonds and at least $681 million was diverted to Najib’s personal accounts.

[39][40][3][41] In 2015, Rewcastle Brown scrutinized the origins of the wealth of Khadem Al-Qubaisi, the CEO of the UAE's International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), suggesting ties to the 1MDB scandal.

[2] The new administration lifted Rewcastle Brown’s arrest warrant, allowing her to return to Peninsular Malaysia, though Sarawak maintained its entry ban.

[51] It alleged that FBC produced shows designed to cover Taib and the state government in a positive light and that it was performing similar services for corrupt regimes across the globe.

[51] In light of the revelations, CNBC cancelled World Business, a programme produced by FBC, while the BBC suspended all FBC-produced shows from their programming.

[51][52] Rewcastle Brown had earlier suggested that the PR firm was part of a network commissioned by Taib to conduct a "defamation campaign" against her, including hiring journalists from a right-wing American blog The New Ledger to publish attacks on her.

[59] At the same time Rewcastle Brown was subject to stalking and harassment in London by presumed agents of Malaysia’s secret service, a stream of legal threats from UK law firms working on behalf of those whose criminality she had written about and approaches by supposed journalists actually working for PR and private investigation firms variously attempting to collect information on her and conduct hostile interviews which they hoped to be able to use to discredit her.

[citation needed] This criminal case proceeded alongside a civil suit filed by the Sultanah against Rewcastle Brown as well as the distributor and printer of the book.

[72][73][74][75][76] In 2018, the law firm Schillings, representing Jho Low, who was already a fugitive, issued legal threats to attempt to prevent the UK publication of Rewcastle Brown’s book on the 1MDB scandal, The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé.

Furthermore, Schillings launched a widespread legal campaign, sending letters and emails to booksellers around the world and threatening litigation if they stocked her book or Billion Dollar Whale, another publication about the 1MDB scandal.

[77][78][79][80][81] In 2017 the law firm Carter-Ruck brought a case in the London courts on behalf of Hadi Awang, the President of the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS).

Rewcastle Brown’s Malaysian distributor, Gerakbudaya Enterprise publisher Chong Ton Sin, and printer, Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd, were co-defendants.

She is also the author of a chapter, 'Malaysia: a case study in global corruption', in the third edition of Investigative Journalism, published by Routledge,[90] and co-author (with Caleb Diamond) of another chapter, 'Sovereign Wealth Funds as Vehicles for Money Laundering: The Case of 1MDB', in Sovereign Wealth Funds: Corruption and Other Governance Risks, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.