Commenting on a news item in FMT and an embedded video about her alleged involvement in a plot against Najib, she said:

“There’s so much defamation being orchestrated by Barisan Nasional at the moment. I am not a plotter.

“The reality is that others and I have uncovered major criminal activity at the heart of 1MDB, linked to the Prime Minister. Such huge sums of related money have ended up in his various accounts and had been personally spent by him.”

She made her remarks in an email to FMT.

She said Najib should resign in the wake of the allegations of that he was involved in wrongdoing. “Instead,” she added, “we are seeing orchestrated and totally unsubstantiated campaigns to claim that alleged conspirators plotted all this.

“The so-called plotters appear to be anyone, including me, who has revealed information about 1MDB or criticised the Prime Minister’s actions.”

Rewcastle claimed that many of the people alleged to be plotters were people unknown to her. “The alleged plotters include various business people I had not heard of before.”

She also claimed that the 1MDB scandal had resulted in a major political fallout. “Of course, the story has resulted in major discussions amongst Najib’s political colleagues. Many of them have concluded that he ought to resign.”

Rewcastle said the demand for Najib’s resignation was appropriate, given that “he has not been able to disprove the evidence against him.”

“Calling for his resignation is not plotting against him,” she said. “It’s democracy.”

She said the situation Najib had found himself in was not the result of her reporting or any conspiracy.

“I have not plotted any of this,” she said.

“I did not tell him to start pouring large sums of money into bank accounts. I discovered that this had happened. I went after the story.

“What I have been doing is investigate a mega public scandal. That’s something that any reporter would consider her basic duty.

“I am beholden to no one, either financially or politically, on my reporting.”