Quotes from Clare Rewcastle Brown

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

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.

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.

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

But I have this vivid memory of flying over Borneo down the coast to Singapore. It was a two-hour journey in those days, and I remember looking out the window for two hours at this amazing canopy of unbroken jungle beneath me.

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.

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

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.

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

I have had to put in police reports that I have been stalked and followed.

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.

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.

As a kid, my first friends were the local children and we used to climb trees and run barefoot, dodging the odd scorpion.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.