Police protection has been given to Ms Clare Rewcastle-Brown, editor of the Sarawak Report website, after she claimed she had been stalked and photographed in London's Hyde Park last month, according to Britain's The Independent newspaper.

Scotland Yard confirmed that they had received the complaint from Ms Rewcastle-Brown, who is behind the London-based website that has been in the news recently for reporting on debt-ridden Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), including allegations that US$700 million (S$968 million) was transferred into Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's personal accounts.

The Malaysian police have issued a warrant of arrest for her, for activities detrimental to parliamentary democracy under Section 124B and 124I of the Penal Code.

"I have had to put in police reports that I have been stalked and followed," she told the British daily. "They have put a detail on my house because we have had men sitting in cars, idling. It's absurd."

The Independent said Ms Rewcastle-Brown, 55, told the police last month that she was followed and photographed while having tea with a former Malaysian official at a restaurant in the Sackler Gallery near Hyde Park.

"I had my back to the big glass window and he kept looking over my shoulder and getting nervous and he said, 'You do know you are being followed?'" she was quoted by the paper as saying.

She also said a "Chinese-Malaysian"-looking man was "very obviously photographing us" from outside the window, despite "pretending to be photographing a bunch of people who had just left the restaurant".

"I got up, went out and confronted him and he ran away."

Ms Rewcastle-Brown also suspects that someone had hacked into her e-mail, according to The Independent.

"(Almost) everybody that has been in touch with me has been arrested," she said, adding that she was starting to fear for her safety.

"I've no doubt whatsoever that they are trying to intimidate me."