Happy to sign the plaque for the Kingwood Hotel - after all I have a major shareholding!

Industry insiders have revealed that the main suppliers of timber to the cheating Asia Plywood Company, are the well-known Sarawak tycoons, the Miri-based Hii family.

Asia Plywood, which rents the major saw mill ‘Tegas Kesuma’, based in Tanjung Manis, is Malaysia’s largest plywood company.

Earlier this week it was caught out deceiving regulators and customers in the UK and elsewhere by pretending that hardwood chopped out of Sarawak’s dwindling forests was sustainable pinewood. [see our investigation]

Tegas Kesuma - saw mill chewing up Sarawak's precious Meranti to make plywood.

We can now disclose that a major provider to Tegas Kesuma is the company Fonsen Timber Sdn Bhd, owned by the Hii family concern Fonsen Holdings.

The Hiis have been granted licences by their close associate, Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, to strip the remaining forests from areas around Bintulu, earmarked for further oil palm plantations.

Another major supplier to the mill was the now dissolved Excellent Future, which was registered at the same address in Jalan Masjid in Miri as Fonsen Holdings and likewise controlled by the Hiis.

Hii King Chiong, key crony and Taib funder

Insiders have confirmed that the main director of the companies is Hii King Chiong, who is the son of Hii Yii Peng, the tycoon who is best known as the owner of Kingwood Hotel group.

Top Taib cronies

Taib, who issues all concessions in the state, is personally responsible for the relentless and unrestrained plunder of timber over the past 30 years.  Before him it was his uncle, whom at the time Taib saw fit to criticise for his greedy destruction of Sarawak’s irreplaceable jungle!

It is worth pointing out that no wood from Sarawak has ever achieved certification from the internationally recognised Forest Stewardship Council, simply because Taib’s logging has been so unsustainable.

Mr Charitable Gesture - Hii is back by Taib's side

So, it is particularly revealing to investigate the business interests that link the Hiis, who are such key beneficiaries of timber and plantation concessions, with the Chief Minister himself and his family.

Take, for example, one of the largest plantation enterprises in Sarawak, Delta Padi, which is currently blessed with concessions handed out at rock bottom rates by the Chief Minister.  Delta Padi has lucratively logged thousands of hectares of wild forest in Pulau Bruit and in other areas around Mukah, before setting about planting oil palm.  Local people were offered nothing for the destruction of their livelihoods.

Again, charitably at the CM's side..... Mr Hii supports Mukah Chinese Benevolent Board Building

So, who owns Delta Padi?  It turns out to be a joint venture between the Hii family and a company Mesti Bersatu.

We have mentioned Mesti Bersatu before.  It turns out to be owned by Abdul Taib Mahmud himself and members of his own family!

As numerous insiders have testified, the corrupt system favoured by the Chief Minister is for the money for such joint ventures to be put up by favoured tycoons.  His own contribution to the venture is his willingness to abuse his position of political power.

Thus he can be seen handing his own family companies great chunks of state owned territory (or more often Native Customary Land) as part of a series of joint ventures funded by others!

Key major shareholder of Fonsen - the Hii family

Kingwood Hotels

Taib has a stake in Sarawak's top hotel chain

Delta Padi is just one example of blatant corruption by the Chief Minister to enrich himself, using joint ventures with the crony Hii family.  Another is the Kingwood group.

Kingwood Inns are one of the best known hotel chains in Sarawak.   The group also owns a major travel company called Kingwood Travel Services Sdn Bhd.

So, it perhaps comes as little surprise to learn that Taib also has a major stake in this profitable group of concerns.  A substantial shareholder of Kingwood Inn Sdn Bhd, is again Mesti Bersatu!

At this point Sarawak Report is forced to ask, yet again, that the Chief Minister publicly defend his extraordinary claim that he and his family do no business in Sarawak!

Look who has a fat stake in Kingwood Inns Sdn Bhd - Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, through his company Mesti Bersatu!

More kickbacks from the Hiis

There are plenty of other Taib family members who are also blatantly taking advantage of the Hii family’s ‘obligations’ as a top receiver of favours and concessions from ‘Uncle Taib’.  These include daughters and sisters.

How it works is, since Uncle Taib has long since ditched the conventional practice of open tendering, in favour of corruptly handing out licences behind closed doors, his family members are able to crowd in and demand kickbacks from the lucky cronies he chooses.

Back at Hiis side! This time they were funding the Islamic Fashion Show in Monaco!

Taib is also able to squeeze these same businessmen into funding his political expenses (such as bribing voters in the coming Federal Election and supporting proteges in the SUPP) and also other events such as the ludicrous Islamic Fashion Show in Monaco, which Taib supposedly sponsored in 2010.

In fact it was the Hii family who put up a large chunk of the money that Taib flashed around in Monaco on that occasion, as he attempted to ingratiate himself with the plainly naive Prince Albert.  The Prince gratefully accepted a 100,000 euro cheque for his Foundation handed to him by PM Najib’s wife Rosmah, but the money was actually funded by the Hiis and funnelled through Taib!

A chance to pay off Prince and PM at the same time, thanks to money put up by the Hiis!

What irony that Prince Albert’s Foundation is supposed to be dedicated to saving the Environment!  Readers are welcome to calculate how many trees the Hii family would have had to unsustainably log to make that 100,000 euro payment to present to the playboy Prince!

Their reward?  A photo with Taib at the event, to which they had dutifully turned up and the promise of many more perks and concessions, as long as they continue to pay suitable kickbacks!

As the very large baubles worn by the Taib family women at the event and round their newest tax haven playground amply demonstrate, the CM could of course have found the money himself.  However, for Taib wealth has become a sickness and he is famously mean.

Rich venture

Taib family line up in Monaco.

Other close ventures with Taib family members include Bormill Wood (Trengganu) Sdn Bhd, which is owned by Taib’s Canadian daughter Jamilah and the Hii’s and The Sarawak Company Sdn Bhd, which is owned by Taib’s brother Tufail and the Hii’s.

And what about the venture between Taib’s sister Raziah Mahmud and the Hii family over the Miri Airport by-pass road?  As we have previously reported, Taib handed his sister large areas of land in the town through her companies Kumpulan Parabena and Miri Properties (in which Taib himself owns a stake, once again via Mesti Bersatu).

More business togetherness - guess who will have put up the investment and who brought the favoured concession rights!

In the money - brains or just corruption?

She sub-contracted the development of the area and the road contract, all of which had been handed to her for free by brother Taib, to the Hii company Rich Venture!

The ‘clever businesswoman’ Raziah has always remembered to skim off a large cut for her effortless middle-man transactions, made possible by her brother’s toe-curling corruption!

Sold as cheap plywood - this is how Sarawak's precious remaining hardwood is ending up in UK store

Two of Britain’s top chain stores have been caught out deceiving their customers over ‘eco-friendly’ wood by our latest Sarawak expose, which has also been taken up by the leading UK paper, the Daily Mail.

We can demonstrate that B & Q and Wickes, which both specialise in selling building and decorating materials, have been knowingly selling wood from Sarawak, falsely labelled as responsibly sourced.

In fact, the accreditation agency, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), has not certified any Sarawak timber, because of the greedy and unsustainable nature of the logging promoted by Chief Minister Taib Mahmud and his business cronies.

The chain stores, which have hundreds of UK outlets between them and are leading brand names, now face potential prosecution under Britiain’s consumer laws for misleading their customers.

How the story was told in the UK

The Daily Mail explains to its readers:

“Environmentalists are particularly worried about the accelerating destruction of the Borneo rainforest, which threatens the orang-utan with extinction, along with an irreplaceable eco-system of rare creatures and plants.

At particular risk is the rainforest in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, where corruption has in recent decades led to deforestation”.

Asia Plywood Company Sdn Bhd

Asia plywood proudly announces on its website that it is the largest exporter of Meranti wood from Sarawak and specialises in top quality tropical plywood! This is its photograph of logs being loaded on the Rajang River

The cheats behind the scandal is a Malaysian company called Asia Plywood Company, which openly advertises as the largest exporter of Meranti wood and tropical plywood in Malaysia.

The company boasts a large sawmill in Tanjung Manis, which it rents from the company Tegas Kesuma, from where it is believed to be exporting 10,000 cubic metres of timber each month to its headquarters in Kedah.

Despite this, the company managed to get FSC accreditation last year by pledging that at least 70% of the content of its finished plywood was now being sourced from New Zealand plantation pine.

Stamps and labels on the sheets of plywood displayed in the stores

The UK supplier Finnforest has imported tons of this material into Britain (around a quarter of the output), offering it at well below the normal market price for genuine sustainable plywood.

The boards are all stamped with the Asia Plywood Company brand name, alongside the FSC logo and certification.  They also all bear stickers claiming it is “wood from responsible sources”.

Consumers in the UK and elsewhere rely on certification by the FSC (the most respected authority) to reassure them that they are not doing damage to the environment, which is why the stores are so keen to be able to display that their wood is eco-friendly.

This is the stamp of approval from the FSC, bearing the logo of Asia Plywood and the company's HQ address in Kedah

B&Q and Wickes snapped it up, leaving genuine FSC products struggling to find an outlet.  However, the low prices of this supposedly sustainable plywood caused suspicion amongst timber experts, who knew that genuine plantation pine costs far more to produce.

Keeping consumers happy - these labels were still stuck on the plywood in both Wickes and B&Q long after the stores knew they were actually misleading.

Their inspections immediately revealed that the plywood was in fact almost completely made up of tropical hardwood, such as meranti wood – exactly the material which is being exported in such large quantities by Asia Plywood Company from Tanjung Manis.

Sadly, this fast disappearing Sarawak hardwood, which should be worth much more than pine, is being sold off cheap because of Taib’s policies.

His licences permitting rampant logging mean that Europe and America no longer want to buy Sarawak wood, because of the rainforest destruction.  Yet, his crony timber barons are cutting them anyway and selling them off cheap to cheats like Asia Plywood.

Cover up!

According to our information, the timber experts alerted the FSC to the situation towards the end of last year.  The authority immediately suspended Asia Plywood’s licence and conducted an investigation. On 6^th January the FSC’s investigation agency, Scientific Certification Systems(SCS), concluded:

“Our investigation found that the FSC products sold by Asia Plywood between February 25^th, 2011 and present are not FSC certified and should not carry the FSC label or any marks that indicate that the material is certified.

We have requested that Asia Plywood remove the FSC label from any products that they have in stock and that Asia Plywood request the same of the customers to whom they sold these products”. [SCS statement]

Sustainable pine-based plywood from New Zealand or 'Superior Grade Tropical Plywood' from Sarawak?

The FSC also confirmed it had removed its accreditation from the cheating outfit, Asia Plywood Company, meaning that the company can no longer brand its wood with their logo.

However, it was at this point that the two UK stores and the FSC also acted in a way that many would also find culpable.

The stores decided not to remove the labels as requested and the FSC failed to take any steps to make them, despite concerns that customers were therefore being mislead.

Asia Plywood's store in Tanjung Manis

Their later excuse was that the FSC legal department had concluded that because the wood had been believed to be eco-friendly at the time it was bought by the stores, they could continue to sell it to customers under that label.  This was despite the fact that the stores now knew that claim was false!

Embarrassing questions for FSC

That decision by the FSC raises serious questions about the integrity of the accreditation agency and also its legal judgement.

How could it be ruled that because B&Q and Wickes had been conned they could legitimately pass on that con to their customers and sell the wood under false pretences? Also, did the fact that B&Q acted as one of the key ‘partners’ in setting up the FSC result in the authority’s dubiously lenient stance on this matter?

Until the day the stores were challenged by the Daily Mail and Sarawak Report both Wickes and B&Q continued to promote the wood as a sustainable product to their unwitting customers, instead of peeling of the sticky labels that claimed the plywood came from “Responsible Sources”!

Conning customers?

Loaded off in containers to line cupboards and drawers around the world

The reason why the stores did not want to peel off the labels seems clear.  Most responsible buyers in the UK take care to only buy products that have been labelled by the FSC, because they do not want to encourage the wanton destruction of rain forests like the Borneo jungle by ruthless and greedy individuals like Taib Mahmud.

Likewise, stores like B&Q and Wickes take great pride in advertising that nearly all their products are certified as being sustainably sourced.  Indeed Kingfisher, the owners of B&Q have won a number of recent awards in recognition of its responsible approach to the environment.  The company boasts:

“Our businesses sell a high volume of timber and products made from or containing wood. Therefore the choices we take regarding which wood products to stock can help protect the world’s forest resources while reducing our impact on climate change. B&Q UK was one of the pioneers of responsible timber sourcing, helping to set up the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the early 1990s…

The reported volume of timber sold in our stores that comes from proven well-managed forests or recycled sources reached 81% in 2010/11 – up from 77% the previous year and ahead of our target of 75%.”  [Kingfisher's Corporate Responsibility webpage]

By removing the FSC sustainability logos from the Sarawak sourced plywood, therefore, B&Q not only faced putting off customers, but would also have been forced to admit that a lower percentage of its products are sustainable!

Panic reaction

Still on sale until yesterday's story!

Once the stores were faced with exposure they immediately moved to defend themselves.  B&Q within hours began to strip the wood from their shelves, claiming that after they were called by the Daily Mail “new evidence had come to light”!

Wickes on the other hand tried to claim that it was better to continue to sell the wood, rather than waste it by destroying it!

“Its better to use the dodgy wood than throw it” [Jeremy Bird, MD Wickes]

What the Managing Director of Wickes failed to explain, however, was why it was necessary to continue to lie about the wood in order to sell it.  Why not peel off the labels claiming it was sustainable?

Emotive - how the Daily Mail communicated the effects of logging in Borneo to the British public this week

The question now is whether Britain’s trading standards authorities are likely to agree with the strange legal advice from the FSC and the decision by the stores to misrepresent their product?

Once again it seems, the corruption boiling in Sarawak has broken out to compromise others elsewhere.

But, at least attention In Britain has now been drawn to the scandal of Asia Plywood and to the extent of Sarawak’s deforestation.  Action should now be taken to prevent Taib’s timber cronies from selling more of the state’s diminishing hardwoods to the UK under the guise of eco-friendly labels.

Bill Wiggin appears on FBC's World Business programme for CNBC. FBC organised the visit as part of their PR contract with Sime Darby.

The Conservative Party’s ex-Environment Spokesman, Bill Wiggin, agreed to play a starring role in videos promoting Sime Darby, after enjoying a luxury trip to Malaysia sponsored by the company.

The palm oil giant, headed by former Deputy PM Musa Hitam, has been exposed as a major client of FBC Media, the disgraced British public relations company, which has now been axed by the Malaysian government and Sarawak, following our exposes into corrupt practices.

FBC boasted that it had managed to ‘cultivate’ and ‘influence’ prominent people to become ‘ambassadors’  to ‘champion’ Sime Darby, which has been trying to greenwash its image after a wave of international condemnation over deforestation caused by palm oil plantations.

British MP cuddles baby orang utan in Sabah sanctuary on a tour paid for by Sime Darby. The practice is discouraged for fear of communicating diseases to the vulnerable creatures.

The company lists Bill Wiggin, who was Conservative Shadow Environment Minister until mid-2010, as one of those ambassadors from the political arena.

We have established that Wiggins was jetted out to Malaysia in 2009 and given a tour of Sime Darby’s showcase ‘eco-plantation’ on Carey Island, before being whisked to Sabah to see the Orang Utan Sanctuary there.

Tour insiders have told us that Wiggin expressed it as a major personal ambition to cuddle a baby orang utan and gratefully responded to the hospitality with a near farcical performance starring as the reporter in a ten minute promotional video praising Sime Darby for its environmental credentials.

Excerpts from the same interviews with Wiggin were then used by FBC reporter Ryan Meltzer to illegally promote Sime Darby on CNBC’s World Business show, in a package which was disguised as a genuine news report about sustainable palm oil.

No expense spared to butter up Wiggin - car and escort all laid on as he visits Sabah.

In fact, Sime Darby is the world’s largest palm oil producer and it owns vast plantations across Borneo in areas that used to be pristine jungle.  Few of its plantations had been certified as being sustainable.

The company has also recently caused outrage and been forced to pay fines in Africa, where it is currently attempting to expand its operations, again at the expense of native people.

One-sided report

Wiggin seems to have willingly understood he was being used as part of a PR drive as Sime Darby attempted to get sustainability certification for its palm plantations in order to attract consumers in the UK and elsewhere.  As he says:

“The purpose of my coming here was to learn about the process, which I’ve enjoyed doing, but I kind of knew what was going on.  It was really to support a company that was going hell for leather to hit that sustainability target, to encourage the people who are doing the right thing, to emphasise that we in the UK want to buy their product when they have gone to the trouble of making it genuinely sustainable”!

It is perhaps no surprise then, that the report by Bill Wiggin on behalf of Sime Darby is blatantly one-sided and lacking in objectivity or balance.  The palm oil giant, which has indisputably destroyed vast tracks of jungle since the 1970s is painted as a benign environmental force, while smaller operators (who can’t afford jolly PR trips for MPs) are castigated as the main environmental menace!

“One of the reasons why people are worried about palm oil is the orang utan.  So, when you go into the sanctuary they tell you that it’s the big estates that are doing the right thing but it’s the little guys, the smallholders, the private individuals, who simply can’t afford to take any losses on their very small operation, where the problems lie!”

Wiggin says he was told that the big palm oil companies are not a threat to orang utans!

Wiggin gives no evidence that he has explored this issue, beyond what he has been told by Sime Darby employees.

He also fails to point out the fact that it is the vast plantations being rolled out across Borneo, thanks to massive investment and industrial scale logging, which have stripped out the jungle by the square mile and exterminated so many of his beloved orang utan.

Wiggin also fails to make any mention in his report of the greatest environmental threat to Borneo, which is corruption and bad governance by BN politicians, of which the Chairman of Sime Darby is one of the most prominent.  Instead he gushes:

“We should be doing everything we can to support Sime Darby in its efforts to lead and from everything I’ve seen it’s quite clear that not only is this company leading, but Malaysia is also in a different league to some of the other palm oil producers.  They’ve got proper government backing, proper government buy in, commitment, funding and all the right things are happening here!”

Singing for his supper? Many of Wiggin's constituents have expressed anger at the 'jet-setting' MP

Has Bill Wiggin stopped to consider how the destruction of Sabah and Sarawak, under the governance of the party of Sime Darby’s political boss Musa Hitam, can in fact be classed as one of the world’s greatest environmental disasters of recent years ?

Has he likewise considered that the on-going destruction of Borneo in Kalimantan is being driven, to a very large extent, by the same Malaysian palm oil giants that have destroyed Sabah and Sarawak?

These companies include, of cause, Sime Darby, which has ripped out around 300,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforest and farmland to make plantations in recent years!

Ambassador Bill Wiggin

Dressed for the part - kitted out in Sime Darby gear and logo!

Given that Bill Wiggin MP was listed as having been ‘cultivated’ to become an ‘ambassador’ or ‘third party endorser’ for Sime Darby in FBC Media’s own promotional material, he can be said to have done a very good job on behalf of his hosts.

However, the constituents who pay him a salary to represent their interests back in the UK, might have questions about the thoroughness of his recommendations that they should buy Sime Darby products.

Sounding rather like advertising, Wiggin, in his capacity as Conservative Environment Spokesman emphases the company’s “virtuous activity”:

“I want, when I am a customer in the shops in the UK, to buy palm oil from a company like Sime Darby, who have produced it in a sustainable way…. Borneo is so full of natural treasures, how are we going to protect that if we don’t buy palm oil from people who are doing the right thing like Sime Darby?”

'Cultivated' - Bill Wiggin was an FBC target who delivered.

Wiggin is not the only prominent person targeted by FBC Media on behalf of Sime Darby and its other Malaysian clients.  We have already exposed US economist Jeffrey Sachs as another prime catch as far as the PR company was concerned.

Corporate leaning environmentalist - Jason Clay banks on big brands for WWF

Sachs has appeared in a number of programmes for the BBC and CNBC, which had been commissioned by FBC clients.  He also featured in a major newspaper advertisement promoting Sime Darby.

Jason Clay of WWF, also listed by FBC Media as one of its ‘champions’ for Sime Darby, is a major exponent of the controversial argument that the 100 top world brands can save the environment.

It is a view that might explain the reluctance of WWF to get involved in criticising large companies when they threaten the environment and the charity’s willingness to engage in working with them!

More FBC material bragging about forging contacts with Bill Wiggin and others on behalf of Sime Darby.

However, any involvement by Clay with FBC, or the others mentioned on the list, appears so far circumstantial.  The list even includes British PM David Cameron!

Cameron attended an enterprise forum involving Sime Darby and organised by Conservative MP Andrew Cumpsty, a former lobbyist, who is also listed as one of FBC’s networking contacts.

Our letter to Bill Wiggin

Remember who you need to thank. Promoting Sime Darby to school kids

Sarawak Report emailed Bill Wiggin late last year asking for comment on FBC’s claim that he had been recruited as an ‘ambassador’ for Sime Darby and questioning his uncritical claims about the company’s environmental record.

We also questioned the MP’s effusive praise of the company’s local school, which provides education for immigrant workers.  Wiggin posed beneath huge signs situated around the school promoting the company at the children in classrooms and their main hall.

However, so far we have received no reply from the conservative MP!

Visiting Sime Darby showcase. But why is educating workers' children such a great gesture by this Malaysian Government controlled company?

These are the matters we posed to the UK MP in the email we sent 

-

“Dear Bill Wiggin,

Earlier this year we exposed the scandal surrounding FBC Media, which was later covered extensively by the Independent and also the Mail and the Guardian. You may have noted that the BBC and CNBC subsequently severed their relationship with this PR/ TV production company, which has now gone into administration in the UK. You can see extensive coverage on the matter on the blogg www.sarawakreport.org .

It may have come to your attention that, as part of this coverage, we revealed documents featuring some of the ‘ambassadors’, which FBC boasted they had managed to recruit for Malaysia’s largest palm oil company Sime Darby. Your name was listed on their power point presentations as being one of these individuals.

We have viewed some of the films that you made with FBC Media at the time of your visit to some of Sime Darby’s company locations, including their showcase Carey Island plantation. These films include your contribution to Ryan Meltzer’s report for the World Business programme, which has now been cancelled by CNBC.

In the light of the content of these films we would like to ask you if you can comment on the claim that FBC Media was making to clients that they had ‘cultivated’ and ‘influenced’ you into becoming an ‘ambassador’ for Sime Darby?

We would be grateful if you could confirm the information which we have received, which is that your trip and private jet travel to Carey Island was paid for by Sime Darby?

We also understand that your stated motivation in visiting Borneo was to ‘cuddle an Orang Utan’. Are you aware that standard good practice in such circumstances is to restrain strangers from coming into contact with baby Orang Utans, because of the danger of passing them human infections?

Could we ask what wider research you had done into the background and history of Sime Darby’s plantations before you provided such effusive and un-qualified support for the company in the film made by FBC media?  Very few of their plantations have yet, of course, to receive accreditation by the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, controversial as that accreditation is in itself.

We ask this, because the devastating extent of deforestation in Borneo owing to the activities of Sime Darby and other major Malaysian Oil Palm growers, like IOI, in both East Malaysia and Kalimantan is clearly well-documented as being one of the primary causes of the destruction of habitat that is responsible for the wiping out of the Orang Utan.

You visited a school that was designed to educate the children of immigrant Indonesian workers. Sime Darby’s logo around the school is clearly featured in a somewhat totalitarian presence, yet you speak loudly in praise of the efforts of the plantation towards educating the children of its imported workers, as if it was the ultimate gesture in philanthropy.

Might we ask if you enquired as to the situation regarding the indigenous peoples of the region, who have been deprived by Sime Darby and other large companies of their native lands to make way for these plantations? Did you ask why it is that they have not received jobs or education in the same manner, or indeed why it is that so many of the Indonesian workers have been given Identity cards and voting rights in Sabah, whereas a very large proportion of the indigenous population have not?

Is it of concern to you that these immigrant workers have been told that to keep their jobs they need to vote for the governing BN party (whose former deputy Prime Minster is the current Chairman of Sime Darby)?

Did you stop to consider that, since Sime Darby is controlled by the Malaysian Government, education of local children is clearly the basic duty of either it or its owners?

You presented a very simple picture in the films that you made for FBC Media of a terrific company that is doing nothing but good in East Malaysia. Given that there is such an enormous weight of evidence to the contrary, in terms of human rights abuses against the native peoples of Borneo, whose welfare the British handed in trust to Malaysia at the time of independence in 1963; in terms of the world’s worst rate of deforestation and in terms of Sime Darby’s current activities in Africa and elsewhere, could you comment on just how much background research you did on the subject as Shadow Environment Minister before you agreed to the Sime Darby tour and the promotional video on their behalf?”

Small guy, big ego

The Chief Minister is not used to criticism and stamps like an angry child in the face of it. This is a great weakness, because it means that wrongs are not put right and fawning publicity can make him a laughing stock.

This week his Press Secretary, Amin Sahmat, got into a terrible twist trying to explain the cancelling of the once regular post-cabinet press conferences, as reported in the Borneo Post.

First Sahmat claimed that there had never been such press conferences, so it was wrong for all the newspapers to report that these had now been cancelled.  But, then almost in the same breath, he said that the reason the press conferences (which had never been held) had been cancelled was because reporters had started asking the wrong questions!.

He explained:

“The media representatives who covered the meetings before this were found to have not asked questions specifically to what was discussed during the cabinet meeting, but instead they asked about other topics”. [Amin Sahmat Borneo Post 21/01]

The offending other topics, of course, were all the news that has come out about Taib and his family’s enormous wealth.  How did the Chief Minister come by so many companies and acquire so much state land, when his official state salary is comfortable, but modest?

Because this issue has become news everywhere else, the local reporters could hardly not ask him about it. Other cabinet matters have been rendered pretty trivial and uninteresting by comparison with the enormous corruption that has been exposed at the heart of government in Sarawak!

But, Taib cannot answer these questions.  So, he has cancelled the conferences.  Anyone can see such an action is a sign of weakness, not strength.

After all, the moment a politician can no longer answer the questions that everyone is asking, is the moment that politician should resign!

Just make it up!

Purchased publicity - Taib at the launch of yet another 'report' full of paid for praise - Inside Sarawak

But Taib is such an old and deluded dictator, that he thinks he can just make up his own version of events and no one will notice.

The Chief Minister already controls all the newspapers in Sarawak, either directly through his family ownership (Sarawak Tribune) or his business partners (Borneo Post). These papers’ main job is no longer to report the news, but to fawn over the old man’s dreary round of daily events (from now on excluding Cabinet meetings).

But Taib has gone a step further to boost his own version of reality, by commissioning a flood of PR and so-called ‘investor guides’, which are really promotions dressed up as genuine reports and analysis.

The Oxford Business Group is one such outfit, having published its ‘Country Report’ on Sarawak in October. We have already exposed this as nothing more than a bought and paid for book of praise.

Barcelona based Investvine is another similar set up, which is clearly trying to get a piece of the action (and lots of Sarawak’s tax money) by starting up with the same business model of getting politicians to pay them to produce flattering ‘investor guides’.

Investvine productions - imploring Middle East investors to put their money in corrupted Malaysia!

Their first report was on Malaysia (Najib is just as addicted to purchased praise) and their second on Sarawak. Once again both Najib and Taib are paying out millions of ringgit of taxpayers money hiring the same PR outfits to release press releases and reports to praise their activities.

Invest in Score

So, what of the looking glass world of these publications, which Taib doubtless keeps by his bedside to reassure himself that everyone thinks well of him?

Investvine is part of Taib’s fantasy drive to raise tens of billions of dollars from the Arab world to invest in his grand plans for SCORE, which aims to turn the centre of Sarawak into an ‘industrial zone’, making more money for his own family and no one much else.

Take a look at what Investvine’s fat ‘investor guide’ called Inside Sarawak informs us about Taib’s ‘brilliant’ son Abu Bekir.  The whole article is a hopeless attempt to justify the obviously unjustifiable when it comes to all the perks and privileges and positions that this none-too-clever young man has been offered.

The attempt to white-wash all the corruption involving the promotion of Taib’s son is so clumsy that it undermines its own purpose by highlighting all the issues that the people of Sarawak are so sick of.  Try this example:

“As a key figure in three major companies in Sarawak, Dato Sri Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib has to wear many hats. He is chairman of Sarawak Cable Berhad, group deputy chairman of Cahya Mata Sarawak Bhd (CMS) and also a shareholder in Titanium Management Sdn Bhd. These three positions are enough to place him among the high-profile business leaders in the state.  But Dato Sri Mahmud has another claim to fame – he is the eldest son of the state’s Chief Minister, Pehin Sri Haji Abdul Taib bin Mahmud.  However, the political blue-blood pedigree is circumstantial as far as he is concerned”![Inside Sarawak]

Who else is going to judge it circumstantial?  By trying to make excuses for such obvious nepotism the Taibs are laughably drawing further attention to the matter and they aren’t convincing anyone, except perhaps themselves.  While the fawning nonsense about ‘blue blood’ just exposes a ridiculous love of flattery!

Re-writing history. Abu Bekir's privileges and shortcomings are written up like personal triumphs!

From ‘Dear Business Leader’ to ‘Dear Leader’?

The flattering article soon becomes even more revelatory.  Because ‘Inside Sarawak’ makes clear what we have all suspected, which is that Abu Bekir will soon be mysteriously selected ‘by the people of Sarawak’ to stand in a safe BN constituency, so he can prepare to take over from his Daddy:

Dato Sri Mahmud has reportedly said that he may enter politics. He is among the favourites to replace his younger brother Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib, for the Kota Samarahan parliament seat in the general election.“I have always thought politics to be very interesting. I merely helped ‘in the background’ in the past. Now I feel that I can contribute more directly to the people”.

In fact younger brother Sulaiman has been starting to show his face in Parliament over in KL for the first time in years, so it seems he may not be so willing to hand over his neglected seat after all!  But, if it has been said in Investvine’s ‘Inside Sarawak’, then we can be certain that Taib has sanctioned the statement.

Sarawak Report insider tip

Ahmad Ibrahim - about to jump into BN politics? Sole claim to fame is he is Taib's nephew

Sarawak Report’s own inside information is in fact that Abu Bekir will be given Mukah by his Daddy and that the Kota Samarahan seat is in rather planned for his favoured cousin Ahmad Ibrahim, son of Ibrahim Mahmud (illegal recipient of many lands and favours from his brother Taib).

We can expect more fireworks from Najib if this is the case, because the UMNO PM has already had long battles with the Chief Minister about his attempts to fill practically all Sarawak’s State and Parliamentary seats with close members of his own family!

What about Titanium Management ?

Nevertheless, if Abu Bekir is to be presented as a great success as a businessman as he moves into politics, there are certainly some glaring failures to be contended with.  The Taib solution it seems has been to get ‘Inside Sarawak’ to re-write history turning his son’s famous failures into triumphs!

The most notorious affair was when Abu Bekir’s newly started company Titanium Management was given a huge contract to build bridges by his father, despite the zero experience or ability of his son in this field.

Everyone in Sarawak knows  that the project was a disaster.  Abu Bekir did not nearly complete the all bridges that had been assigned and his costs over-ran scandalously, forcing the State Parliament to almost double the payment.

But, this is how Investvine writes up the sorry story:

One of his first projects after joining Titanium Management was to rebuild dozens of bridges originally put up by his father more than 30 years ago. They managed to complete the job at a cost much less than expected.“We were concerned about replacing those bridges, especially with the new palm oil estates where the trucks were getting bigger and the old bridges struggled to take the increased load,” said Dato Sri Mahmud. “We built them at a cheaper price.”

Who do the Taib’s think they are kidding?!

While an old man retreats into his fantasy world, refusing to talk to even his own newspapers and commissioning publications that speak plain nonsense, the people of Sarawak should think long and hard about how to make the most of their opportunities of the coming election.

Don't take our forest! Bruno Manser Fund has looked behind 'development' at the real motive driving Taib - Money.

Bruno Manser Fund’s research team have done the world another favour.  They have conducted a careful and painstaking analysis of the leaked Land & Survey Department information that we first revealed on line here on Sarawak Report [click for land grab map and data].

From the BMF report we can now see clearly, in black and white, the extraordinary extent of the theft carried out by the Chief Minister and his family of Sarawak’s native and state-owned lands.

In the name of ‘development’ Taib has filched an area three times the size of Singapore for himself and close family members.  Indeed, the Chief Minister, who claims he ‘does no business in Sarawak’ is himself an owner of the company which has received most of all in terms of land, Delta Padi [see our previous expose].

Dirt cheap (or free)!

Just as outrageous is the fact that these handouts by the Chief Minister to himself and his family were made either for free or for a ridiculously low cost.  According to BMF, 50% of the land handed to Taib family companies were given out for free under the guise of “payment in kind”!

This means the poor people of Sarawak did not even get a proper premium for the land that has been taken from them, which could have at least paid for some compensation or basic amenities for the state.

What kind of government carries out this sort of theft against it people?

Kleptocracy

Leadership cult - Who is Taib that he wants to take everything?

Taib Mahmud runs what is known as a kleptocracy, from the old Greek word ‘klepto’, which means I steal.

Taib is himself a kleptocrat, which means that his primary motive, from the moment he gets up in the morning till he goes to bed in the evening, is to abuse his power to grab as much as he possibly can from the people who have placed their trust in him.

Sarawak has given a thief all the keys to the nation’s wealth and he has been stealing from them ever since!

The headline figures of the BMF report are that 200,000 hectares of native lands have been handed out to 31 Taib related companies over recent years to chop down and turn into oil palm.  Altogether these companies have paid a mere RM100million in premiums for that land, a fraction of its worth in terms of timber and palm oil production.

Take Taib’s brother Onn’s recent advertisement for his own Achi Jaya plantation lands for example.  He has been asking RM31million per acre, which makes a price of RM77million per hectare.  This would place a worth on the 200,000 hectares grabbed by Taib at an eventual RM15.4 billion!

Compare that figure to the miserable RM3.47 million that Taib’s BN state government just announced was all it could afford to allocate this year to alleviate hard-core rural poverty!

Top Ten! - The top ten Taib companies to receive land grants from .... well Taib

Consider what Sarawak could do with RM15.4billion to help the impoverished communities of the interior. What a mistake to allow such wealth to pass through the hands of greedy old Abdul Taib Mahmud!

MACC – stubbon silence

At what cost? Taib's money-making obsession has destroyed Borneo's priceless heritage

Once again this is new information that has prompted yet another call to Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Commission.

BMF in its latest press release reminds that it was only last month that the NGO presented another key dossier on the Chief Minister to the same authority, showing how Taib’s closest family members have stakes in 332 Malaysian and 85 foreign companies.  The net worth of just 14 of those companies adds up to US$1.4billion (around RM4.5billion).

Just one last statistic – Taib’s salary is around RM20,000 a month!

Moonscape ? Local people of Pulau Bruit after Taib-owned Delta Padi stripped their land

The Chief Minister of Sarawak faces the humiliation of being prosecuted for cheating members of his own community in a Kuching court. Some of the potential plaintiffs are among his own constituents!

The unprecedented plan by a group of Taib’s fellow Melanau, till now considered to be his most loyal supporters, was revealed on air today by the new-look Radio Free Sarawak, during interviews about the latest land grab figures released by the Bruno Manser Fund(BMF).

The Swiss-based NGO has analysed who received what out of the huge areas of Native Customary Lands, alienated by the Chief Minister’s own government.  Their figures (due out shortly) prove that the vast majority went into the hands of companies owned by himself and his family.

From mangrove to oil palm – new look in Pulau Bruit

In recent years alone, according to BMF, nearly a quarter of a million hectares have been taken, then lucratively logged and converted into oil palm plantations by companies owned by the Taibs personally, along with their business partners.

Among the communities worst affected are the Melanau, who have now decided to join the flood of land grab cases against the relevant companies and Taib’s State Government.

This case could be uniquely damaging to the Chief Minister, because Taib himself is registered as one of the key owners of the company that the community will be taking to court!

“Taib’s company cheated us”

Central to the accusations against the Chief Minister will be his involvement in the company Mesti Bersatu Sdn Bhd, of which he is personally registered as both a Director and Shareholder. Taib has always claimed that he “does no business in Sarawak”, however Mesti Bersatu has numerous interests, including substantial shares in the company Delta Padi Sdn Bhd.

The Chief Minister’s business profile as a Director of major land company Mesti Bersatu, one of the owners of Delta Padi!

The BMF figures show that Delta Padi  was the largest single recipient of the lands handed out to Taib’s own family!  The company received a total of 28,000 hectares of plantation land in the affected Melanau areas on the island of Pulau Bruit and around the Sibu area in return for a nominal sum to the state of just RM 6million.

RFS Presenter, Christina Suntai

Angry locals have now told Radio Free Sarawak that they received zero compensation in return for the confiscation of these lands and they say they were cheated out of their territories by false promises from Delta Padi, which the Chief Minister originally set up under the guise of a state-backed rice project.

As one community leader explained to RFS Presenter Christina Suntai, his people were told not to expect compensation when their land was confiscated in 2008, because the government would make sure they would all benefit from the rice project.

However, once the area was felled, destroying valuable mangrove areas, the company turned to oil palm instead and the locals were left with nothing:

“Taib cheated us” , he said. “This was supposed to be a paid scheme to help us, but now it is an oil palm plantation for his cronies and family” [Radio Free Sarawak, Nov 17th] 

Zero compensation while Taib makes billions

The spokesman, an inhabitant of the now ravaged island of Pulau Bruit, also pointed out that his people had been granted the area way back during the Rajah Brooke era.  Yet he said Taib, had removed it from his own people and given nothing in return.

Interviewees on the show expressed shock when they learnt of the enormous value of the timber removed by Delta Padi in their territory over the past two years and also the billions that the area will become worth to the Taib-owned company as an oil palm plantation.

Empty sea - fishing has been decimated at Pulau Bruit

The people of this region are desperately poor fishermen, whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the development following the collapse of the fish stocks, caused by the removal of the mangrove forests and the pollution of the waters of the area by fertilisers and pesticide.  Many are facing sickness and starvation along with the loss of their homes.

The PKR candidate Nicholas Mujah, who is a campaigner for native rights and also Secretary of the land rights organisation Sadia, says that the remaining 15% of the island’s forested area, which is supposed to be National Park land, is also being eroded by the logging initiated by Delta Padi.

Sadia believes that a court case could be filed over the coming days by a number of local people against the State Government and against Delta Padi.  Chief Minister Taib Mahmud would be implicated on both fronts Mujah told the Iban language programme:

“They feel they have been conned by the company, so they want their land back and they want to sue” said Mujah

Scale of graft

The vast profits which Taib Mahmud stands to make at the expense of the State in the case of Delta Padi is just one of the numerous examples that BMF has drawn from its analysis of the land grab data, which was originally released by Sarawak Report last year and can still be accessed on this site.

The NGO is due to release shortly a list of over 100 concessions handed to just over 30 companies in which Taib family members have extensive interests.  Titanium Management, owned by Taib’s son Abu Bekir, for example, has been granted valuable plantation lands larger than the land mass of Singapore in the past few years, most of it entirely for free.

Likewise, Taib’s favoured sister, Raziah Mahmud, and her influential husband the Lebanese-Australian, Robert Genied, have also received even larger estates, once again in return for a mere pittance to the Ministry of Finance (which is also headed by Taib)

PKR Candidate and land rights campaigner, Nicholas Mujah

Once again, many of these lands have been taken from local communities in defiance of their native land rights, which had been enshrined in the law.

In the case of Delta Padi local people, who received zero compensation, expressed shock and anger when RFS explained the profits such companies stand to make in turning such areas into oil plantations.

Based on the price that Taib’s brother Onn Mahmud has been asking for his own oil palm plantations of around RM1 billion for 12,000 hectares, the 28,000 hectares given to Delta Padi could become worth well over RM2billion to Taib Mahmud and his fellow shareholders!

These business partners include his own family members and close business cronies, the the timber tycoon Hii family, who own the Pullman Hotel in Kuching.

“70% of our land has now gone” villagers told RFS “land that was given to us by the White Rajah”

Taib now faces widespread suspicions among his own people that they have been cheated and abused by their relative and state leader, whom they had trusted to help them.  The suspicions are correct.

Personal profit – as a major shareholder of Mesti Bersatu, which owns 1/6th of Delta Padi, Taib stands to make millions from the timber and oil palm concessions he handed the company.

In the dock

The beneficiaries – Taib’s family and inner circle have done well out of confiscated lands

This allegation of fraud and deception has the potential for enormous damage to the already beleaguered Taib.

Not only have his people received nothing for the lands which the Taib family have taken, but clearly neither has the State of Sarawak received its rightful payment.

A mere RM 6million premium for land for lands worth billions of ringgit in the case of Delta Padi is a clear scandal.

The taxpayer of Sarawak has therefore lost money, which could have been spent on genuine development projects for those people who have been deprived of their lands and livelihoods by Taib’s self-serving projects.

Radio Free Sarawak’s latest exclusive could signal the beginning of a process that might at last bring the Timber Tyrant of Sarawak to account – as a witness in the dock of one of his own court rooms!

Walking free – Najib backed down and called off judicial persecuion

So, the New Year has seen yet another legal climbdown by BN!

First it was Taib, now it has been Najib’s turn to bottle out of a court case which should never have been brought.

The victim, Anwar Ibrahim, was genuinely surprised at the last minute decision to acquit him after three years of dogged legal persecution.

However, it turns out that even BN had started to foresee the dreadful consequences of putting the popular opposition leader in jail on charges of being gay!

A campaign was already getting underway in the UK, for example, to oppose the planned royal visit to Malaysia by William and Kate, should Anwar be locked up.  Letters had arrived at the Palace before Christmas.

That issue alone had the potential for global publicity and massive embarrassment.   It  would have horribly highlighted Malaysia’s harsh and outdated attitudes towards homosexuality, as well as the corruption of judicial independence, along with so much else.

Warning from Burma – did Malaysia want a high profile prisoner showing them up?

‘Cool Najib’ would certainly have been exposed as the square old dictator he actually is!

So no wonder all those foreign PR advisers that he favours were undoubtedly lining up to say “No! no! no!”.

Anything had to be better than creating Malaysia’s own version of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, to become a standing emblem of the country’s shameful oppression.

Najib should have realised this trap of his own making from the start.

Damage limitation backfires

Faced wih the climbdown, BN’s PR machine has gone into action  to contain this embarrassing reversal.  Their ‘spin’ has been that the acquittal ‘proves the independence of the judiciary in Malaysia after all’ and shows what a reforming and liberalising fellow Najib is!

But, consider how BN are betraying themselves by such arguments.

Firstly, they are acknowledging how dearly they would have liked to have seen their political opponent jailed for sodomy and that they were doing their best to get him banged up.  Not pretty.

Secondly, they seem to think it can be advertised as some sort of triumph that a judge has not bowed to such disgusting pressure.  What better way to draw attention to the very real concerns in Malaysia about the political interference in the independence of the judiciary?

What we all know, of course, is that Anwar’s acquittal was not a sign of the independence of the judiciary, which has been relentlessly pursuing this case at the government’s behest for the past 3 years, even though it should have been dropped at the very outset.

Rather it is a sign of Najib’s growing weakness and appalling misjudgement in bringing the prosecution in the first place – a mistake that he realised far too painfully late.

It was Najib who called off the judge.  Until that moment the courts had done his bidding by stacking all the odds against an acquittal and defying normal procedures, as the whole world knows.

Questions for Najib

Poor judgement to attack Anwar in this way – maybe he fears a genuine contest?

Which brings us all to the key burning questions that still surround Najib’s own conduct in this affair.

The evidence in this case shows that a) Najib was closely involved in the decision by Mohd Saiful to make his allegations against Anwar and b) Najib did not tell the truth about that involvement (at least to begin with), because he changed his story a number of times as evidence of his contacts with Saiful started to emerge.

So, we have a PM who was forced to admit that his original statements were not true!  He changed his evidence, not once but twice!  Surely, this is scandalous, even for a BN leader?

A useful summary of the case has been provided by Australian barrister Mark Trowell, who concludes that the evidence against Anwar was always so weak it should never have come to trial.  His record of events shows that Najib originally claimed publicly that he had never met Mohd Saiful and had had nothing to do with the bringing of the case.

When however, a photograph was produced showing Saiful in Najib’s own office, the then Deputy PM acknowledged he had in fact met with the young man, but claimed that it was only to advise him on his student grant !  (this is not something Deputy PMs very often do for bog standard students, who they don’t know).

In this second version of events Najib continued to claim there had been no mention of the issue about Anwar.

Changing stories, but no evidence. Saiful wants an appeal

But, just three days later Najib was forced to change his story again!  This time he admitted that Saiful had actually come to his own residence just days before making the allegations against Anwar and had indeed told him about the accusations of abuse that he subsequently made to the police.

Yet, even in this third version of events, Najib still maintained that he gave Saiful no advice to pursue the case or go to the police!

One has to wonder what Najib did advise young Saiful to do then?  Because it then further emerged that shortly after, the day before the alleged incident took place, the young man had a secret meeting with the Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police, Rodwan Mohd Yusof, in a room at the Concord Hotel in KL!

Such high-level attention for such a lowly guy…. and all in advance of the alleged incident!  This, of course, was the same Rodwan Mohd Yusuf, who had played a key role in the earlier discredited investigation against Anwar.  What a failure he must feel !  Two attempts to pin the same charge and both eventually shown to have no credibility.

Yet, no one should under-estimate the pernicious effects on the political target of this bungled villification. Anwar spent 5 years being tortured in jail because of the first prosecution and now for the past 3 years has been harried and distracted from his political duties by this latest relentless and distasteful court case.

Time for a new investigation and trial?

So what of the questions still hovering over Najib?  Given that the Prime Minister has himself finally admitted to giving two misleading statements, which might have seriously perverted the course of justice against Anwar Ibrahim, surely it is now Najib who should be facing an investigation into whether he entered into a conspiracy to defame and imprison his political opponent?

Since the evidence is so glaring and so much of it has been supplied by Najib himself, it would be a complete negligence by the forces of law and order if they failed to launch a thorough examination of the whole affair.

Now, that would be the genuine test of how objective the police force and judiciary of Malaysia are!

Apology that cost nothing! – Well done Malaysiakini

So, the threats and bluster have come to naught.  What a non-surprise!

Taib Mahmud launched his libel case against Malaysiakini way back in 2008, thundering from the State Assembly that the evidence that his brother’s company had accepted kickbacks from Japanese shipping companies seeking licences to export Sarawak’s timber was “lies”.

The Chief Minister had given his brother’s company, Achi Jaya, a monopoly over issuing those licences, by the way.  That in itself comprises blatant corruption and nepotism, so getting upset about the evidence of kickbacks is almost beside the point!

Why else would the well-connected Onn Mahmud be so interested in such a pen-pushing occupation, dishing out licences?  And why else would Taib bother to inflict it on him?

In fact, those kickbacks were worth at least US $2 billion a year for three decades, according to the industry and political insiders Sarawak Report has interviewed on the subject.  That figure is hardly contradicted by the millions which the Japanese tax authorities announced in 2007 had been paid over just a few years by just a few exporters to just one of Onn’s companies.  Regent Star Ltd received RM32million over 7 years.

The first law of a libel case is that it draws attention to the complainant!

"come and visit the world's oldest rainforest" - Tourism Malaysia

Having been caught out, Taib was determined to crush the upstart internet news provider that had brought this fact to the world’s attention. 

But, what a huge mistake to sue for libel!  At least, not under circumstances where the whole affair could be fairly and accurately reported. 

The reason he went ahead was that in 2008 Barisan National were not yet quite used to a media that did not say exactly what they wanted. They had long since established a corrupted monopoly over the press and broadcasting in Malaysia and they thought that was the end of the matter.  The reach of the internet, which has helped topple nasty regimes this past year in the Middle East, had yet to register with old fashioned chaps like Taib. 

By the time he realised his error, the story had ballooned and all because of his own court action.

Even so, for a long while the Chief Minister still clearly hoped he could get a way with the issue, because of his sheer wealth and power.

Since BN has established control over the courts and judiciary, the embarrassed politician was pretty hopeful that he could rig a result that could drive an outfit like Malaysiakini out of business.  A huge fine should have done it !

But, unlike BN’s own controlled press, Malaysiakini has already rapidly developed respect throughout the region (and beyond) for its professional and accurate online reporting.  The world could see that their story was based on concrete information provided by the tax authorities in Japan.  Their scoop consisted of justified and fair reporting and comment.

Oh dear!

Blame him! Taib has apparently fallen out with very rich Onn.

So, while Taib ranted and raged, everyone else could observe the perfectly obvious.  Sarawak’s Chief Minister and his family have been permitting their cronies to cut down the state’s unique and unparalleled forest estate as fast as they can – and getting rich off the back of it. 

With the court case about to finally begin at the very onset of the federal election campaign, it was clear that Taib had to settle, whatever it took.  His reputation could not stand such an assault and nor could BN’s.

I don’t mind doing it, but I mind you saying I do it!

Today’s out of court settlement has been a humiliation for Taib.  Malaysiakini didn’t have to pay him a cent. 

What a huge mistake, all caused by anger.

Indeed, it is funny how some people are prepared to do all sorts of sinful things and yet get terribly angry and upset when others mention it.  They seem to think that if they keep their sins secret, then they are not really sins! 

But, if Taib cares so much about what the world thinks, then he and his family should appear less rich. Because if you don’t want to be thought a crook, then don’t act like one.

So it was, that, as Taib’s libel case dragged on, it reminded the world, time and again, that he had handed his brother a monopoly over shipping licences and that his brother had subsequently become extraordinarilly rich.  

Moreover, people were reminded that the whole Mahmud family have also become suddenly and unaccountably wealthy, thanks to a slew of monopolies, licences, concessions and state contracts handed them by Taib at the expense of the people he was in office to represent.

Once again, the first law of a libel case is that if you have things to hide, don’t bring one. 

Reputation? What reputation?

Given that Taib is a trained lawyer, it was a really bad mistake to forget this rule about libel.  Clearly, he had failed to recognise that the internet age has outstripped the totalitarian controls over media and the law that regimes like BN have imposed in countries like Malaysia. 

Because of the internet, for the last 4 years he has been trying to defend a reputation that has long since been mud.

Freedom or captivity ? What does it take?

He did succeed in rigging the case.

He got the courts to make an unprecedented ruling that the hapless  defendent, Malaysiakini, should present their defence before they had even heard the plaint!  This has never happened before, because such a practice would be so unfair.  Taib swung the unheard of ruling, none-the- less.

But clearly, even with this outrageous advantage, the Chief Minister’s lawyers (and what sense he has left), were urgently advising that the last thing the tainted Chief Minister of Sarawak needed in the run up to the Federal election was for the details of how he runs Sarawak to be trawled over in open court!

All those monopolies; all those landgrabs from the state and native peoples; all that environmental destruction and all his monstrous wealth to be raked through in the dock in horrible detail!  Think of the sorts of questions Taib would have been asked in the witness box:

“Chief Minister, you attained a scholarship to university on the basis you were a penniless student.  You then went straight into public office on a modest fixed salary for the following 40 years.  How is it, therefore, that you and all your once impoverished family are now amongst the richest people in Malaysia, while the natives who lost their forests and their lands and their minerals and oil to your rapacious ‘policies’ have nothing?  Indeed they are poorer than they were under the White Rajahs a hundred years ago!  How come?”

It is plain to the whole world that Taib thought about facing such questions in open court and decided, very sensibly, that he would rather not! 

Who could avoid noting however, that any honest, religious and decent man, caught up in such accusations of graft, would have welcomed the opportunity to put the record straight?

Yet in Taib’s case, even the most wild and optomistic Bomoh would have been mad to suggest he take the stand in a trial about kickbacks.  Libel is about defending a reputation and Taib doesn’t have one anymore – his record speaks for itself.

Saying sorry is cheap!

Blond bomoh advisor - Stellah is Taib's witch doctor

So, Malaysiakini has got off having to face one of the most rich and powerful men in Malaysia in a rigged trial. 

Taib had been trying to get a settlement for months, but they had bravely refused to buckle. This, despite the rigged court, the fact their reporter on the story had meanwhile died and the decision by the Japanese tax authorities to drop their own prosecution on the kickbacks.

But, let us be clear, the Japanese tax authorities have not said the money was not paid after all. 

Yes, it was paid – all RM32 million of it. 

The Japanese have just bowed to the argument that it is impossible to do business in Sarawak without paying kickbacks to the corrupt authorities – in this case Taib’s own brother!

It is for this outrageous reason that the implicated Japanese shipping merchants have been allowed to write off their bribes as a ‘business expense’ after all. Malaysia’s ruling BN, in charge of the world’s 3rd most corrupted country has to answer to that indignity. And Japan has to answer to the international community.

To get out of such discussions in court during an election, the desperate CM, who had once threatened to use all his power over the legal system to fine and destroy and possibly even imprison journalists, agreed to a simple little ‘apology’ in the light of the Japanese decision not to prosecute.

So easy..

Malaysiakini had refused his original offer to drop the case if they paid towards Taib’s massive legal expenses. 

They also refused his revised offer to pull out if they just paid a teeny wincy few thousand ringgit, so that he could say they had to pay damages.

But, when he came back just asking for a statement saying sorry in return for dropping the case – well why not?!

An apology, especially a qualified apology, based on a change in approach by the Japanese prosecutors, has cost them nothing! 

Taib has lost his revenge…. and his reputation as well!

Snowy silence from the Swiss won’t shut up the corruption campaigners!

Taib did not get the response that he wanted from the Swiss Government yesterday.  But he did buy some time.

In answer to questions from MP Maya Graf in the Bern Federal Parliament, the Swiss Finance Minister, Evelyn Widmer Schlum, fell back on traditional Swiss secrecy!

The country’s financial regulators FINMA would not be able to publicise the findings from their investigations into Taib’s assets, Widmer-Schlumpf explained, owing to Swiss confidentiality laws.

She announced that FINMA has ”no possibility, nor the right“ to disclose any information on its findings to the public. Rather, it ”will inform the directly affected persons only“ on the results of its investigations.

Those interested parties are, presumably, Taib himself and the Malaysian Government.  But what about the people of Sarawak, who have lost billions in revenue owing to the Chief Minister’s handouts of public property, concessions and contracts to his own companies and to his family?

Still on the hook!

Swiss Finance Minister, Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf

While this cryptic response has infuriated campaigners, who had been given to understand that Switzerland’s new drive for more openess in its banking system would bring swift and clear answers, it has done little to help Taib.

The reply that would have benefitted the Chief Minister, of course, would have been a straight confirmation of his own declaration earlier in the year, after the investigation was announced, that he had no assets in Switzerland at all!

Indeed, Sarawak’s billionaire politician had laid his reputation on the line by standing up in his own state assembly and announcing:

 “Let me state categorically that I have no secret Swiss bank account, nor assets or investments of any description. None whatsoever”.[Taib Mahmud statement]

The Swiss Finance Minister has refused to corroborate this statement.  Instead her reply seems to give the strong impression that there ARE interested parties who need to be informed of the results of this investigation!

How long are his secrets safe?

Maya Graf – Green MP, Swiss Parliament

Campaigners are hardly going to allow the situation to rest there.  The Swiss, who have been trying to wipe clean their reputation as a country that made itself rich off the back of Nazi gold and the ill-gotten gains of the world’s worst dictators, are in the middle of a national argument over ending its obsessive banking secrecy.

The Finance Ministry may be on the side of conservatism, however the former President Micheline Calmy-Rey, who ordered the enquiry, made clear that she was in favour of openess  and yesterday the Green MP Maya Graf said:

“I am disappointed that the Swiss government is hiding behind the Swiss banking secrecy and thus helps promote corruption in countries with weak governments.  There is no point in complaining about the destruction of the world’s tropical rainforests as long as Western countries assist corrupt families like the Taibs enrich themselves by cutting down the forests.”

It is not the sort of endorsement that Taib would have wished for from Switzerland and it is a clear sign that the story is by no means finished as campaigners step up their noise on this matter.  The Sarawak-focused Bruno Manser Fund demanded:

“How can it be that our authorities will inform a corrupt potentate but not the public on the findings of their investigations?“[BMF press release]

Taib will know that the longer an issue is bottled up, the bigger the bang when it is finally un-corked!

So what about Monaco?

The Taib family attracted Tatler Magazine to wallow in their wealth in Monaco last year

Of course, the speculation has been that it is likely that Taib has already removed his assets from Switzerland.  The tightening of banking laws and moves towards better scrutiny of criminal customers has caused the flight of a great number of rich clients, who no longer feel so secure from investigation, despite the stand that was taken by the Finance Minister yesterday.

Many felt that Taib’s comments in the Assembly were carefully worded, in that he denied having assets in Switzerland now, but not in the past.

Indeed, those close to the Chief Minister have remarked that his trips ‘to see his Swiss dentist’ have dropped off markedly in recent years and that he currently appears to favour more detours to Monaco!

Likewise, Prince Albert’s tax-haven has become a popular haunt for Taib family members in recent years and it is a place where they are happy to put their flashy couture on full display.

Prince Albert’s Foundation (which supports the environment!) has also become a major beneficiary of Taib’s largesse, including a fat 100,000 euro cheque presented at the Islamic Fashion Show in Monaco last year and an expenses paid tour to Mulu National Park for the Prince and his entourage.

Currently on trial for fraud – Kallakis (left) enjoys Mulu with Prince Albert, Jabu and Robert Geneid (right)

It is worth noting that a prominent member of that Mulu entourage, Achilleas Kallakis, then on the Board of Albert’s Foundation, is now on trial in the UK, charged with conducting Britain’s largest ever mortgage fraud, involving the purchase of properties to the value of £850 million (RM 5 billion).

Interestingly, the trial has currently been put on hold while some 8,000 new papers are considered.  These papers have just been released by the Swiss authorities and relate to Kallakis’s alleged collaborator, a Swiss lawyer called Michael Becker.

Kallakis has previously acknowledged that the wealth behind his investments was not in fact his own, but came from a ‘family trust’, based in Switzerland.  Once again Swiss secrecy laws seem to have been actively used in an attempt to protect the identity of the owner of those millions that Kallakis was investing in his property empire.  However, in this case the authorities have clearly come round.

It means that the full story may eventually come out in London’s Southwark Crown Court when the case re-opens in January.  With the Swiss documents placed before the court we might finally get to hear more details of how this enormous property fraud developed, involving the company Atlas Management, which was originally set up in London by a Malaysian National, one ‘Mr Azlina Goh Abdullah’ (a man with a woman’s name).  It was later taken over by Kallakis and alleged co-conspirator, Alexander Williams, while keeping its headquarters at the same address.

Depending on the extent of the transparency allowed in the release of the Swiss papers, we might even learn which family trust Kallakis was investing on behalf of, during those years when he was dazzling Europe with his flamboyant apparent wealth and even found his name near the top of the UK’s Sunday Times Rich List.

The family who sponsored Kallakis, at least, may well be wishing they had not hidden their money in Switzerland after all.

Tight lipped – He once lapped up attention, but now the door is slammed shut

For the first time in 30 years Abdul Taib Mahmud has cancelled the traditional press conference, normally held at the Wisma Bapa Malaysia after the weekly Cabinet meeting. 

Even more astonishing, the journalists were barred from the building, as if they were unwanted intruders.

It is often such small, but extremely strange signs, that make us aware of developments that are seismic behind the scenes.  Like when a beach suddenly bares before a tsunami or there is rumbling before an earthquake.

So what has made Taib act so out of character?  What pressure is he under that he and his ministers have suddenly decided they dare not face what has for so long been their ’lapdog’ press?

The inescapable conclusion is that the evidence has now piled so high, that Taib suddenly realises that he can no longer brush aside the questions about his corruption and the squalid wealth of his family, both in Sarawak and abroad.

With the issue now making headlines in Malaysia and reaching the international news, even the controlled pressmen of Sarawak would not be able to avoid asking questions about  it.  And, by cancelling the press conference, it seems clear that Taib has no idea how to answer them. 

It is a sign of fatal weakness at the heart of his regime that Taib no longers dares to face the press.

Lost for answers!

Family company CMS built the DUN – now it is full of hostile questions directed at Taib

People should remember that Taib has already been suffering under siege in the State Assembly. 

He may have been able to rig the recent election to produce his customary 2/3 majority of seats yet again, but even after all the bribery and manipulation 45% of voters still voted against him and there now is a strong body of PR opposition YBs, who are fearlessly giving him a far tougher time than before.

So how has he dealt with their outraged questions about corruption and cronyism?  How has he met their complaints about lands and contracts being handed out to his unqualified children and siblings, instead of being tendered properly for the benefit of the people of Sarawak?

It turns out he has been reduced to having to switch off their microphones, rub out their statements from the Hansard record and even to throwing these individuals with their rightful concerns physically out of the DUN building! 

The only reason for such a farcical reaction has to be that he finds such questions impossible to answer, so he needs to pretend that they haven’t been asked.

In exactly the same way, now that it is the turn of the press to ask the same set of questions, he has been forced to lock the doors and shut them out!

The questions that Taib is frightened of being asked 

So, what are the questions that any decent set of journalists would have put to Taib, if he had agreed to open the door?  We suggest the following top five:

“Chief Minister, how do you explain the US$1.5 billion dollars worth of assets that have been acquired by members of your immediate family through just 14 of the more than 400 companies that they own?”

“Chief Minister, you claimed that you and your family ‘do no business in Sarawak to avoid being hounded by accusations that you have used your influence to enrich yourself’.  So how do you explain the over 300 companies in Sarawak that you and your family own shares in?”

“Chief Minister, your dead wife is the largest single shareholder of Sarawak’s largest single company, CMS.  Yet she passed away two years ago.  So who is her beneficiary?”

“Chief Minister, why do you keep handing out all the most valuable state lands and state contracts to members of your own family in secret deals, instead of putting them out to open tender?”

“Chief Minister, given that dual citizenship is illegal, is your eldest daughter, Jamilah, Malaysian (as it says on the records of the 87 Sarawak companies in which she holds shares) or is she Canadian, as admitted by her husband Sean Murray?” 

There are, of course, numerous other questions that eager journalists, given half a chance might unleash on the Chief Minister and we suggest that contributors to our comments column put theirs forward too.  These are also questions that should rightly be asked by the Malaysian police force, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and, of course, Taib’s political colleagues and the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

Jobs for the newsmen

Sarawak – full of stories for newsmen

Now that Taib is no longer so interested in talking to the press it is going to give them a bit of a challenge.  After all, for the past decades Sarawak newspapers have relied for every page on tedious stories recording the aging Taib and his colleagues’ daily movements, without question or criticism.

The Borneo Post is largely owned by his timber crony Henry Lau of KTS and the Sarawak Tribune is half-owned by his cousin Hamed Sepawi and edited by his own daughter Hannifah Taib.  Their fawning praise has, unsurprinsingly, never faltered. 

However, if the Chief Minister is no longer going to provide them with a constant stream of ‘stories’ about his comings and goings and lhis atest theories on ‘progress and development’, what can we suggest for them to write about instead?

Again, we would be happy to see suggestions in our comments column.  However, we think that the journalists of Kuching should roll up their trouser legs and get out on the roads to examine some of Sarawak’s  devastated interior and visit some of Sarawak’s disinherited tribes?

Progress and development? Sarawak’s dreadful roads

They could consider why the majority of the population no longer have clean rivers and fish to provide food and water.  They could cover the landgrab scandal.  They could demonstrate the effects of erosion. They could look at the lamentable health problems of the population and ask how corruption has interfered with proper medical care.

They could look at schooling and why it still fails so many native Dayaks?  Why promised roads are not being delivered?  They could document the gangster attacks on behalf of loggers and go searching to see what remains of Sarawak’s once fabled biodiversity – its trees and animals.

They could feature the lives and problems of some of the ordinary folk of Sarawak, instead of boring everyone to death with yet more dreary and depressing articles about Abdul Taib Mahmud, the ancient Chief Minster, who dare not step down for fear that his successor might challenge all his ill-gotten gains!