Taib’s sister Raziah Mahmud, draped in jewels and finery.

The Taib family are far from coy when it comes to flaunting their riches.

Taib himself is recognisable by his chauffeur driven Rolls Royce and walnut sized gems and his wife is often photographed dripping in jewels.

But this month’s Malaysia Tatler Ball gave Taib’s tycoon sister Raziah Mahmud-Geneid and her family a fresh chance to boast and gave us a reason to remind you just where the money came from.

Having sold off one of their million dollar properties in Sydney earlier this year, the Geneids have been partying in designer Valentino and Cavelli dresses and suits with Malaysia’s high flyers this month.

Tatler previously described Raziah as “a frequent traveller, flying round the world to wheel and deal” and has now branded her part of the “Tatler Tribe”.

Describing this month’s ball, the Tatler website boasts that:

“After walking the red carpet, guests were ushered into a resplendent cocktail area that dripped of sophistication with black drapes and tablecloths. Following the cocktail reception, distinguished guests adjourned to the grand ballroom for the dinner party where they wined and dined on the finest haute cuisine, a scrumptious 5-course gourmet dinner.”

The Taib family have a particular penchant for displaying their wealth.

However, recent claims by the Governor’s London lawyers that the family enjoy inherited wealth are wrong.

Cousin Yukub (son of Tufail Mahmud) boasts his own presence at the ball by “eating forbidden fruit” – would that be from stolen oil palm plantations?

When Taib, his sister Raziah and 9 siblings were young (i.e. before he entered politics) their family was dirt poor.

We have previously exposed how Raziah and her husband Robert Geneid themselves became rich, thanks to brother Taib’s lucrative state concessions, all at the expense of Sarawak’s indigenous communities.

Similar plundering has been carried out by Taib’s other family members, his children and brothers like Tufail, Onn, and Arip in particular.

Robert Geneid, a Lebanese Australian, has fought back against the various exposes of his dubious gains at the expense of Sarawak’s natives by investing in a number of websites, in which he portrays himself as a business “philanthropist” and “ecologically sensitive”.

“Philanthropist” Robert Geneid

Siphoning money from Sarawak

So where did the money come from?

As well as benefitting from huge state construction contracts, Raziah and Robert have been granted thousands of hectares of oil palm plantation in Sarawak, none of which are mentioned on Mr Geneid’s online websites.

In a series of deals between 2005 and 2008, Raziah was handed land amounting to roughly 20,000 hectares of forest.

Much of this was Native Customary Land.  In Sebangan we exposed her company Quality Concrete for attempting to illegally force locals to surrender one of these concessions for a pittance of just RM250 per family.

The courts ruled against this ploy by Quality Concrete and in 2011 the company was ordered by the Kuching High Court to pay the natives of Sebangan RM160,000 for encroaching on 3,305 hectares of NCR land.

Elia Geneid in £5,000 (RM26,000) Valentino dress

Mulu’s ‘eco resort’

We have also previously exposed how the Taib/Geneid family control the 5* Royal Mulu Resort in Sarawak’s UNESCO World Heritage Mulu National Park.

Despite Robert Geneid insisting that he handles the area with “care and attention” and “works with local communities”,  the construction of the hotel was responsible for the forced acquisition of native lands from indigenous Berawan communities in the state.

This year, along with a string of judgements in favour of native rights against the State Government run by Raziah’s brother Taib Mahmud, the high court concurred that the land for the Mulu Resort airport was illegally confiscated from the Berawan without compensation.

Yet, despite warnings from this website and others, this hotel is set to become part of the Marriott group as their first ever ‘nature resort’.

It is a mistake that Marriott is likely to eventually regret.

WARNING – Do not ally with the Taibs if you are seeking eco-credentials!

Meanwhile, the rest of Raziah’s family has also been tucking into the riches of Sarawak, as if they owned them.

And thanks to the booty they were also there flaunting the proceeds at Tatler’s tacky KL ball.

Elia’s sister Esha was also flashing unearned wealth

Elia Geneid, Raziah’s eldest daughter (clad in a Valentino gown worth RM25,000) was, for example, granted 9,320 ha of palm oil concessions on NCR land in Bintulu by her uncle’s so-called Land Custody and Development Agency.

And her sisters are equally happy to be seen in the ‘high society’ of such events displaying wealth plundered from the public.

After all, if anyone still wonders how all these dresses and jewels are paid for, we recently highlighted how 17 Bidayuh villages from Sarawak came together to protest against another company owned by the Geneid family who have grabbed their sacred land on Mount Serumbu.

Marriott Hotels should therefore stand on notice, as they gear up to advertise their ‘eco-resort’ and welcome tourists to their ‘jungle paradise’.

There is plenty of information at hand for those who will be advising those tourists that these claims bear no relation to the truth about Sarawak and the owners of Mulu.

Raziah Mahmud, one of the “Tatler Tribe” – but you can’t buy class

Suspicious – installations have appeared on masts like these in Sarawak, which experts say include probable jamming devices.

The multi-award winning Radio Station, Radio Free Sarawak (RFS), has today announced that, after months of deliberate jamming and disruption, it is suspending its shortwave broadcasts.

Friday 14th November will be the last shortwave transmission on its 15420 slot until further notice, although the station will retain its web presence.

The decision was taken after audiences had been driven to frustration by signal disruption and in particular a new  form of electronic interference, believed to be caused by a network of jamming devices, which appear to have been erected in various localities around Sarawak.

These local jammers are extremely expensive to buy and have a limited local range of a few miles. However they are highly effective.

It means that the Sarawak authorities appear to have invested millions of ringgit in several devices, in order to silence one single independent radio platform.

Radio Free Sarawak had specialised in allowing native communities to speak out about their problems, including deforestation, land grabs and the frenzy of dam building now hitting their regions.

It recently won the Communication for Social Change Award 2014, awarded by the University of Queensland Australia and last year the International Press Institute’s ‘Pioneer of Media Freedom Award 2013‘ for this service to isolated Sarawak communities.

Bidayuh women from the timber trouble-spot Melikin listening to the show

However, the programme, which has been broadcasting for four years every evening except Sundays for 1 1/2 – 2hours a day, said the number of listeners had recently plummeted because of the disruption and therefore the shortwave transmission were no longer cost effective.

The station says that besides the local jamming, the state government has continued to hire external jamming broadcasts from Moldova, in order to make a wider attack on the station’s broadcasts.

“Our audiences are dedicated and enthusiastic and they hugely miss listening to our programmes.  However, this state government has thrown everything at us”, says the founder and editor Clare Rewcastle Brown (Editor of this site)  

“We have identified and confronted the Belgium based agent, who has been behind much, if not all, of this jamming jihad against us and what we can verify is that his services are very expensive.  

“It costs millions to erect this sort of local equipment and the long range jamming from Russia and Moldova also costs hundreds of thousands of ringgit.  

“It is very sad that the Sarawak authorities have spent this money on silencing freedom of speech, instead of improving services in education and health and other such needy matters, which have been raised by the radio station.

They have shown their true colours by doing so and also their fear of a single, small voice of criticism”

Ludo Maes – radio silencer

A Penan tribesman listening to RFS

It is just two weeks since the radio team identified and publicly confronted the agent who has been identified as one of the main players behind the jamming of their broadcasts.

Belgium broadcast agent Ludo Maes functions as broker for legitimate and pro-democracy stations, but also runs a highly lucrative side-line in selling equipment that could be used for jamming.

He is widely suspected to be the agent behind a number of jamming operations against freedom radio stations and he has been formally identified as the person who organised the jamming of RFS broadcasts during the 2011 state elections.

It has been established that he payed a large up-front fee to a broadcast station in Russia to deliberately transmit on the same frequency as RFS.

Insiders have confirmed to Sarawak Report that Maes was indeed commissioned and paid by Malaysian agents.

Sting!

Maes claimed he never jams radio stations, yet he had offered to ‘project manage’ just such a project

To establish whether Maes, who advertises a variety of transmitters and antennae for sale, was indeed willing to take on commissions to disrupt democracy radio stations RFS personnel contacted him last month.

They went to Belgium posing as agents for an African regime that was wishing to silence another freedom radio station and after a short interview Maes readily agreed to supply the necessary equipment and to show them how to use it.

Even though Maes stressed that jamming is illegal, he claimed to the prospective purchasers that he was doing nothing wrong, because he could not be held responsible for how his buyers used the equipment.

Yet Maes then went on to offer to ‘project manage’ the operation to help make sure it was “as effective as possible”.

He had thereby offered to participate in the bogus jamming project in a leading capacity, undermining his claims that he has had no role in the attacks on Radio Free Sarawak.

Silenced -

Sarawak Report asks how Mr Maes can on the one hand justify his claim to support “pro-democracy radio projects” as a broadcast agent, while at the same time being prepared to offer his services to jam broadcasts in a secretive operation on behalf of an African regime?

So far, Mr Maes has failed to contact Sarawak Report after his ‘outing’ in Brussels, even though he was invited to do so.

Flame of freedom never dies

This weekend the team of broadcasters at RFS have made clear the station will not close under this pressure, despite suspending broadcasts.

The team will continue on the project and seek other ways of transmitting their broadcasts:

“Freedom finds another way and it is always one step ahead of oppression”, commented its well-known founding DJ/Presenter Peter John Jaban.

The station expects to be back in 2015 and to be reaching its audiences, thereby putting to waste the millions of ringgit that have been spent on silencing its voice in 2014.

Longhouse listeners – exercising their democratic rights.

Sarawak’s chain of custody of logs is deliberately kept weak, so no one can prove the origin of timber in ponds like this

Jaws have been slowly dropping around Sarawak and Malaysia – and then on around the world.

Earlier today the new Chief Minister, Adenan Satem, echoed Malaysia’s former Prime Minister and condemned the timber corruption in Sarawak!

The conversion of either men to this cause is wholly surprising, given that both are long time political associates of Governor Taib Mahmud, who has savaged this website and other concerned NGOs for criticising this very corruption.

Taib has for decades denied that Sarawak’s timber corruption even existed or that the people and the environment were suffering.

Now, it seems that Sarawak Report has gone from being an ‘enemy of the state‘ to speaking as with one voice with the leaders of BN!.

Adenan complained that some enforcement officers say they are too afraid of the notorious timber gangsters (existence of which previously denied) – how more so poor native landowners like this?

After all, for years we have deplored illegal practices by the major crony timber companies and the appalling destruction of the Borneo rainforest.

And we have protested at how native communities have been cajoled and tricked and violently bullied from their lands by these companies, whose practices have caused the silting of rivers and immeasurable eco-destruction.

Today, at a rare gathering of timber tycoons at the Forestry Department Satem finally agreed:

Don’t mess with me

“Don’t mess with me!” he told the shocked timber bosses, naming the big six KTS, Rimbunan Hijau, Samling, Shin Yang, Ta Ann and WTK as directly responsible for what he called “this robbery which is carried out in broad daylight.”.

The timber companies had all been summoned by the new chief minister to sign an ‘integrity pledge’ and found themselves subjected to a raging ticking off about lost revenues to the state.  According to The Star:

‘He described the present state of corruption as “very bad, a reflection of what enforcement officers have not been doing”. “Some, of course not all, pretend they don’t know. The reason is very simple; either they are stupid, cowards or corrupt,”’

“We must put a stop to (illegal logging),” he further said. “We are not only losing (revenue), we are losing our international reputation.” – [malaysian insider]

And, says Malaysiakini, Adenan vowed to ““put the fear of God into people who are dishonest”.

He certainly grabbed the headlines and shocked his VIP audience of timber barons and senior politicians and state officials in the process.

Destructive hillside logging

Don’t disown the problem

In his attack on Sarawak’s rampant timber corruption Satem fingered a key issue that has been swept under the carpet for years in his statement, which is the way that illegal logging is carried out by third parties or so-called sub-contractors of the big six, so that they can deny responsibility for logging outside of proper concession areas.

He also referred to the blatant failure by forestry officials to identify or tackle the problem.

The reason for the lack of supervision is clear when you see Sarawak Report’s own recent expose detailing the blatant bribery practices employed by big companies to silence these forestry officials.

Adenan Satem signalled that he has now deployed the MACC to investigate all this corruption and to prosecute those responsible.

But who actually is really responsible?

Where is the timber – and the money?

However, the new CM, despite his commendable condemnation of corruption, failed to mention the biggest elephant in the room.

He did not address how come all these companies and officials have got away for decades with this greedy and corrupted destruction of Sarawak’s native lands?

It’s not as if voices like Sarawak Report and many many others have not been drawing attention to the problem.

It is not as if native protestors have not gathered to try and prevent it and build blockades against the logging.

The real blame, of course, lies with Adenan’s own political allies in BN, including his own long-term boss Taib Mahmud.

These are the politicians who have taken vast kickbacks from timber exports and accepted bags of cash from timber tycoons in return for concessions.

Most have hefty shares in the companies which have taken licences in their own constituencies.

Fruits of timber corruption – Taib’s $1 dollar Seattle mansion handed over from Samling.

Consider the two fancy mansions that Taib’s own family received in Seattle USA from Samling’s Yaw family for the cost of just $1 each, for example.

Or, the many shares handed to Taib’s personal bomoh in Samling Global alone.

It’s not just the Taibs who have been benefitting from timber and plantation concessions and the logging out of dam areas such as Bakun.

A whole raft of his political underlings have also been grabbing at major concessions.  Jacob Sagan, Awang Tengah, Alfred Jabu, Naroden Majais, Billy Abit Joo, Lihan Jok, Daud Abdul Rahman are some of the bigger fish exposed in this blog, but is there a single BN YB or MP who has not benefitted in some way from the plunder?

In fact, the only reason timber corruption has been allowed to flourish at such enormous levels for so long is that practically every BN politician in Sarawak has been up to his own neck in these practices under Taib Mahmud – and because Taib himself was the worst of the lot.

Clean sweep or a chip off the old block? Satem was Taib’s college pal and long-term side-kick

Indeed, when Satem made a personal pledge to allow no concessions or contracts for his own family on taking office and asked the rest of the political establishment to join him, he got not one single other minister or YB to agree.

Today that matter was raised by questioners and the chief minister again assured that he was in the process of getting his BN colleagues to join his so-called ‘integrity pledge’… “soon”.

It looks like being slow progress indeed.

And, with such a bunch of rogues still in charge, how can Adenan hope for a genuine solution to this problem?

Instead, cynics will be questioning if this latest BN chief minister is merely planning to do what his BN predecessors all themselves did before him?

This was to call in all the timber licences and to refuse to re-issue them, unless they got their own secret 30% in kickbacks!

Could this be Adenan’s real game, some are inevitably asking?

Can BN perform such surgery on itself?

For decades BN politicians have turned a deaf ear to cries of corruption

Because, if Adenan Satem’s real agenda is genuine reform, then he needs to tackle not only the timber industry and corrupt officials in the forestry department.

He must also tackle political corruption and at the highest levels.

With the help of this MACC investigation Adenan must first sack his own boss and long term political ally and relative and college friend, Taib Mahmud (remember Taib appointed him because he reckoned he could trust him to continue to be servile).

Then he must get rid of all the other BN hangers on, who have cheated their own communities to get rich and then prosecute the lot.

To do all that to his own party he needs all the help he can get!

The still powerful Dr Mahathir for a start should come out as his ally in this belated battle against corruption.

Nevertheless, these reforming BN politicians, if by any chance they are sincere, will soon find out how painful and difficult it is to perform surgery on oneself.

Now that the disease is recognised, they would do better to submit to the untainted hands of others.

It is something most voters are likely to agree on.

Ooops! I didn’t quite mean what I said.

It took a mere 24 hours for the ‘clarifications’ to emerge over the Chief Minister’s vote-fishing remarks about combating corruption yesterday.

NGO’s were still trumpeting Adenan’s ‘change of heart‘, while he sounded his own change of tune….. by explaining what he had really meant to say.

Following the furore over his condemnation of timber corruption in Sarawak, Mr Satem hastily rang round the press, confirming he had not meant to cast aspersions against any senior timber tycoons, large companies or (naturally) a single BN politician.

No, he was referring to the small fry.

It is those lowly ‘sub-contractors, camp managers and workers‘, who are now apparently to blame for tearing out  Sarawak’s remaining jungle regions.

Also, of course, an army of petty officials for turning a blind eye to the problem.

As for those politicians and political relatives, who are on record for owning substantial shares in the logging companies concerned?

How beastly to suggest any of them should be held accountable!

 “What I said was that I want them [the timber tycoons] to monitor their subcontractors, camp managers, supplies and workers closely as I don’t want to see any of them failing to adhere to the pledge,” Adenan said.

“Some of the newspapers misrepresented what I said,” he added.

He admitted that corruption and illegal logging “are very serious” in the timber industry in the Sarawak, adding that he wanted these timber companies help the government to monitor it.

Adenan said if illegal logging and corruption were not stopped it would cause the state not only to lose millions of ringgit in terms of revenue, but also give a bad name to the state.

When he said not to“mess with me”, he meant these illegal loggers and corrupt people” [Malaysiakini]

Meanwhile, Satem pointed out that his friendly timber tycoons and a bunch of officials and politicians have now got together to sign a ‘corporate integrity pledge‘.

Sitting pretty – timber tycoon, Shin Yang’s Ling Chiong Sieng’s, Miri Mansion

So, that’s ok then.

BN can now set about locking up some camp workers and forest department officials – and then storm ahead to win all the seats in the state election!

What won’t wash

Unfortunately, certain things just won’t wash with this tactic of blaming the little guys.

Let’s start by following the money – those billions that Adenan has complained are being stolen through illegal logging.

Is it the camp managers, forest department officials and sub-contractors who are building vast homes, buying silly cars and investing billions overseas – or is it Sarawak’s timber tycoons and top politicians?

We all know the answer.

Why so hard to meet international monitoring requirements?

Then consider the logistics – we are not talking about stealing tiny diamonds or light feathers.

We are talking about socking great big logs; expensive heavy machinery and complex storage and shipping arrangements.

So, how could sub-contractors go about felling thousands of hectares of timber from under the noses of the greedy concession holders, who are armed with geo-sat technology, helicopters and gangs of ‘tough individuals’, without their complicity in the arrangement?

And finally, consider the management of these operations – why so slack?

After all, how can it be that the arrangements at the timber camps are so disorderly that it has become impossible to prove the origin of incoming logs and how come Sarawak has refused to improve its verification procedures, in line with the recommendations of international monitors?

Are we to conclude that these super-rich timber tycoons are really so dopey in running their businesses, or are we merely witnessing a convenient arrangement for distancing illegal behaviour by the use of ‘third parties’?

Hard to spot? Easy to organise ‘under the radar’?

Surely, the direction of the money shows us the answers to these questions and where the MACC should be focusing their attention?

Who is bribing who?

There is much more, of course.

Sarawak Report has exposed how forestry officials are bribed to produce false reports on illegal logging.

And we exposed how the people bribing them were the company Samling.

We have further evidence, which shows that exactly the same behaviour is being adopted by other big logging companies and it is this that the MACC should be investigating, not petty camp managers who are just doing their bosses bidding and trying to earn a bent penny in the process (as their ‘betters’ have taught them to do).

Do small sub-contractors and camp workers have the funds to mobilise machines like these?

But, if any of this corruption is to be rooted out, Adenan has to address why this scandal has been known about and complained about for years and years and years, but nothing has been admitted officially till now?

Indeed, BN politicians have outright denied the problem all this time, while at the same time building their fancy houses and riding round in their silly cars.

How come?

Sarawak Report has worked on providing the proof of the pudding in this matter.

We have shown time and again how these BN politicians have been taking timber concessions for themselves, along with shares in logging companies.

Yet, there they were today, all lining up behind one of the worst offenders in the matter, none other than Awang Tengah, whose personal assistant’s company was hiring gangsters to beat up locals in Melikin earlier this year, to enforce the illegal logging of their native lands.

At the same time as solemnly signing their ‘integrity pledges’ to eradicate illegal logging these BN politicians are also backing a motion with the DUN privileges committee to move against the MP Violet Yong, who has pointed out the hypocrisy in this matter and criticised Tengah.

Can BN perform the necessary surgery on itself?

What is the difference between legal and illegal logging in a corrupted state where politicians have ignored the rulings of the courts?

So, within 24 hours of acting out the big hero, it turns out that Satem is the sort of general who blames his foot soldiers.

The kind of warlord who knows nothing of atrocities carried out by underlings.

And his ‘integrity pledges’ are merely designed to win votes and squeeze big businesses, while letting them off the hook.

Instead, he plans to hit some poor nobodies with all the blame.

Time to remember that Adenan Satem was the Governor Taib Mahmud’s side-kick for decades.

Adenan Satem was chosen by Taib, in the face of opposition in his party.

And Adenan Satem has pledged to continue with Taib’s dam building frenzy in Sarawak, which will cause as much deforestation as all the illegal logging put together so far.

Consider how Satem is personally backing the illegal loggers MM Golden, which is using state police and gangsters to force its way into native lands in Baram, in order to build a construction road for the as yet unauthorised Baram Dam.

He can sign all Sarawak up to his ‘integrity pledges’, but Adenan Satem must speak by his actions not mere words.

UMNO have marginalised themselves Tian Chua told listeners in London

The Vice-President of PKR, Tian Chua, drew a substantial body of listeners in London on Sunday night, after a tour of Europe that included several days in discussion with EU officials in Brussels.

Questions focused on the unravelling financial ‘horror story’ surrounding revelations about the Prime Minister’s pet project of 1MDB, which now appears to be in debt to the tune of over USD$40billion.

Tian Chua pointed out that the scandal had a particularly awkward aspect to it, compared to earlier financial imbroglios, in that it lies right at the PM’s door.

This has featured plainly in the latest twist, where the Deputy Finance Minister, Ahmad Maslan  was forced to admit last week that he “inadvertently misled’ parliament by denying that the Malaysian Government had guaranteed 1MDB loans.

This had been pointed out by DAP’s Tony Pua, whom the Minister had accused of lying.

After the relevant ‘letters of comfort’ to lenders had been pointed out to the Minister, which indeed commit the Malaysian Government to guarantee the loans, he had to correct his claims and retract his attack on Pua.

Tian Chua pointed out that in this case it was the PM’s signature that had been on the document and the PM who had failed, apparently, to inform his colleagues about these liabilities.

After all, Najib is also Finance Minister and the Chair of 1MDB’s Advisory Board.

Ruptured over 1MDB – Tian Chua suspects Dr Mahathir will be absent while stirring trouble for Najib at next week’s UMNO Assembly

He is also the driving force behind the debt-ridden enterprise.  Whereas, on other occasions, such as the Port Klang scandal, lesser Ministers could be held to blame.

Mahathir has decided to make his move?

Tian Chua reflected on the fact that Najib has nevertheless gone ahead and issued legal proceedings against Tony Pua for allegedly libelling him over his series of questions relating to the scandal.

“This next week’s UMNO Assembly will tell us where they are going” he told listeners, explaining that Najib is now extremely isolated.

Dr Mahathir has made clear he too feels that Najib is threatening his legacy through this and other matters and is likely to shun the event.

Tian Chua concluded to laughter from his audience, that if there is one good aspect to the GST this government is raising, in large part due to the 1MDB misadventure, it is that in pretty much every example where a government has resorted to issuing this form of tax the electorate has responded by throwing them out!

Meanwhile, BN’s state sponsored religious and racial extremism had unleashed forces they could no longer control,  Tian Chua said.  People were either moving against them or starting to support the ultra-right wing groups that should never have been encouraged.

No one is actually joining UMNO itself these days, said Chua, because the party has made itself irrelevant by endorsing outfits like ISMA and Perkasa.

Low’s has tweeted about it non-stop for 3 days

The 33 year old Taek Jho Low has been out buying yet more high profile friends and contacts, this time at the UN.

Sarawak Report can further reveal that the cash incontinent young Malaysian has also been astounding the art market, by paying millions over the odds for trendy paintings. More later.

The announcement last week that the international body is going to ‘privatise’ its humanitarian news agency IRIN, thanks to a $25million bung from the self-styled “billionaire philanthropist”, has caused consternation amongst Malaysian NGOs.

The money is emanating from the foundation arm of his company Jynwell Capital and is clearly designed to position him as a serious philanthropic figure on the international stage, with friends of influence.

Given the growing speculation about the origin of all Jho Low’s unimaginable mountains of dosh, he possibly reckons he needs them.

After all, as Malaysians well know, when Low is seeking to cultivate a different crowd he is every bit as happy to throw his under-explained billions at Vegas gambling tables, party girls and record-breaking amounts of Crystal Champagne.

There was a different tack again when it came to buttering up Najib and Rosmah last summer.  On that occasion Jho Low and his pals hired the Tatoosh for a spin around the Med.

The Tatoosh is the world’s 26th largest super yacht and rents at around half a million dollars a week. It was the same yacht that Low used to entertain Paris Hilton in 2010.

A philanthropist on holiday – Tatoosh (with Hilton photographed on board inset)

Who scrutinised this donor?

Gushing officials at the UN were clearly mindful of all this money as they greeted the pudgy young Malaysian and announced his ‘generosity’ last week.

Welcome to the UN

The UN ‘Humanitarian Chief’, Valerie Amos welcomed his involvement, according to an IRIN press release, which claimed that under its new ‘independent existence’, IRIN would:

 “continue to do what we do best: deliver in-depth reporting on crises often forgotten by the mainstream media”.

Director, Ben Parker, told reporters it was “felicitous that our new investor comes from the emerging rising powers” as the humanitarian aid industry changes “from a western-dominated construct to a multipolar world”.

But, many in Malaysia are bound to ask what due diligence had these UN folk done on the provenance of Low’s millions?

NGOs, who have brought Malaysia’s problems time and again to the attention of the UN’s humanitarian arms (to zero effect) likewise have their issues with the overly-wealthy Mr Low.

Let’s splash that cash! Paris and Jho Low like wasting money – but where did he get it from?

For example, there is the crisis in Sarawak and Sabah that has not only been forgotten by the mainstream media, but the UN and IRIN as well.

This involves the destruction of the Borneo Jungle and the decimation and exploitation of its native peoples.

Jho Low’s business has done well out of this particular tragic and under-reported story – it is one of the few concrete facts we know about it.

After all, his first specified job came as a non-executive Director of Taib’s own UBG bank 2008-10, thanks to a buy-out, in which the then 26 year old claims to have contributed 10%.

His 1MDB chums at PetroSaudi, who were of course being funded by Malaysian taxpayers money, bought it off him shortly after.

The UN’s latest philanthropist is at the centre of media speculation back home

UBG’s wealth relates directly to the corrupted management of Sarawak, which in turn has driven the destruction of the Borneo Jungle, the looting of lands from its native people and the plunder of timber and other rich resources from the public ownership of the state.

Meanwhile, Jho Low’s own shadowy relationships with 1MDB, the company PetroSaudi and a series of deals involving Malaysia and the Middle East are currently at the centre of attention, concerning Malaysia’s biggest ever financial scandal.

The whole shambles has been made possible only by a disgraceful lack of transparency, which opposition politicians and BN’s own ex-Prime Minister have united in condemning.

Despite the confusion and lack of information, it is clear there is an uncomfortable juxtaposition between a borrowing exposure of over $40billion by a public body that does not appear to be able to account for very large parts of it, and the ridiculous level of sudden wealth of this politically well-connected young businessman, who has been most intimately connected with the main players in all 1MDB’s dealings.

And as Sarawak Report has also earlier noted, Riza Aziz the PM’s step son, who also turns out to be a super-close pal of Jho Low, seems equally unable to explain his own secretive wealth.

What due diligence was undertaken by the UN?

Jho Low may indeed be a most fortunate investor and have managed to acquire tens of millions between the age of 25 in 2005 when he left Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania and the age of 28 in 2008 when he was buying into UBG bank – and then billions by 2010.

We can give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

But, given the sparseness of his CV and the vague and anecdotal nature of his explanations about his wealth, ought not the UN humanitarian agencies be looking for a little more concrete information before they take his money?

After all, one of those untold stories in which IRIN is supposed to specialise is the destruction by Malaysian corrupted businesses of the Borneo Jungle and the raft of human rights abuses against its native people, including the systematic rape of Penan women by logging workers.

Another is the use of enslaved labour in the same areas and another the appalling treatment of immigrant workers all over Malaysia.

Key ‘friends’ have been the route to Jho Low’s wealth, as he openly admits – amongst them Rosmah Mansor, herself recently at the UN

Will Jho Low’s influence improve the coverage of these matters, given his own intimate ties with the corrupted Taib family and also those corrupted BN politicians, who are at the moment failing to come up with basic answers about where missing hundreds of millions of dollars have disappeared to in the matter of 1MDB?

Jho Low admits to being the original architect of 1MDB, after all.

Confusing

It is never helpful when people appear to change their stories about their past, if you are trying to understand the story of their wealth and success.

Yet this appears to be another problem with the mysterious businessman Jho Low.

When journalists first started to quiz him on his spending way back, when he got suddenly wealthy in 2009, he made out that the money wasn’t his.

Interviewers were told that Low came from a moderately wealthy background and that he acted as the “concierge” who fixed a good time for far wealthier friends he was trying to suck up to.

This way, he intimated, he hoped to get their parents to invest money (a few hundred million here and there) in his student projects. But, the money he was spending around town wasn’t his, he explained:

Q: How do you feel being in the spotlight when your friends have managed to somehow escape the spotlight?

A: That’s the interesting part. I think probably it was more to do with the public relations aspect of it because, as a Malaysian, I come from a fairly okay family but nowhere as close to the prominence and wealth levels of the people that I usually spend time with who also are my very good friends. So generally, I am usually the concierge service that arranges everything, and thus my name is all over the place.

Q: So you were the fall guy?

A: I wouldn’t say I was the fall guy. I am the person who called and made the reservations, the bookings and so on. Unless of course, we were invited by others, then the others made the arrangements.

Q: Was it because they were less well-organised and you more organised?

A: No, I think it was more because most of their families were my investors.

Q: So you were looking after your investors?

A: Yes. I go through the entire motion. I think a relationship with an investor is not just about managing their money well. Although it is not in my job scope, but if my friend says he wants a flight urgently to somewhere or he wants a dinner reservation at a well known place, I’ll do my best to make it happen.

Q: Was there a US$160,000 bill in Avenue (nightclub)?

A: I think factually there was a party being thrown for a friend’s engagement which I was told cost around US$160,000. Left to me, I would not spend that kind of money.

Q: So what about your birthday party in Las Vegas?

A: It was actually a group of my close friends; some of them were my investors who threw me this surprise party which I must say was memorable and phenomenal and I was very surprised by it. I guess that is what good friends are for. It was for my 28th birthday last November.

Q: Did you guys book almost the entire Caesar’s Palace for this?

A: No, it was a party they threw for me at the poolside of Caesar’s Palace. [The Star July 29, 2010]

Five years on, Low is now  a fully established “billionaire philanthropist” of great renown.  These days he confidently claims the money as his own.

Yet the background family story no longer appears quite the same.

Low is now being increasingly described as being from the third generation of a billionaire family.

“Jho, the third generation of a billionaire Asian family, had previously generated global headlines for his parties with Usher, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. Now, he is certainly drawing headlines for his astute merger and acquisition skills. [Rakyat Post]

So did Low really make his cash from charming the parents of insanely rich Arab friends, who threw their money at him so willingly that he made vast profits himself?  Or was he rich himself all along?

Given that his rise to riches took place during the nadir of the world economic downturn and that the few advertised enterprises in which he has been involved (purchase of RHB, UBG, Tun Razak Exchage) have not been visibly successful in any major sense, it is perhaps not surprising that his original family wealth has turned out to be a useful fall back.

Mr Low said his interest in Irin was inspired by his grandfather, Dato’ Low Meng Tak, who made his fortune in mining and liquor and used to send cheques to causes and people he read about [Financial Times]

No one denies that the Lows are a successful family. But, to what exactly does this billionaire super-status owe and when did it kick in, Malaysian are certainly asking?

Did the UN ask the same thing and can they let us know the answers if they did?

Warhol era painting hits a record price of nearly $50million

Christies sold Dustheads for a record price – to Jho Low

Which brings us to the latest finding on Jho Low’s eye-popping extravagance.

Warhol’s last love – Basquiat’s trendy painting was about hallucinogenic drug taking friends, whom he called ‘dustheads’

Sarawak Report has discovered that the bon-viveur caused a sensation at Christies last year, when his agent busted records for a painting by a graffiti artist cum Andy Warhol groupie, Jean-Michel Basqiat.

Basquiat’s Dustheads, painted in 1982 had been expected to retail for an already impressive $25-30million, given his Warhol groupie status.

Warhol apparently fell in love with the young street artist, who gained further fame for his work by dying of a heroin overdose aged 27.

Sarawak Report has learned from researchers that Jho Low was indeed the buyer of the painting sold in New York on May 13th 2013.

Low was so keen to get hold of this trendy work (believed to be admired by Hollywood friends such as Leonardo di Caprio) that he chucked a total of $48,843,750 at the auction – which could have saved a lot of GST payments, of course, for the poor people of Sarawak or transformed the fortunes of the native textile industry if he had spent it there instead.

When a tragic accident hits the news, such as the shocking explosion that caused injury and death to miners in Selantik this weekend, it is normal for the name of the company concerned to be reported.

But, there was a strange silence on this matter in Sarawak’s news.

What we did learn was that the workers, including those killed, are all foreigners in this mine.  There are no jobs for local people in this enterprise which is extracting the wealth from under their feet.

A minister has helpfully provided his explanation for this matter.  XXX announced that it was because the mainly North Korean workers are more brave than locals!

By doing so this West Malaysian has clearly managed to insult the Dayak of Sarawak.  But, he has also raised an important issue.  Why do these miners need to be so incredibly brave?  Are the safety conditions in Sarawak’s mines more treacherous than in tens of thousands of other mines across the world where local people find employment?

Because, let’s be frank. North Koreans come from the world’s most vicious dictatorship – their bravery is based on desperation and their employment in Sarawak is clearly based on exploitation.

Luckyhill?

Which returns us to the question as to who is doing this exploitation and why are the authorities so silent on the matter?

Sarawak Report’s enquiries lead us to an answer that is very far from surprising. The company is none other than Luckyhill, which has already suffered another similar explosion accident as recently as 2012.

So, no wonder the workers have to be brave.  What safety enforcement regulations are being carried out to result in such repeated accidents?

There is more of course.  Luckyhill has provided reason for local protests ever since it and its related mines in Selantik opened shop.

The sloppy management of this lucrative enterprise has caused destruction, disruption and serious pollution to the lives of the local people, according to numerous complaints, and it has poisoned the water sources of thousands downstream.

Pretty typical really.

Just as typical is the report that no notice whatsoever has been taken of the complaints of these poor locals.  They didn’t get a say in whether there should be mining in their area.  They have never been consulted on mitigation of the problems.  They have never been compensated or given jobs. The usual story.

So, who is behind this mine, granted as a concession of course by the former Resources and Planning Minister cum Chief and Finance Minister, the present Governor Taib Mahmud?

Because, make no bones about it, coal mining is very lucrative indeed – especially if you don’t have to worry much about safety measures, paying workers adequate wages or pensions or indeed any form of genuine compensation if they are killed or injured.

Is anyone surprised to learn, therefore, that the shareholders in this mine are a combination of Taib family members, Taib political hangers on and one of his key crony families the Wongs of WTK?

After all, the idea that a state concession for a mine should be managed for the public good with a proper tender to gain maximum income from the state and proper consultation and consideration of the local people affected would have been anathema to BN.

They prefer to treat Sarawak as if a handful of politically connected families were the owners of the entire place.  They have clearly started to believe that in fact they are and that laws and regulations are for other people.

That’s why they don’t even employ the local people, because they don’t want to even consider the possibility that they too have rights over the coal in Selantik.  In fact, they only have these rights and the politicians and their hangers on have no legal rights at all.

The tragic news that three foreign workers had died in a coal mine explosion in Sarawak at the weekend has provoked speculation as to who was behind the company. The company was thrown into the spotlight earlier this week when it became apparent that they were employing migrant workers from China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and most alarmingly from North Korea.

4 foreign workers have died so far, 30 others injured, of which 20 are said to be critical.

Shortly after it was announced that a North Korean was among those killed in the explosion, Malaysia’s Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Jaafar informed journalists that North Koreans can work legally under a special agreement between Pyongyang and the Sarawak authorities.  

Defectors from North Korea claim that Pyongyang pocketed at least 90% of earnings by migrant workers in Qatar.

But despite local and international media coverage, why has the company involved not been named?

It didn’t take Sarawak Report long to work out that the company managing the coal mine in Selantik is none other than Luckhill Mining – a company that came into the spotlight in 2012, when it also exploded, killing four Chinese nationals.

Locals have been complaining about the environmental concerns linked to coal mining in Selantik for years but their concerns appear to have fallen on deaf ears. According to Iban communities living nearby, their farm lands have been destroyed, their drinking water polluted and their personal safety threatened.

Injured workers are being treated at Sarawak General Hospital

Calls by the Sarawak opposition party two years ago for a thorough investigation into the fatal incident and the need for environmental and social impact assessments to be conducted were ignored by the authorities.

Although investigations are now underway, Sarawakians have been left questioning why no action was taken back in 2012 and why the mine has been left to explode for a second time.

Who is behind Luckyhill?

How did Abang Johari’s family members get the contract?

The fact that the company involved in this week’s explosion has close links to the family of former Chief Minister of Sarawak (and current state Governor) Taib Mahmud and other BN cronies may explain why the company has been unnamed until now.

Although predominantly owned by Kim Don Hwan (thought to be of Korean nationality), a company search shows us that the directors and shareholders of Luckhill Mining include the usual BN hangers on.

The list includes; Zaleha Mahmud (sister of Taib Mahmud), Datuk Abang Abdul Karim Openg (brother of Sarawak’s Minister of Housing Abang Johari), his wife Datin Airi binti Abdul Manan, her sister Marjuin Bt Haji Abdul Manan, Datuk Amar Haji Hamdan Sirat (former State Police Commissioner), Halimah Abdullah (wife of Hamdan Sirat) and Benedict Bujang Tembak (former Senator and current PBB Supreme Council Member).

And what about the single largest shareholder of Luckyhill, Stratum Mining Sdn Bhd? The shareholders are none other than Taib timber cronies the WTK family. Sarawak Report have previously exposed the close links between the Taib family and WTK including the fact that Taib’s daughter Jamilah has substantial shares in the company. The coal explosion adds to a growing list of human rights and environmental concerns linked to the Wong family’s global ventures.

But there is one character that we have noticed crop up as secretary in almost all Taib family ventures and here she is once again in Luckyhill Mining, a Ms Joyce Chew Chin Lian.  Just who is this secret secretary and why does she appear to control almost all of Taib’s business? Sarawak Report will be looking into the links between Joyce and the Taib family in the coming weeks.

Time for Adenan to take corruption seriously! 

Natives have been complaining about the environmental and social consequences of coal mining activities in Selantik for almost 30 years. Will the government also listen to them as well as investigating the cause of the explosion?

And what about the safety and rights of the foreign workers in Sarawak? There have been countless reports of abuse and exploitation of migrant workers in Malaysia.

If anyone is to take Adenan’s recent calls for reform seriously then he should start by condemning WTK and the family of his predecessor Taib Mahmud. It was WTK after all that signed his integrity pledge promising to tackle bribery and corruption.

Luckyhill shareholder and WTK tycoon Wong Kie Yik signs Adenan’s integrity pledge

Nice new projects for CMS – two government buildings for RM70million each and no tender!

Why did Governor Taib Mahmud go to so much trouble at the 40th anniversary ‘celebration’ of Sarawak’s blood-sucking conglomerate CMS, to tell his audience that he has done nothing to favour this monster company, which is largely owned by his own family?

The old boy went on and on about it!

Surely, no one had been so indelicate at such a gathering as to mention the fact that CMS has laid its hands on just about every lucrative contract in the state?

So, why did the ex-Chief Minister/Finance Minister/Planning and Resources Minister find it necessary to make such a point about denying it?

The papers of course reported the whole speech dead pan, but Kuching was soon echoing to hoots of laughter:

“He took pride that when he was chief minister CMS never took advantage of their link with him and that the company played its roles like any other entity.

“I shut it out from my life for … until now and I am very happy to see that the management of CMS understands why I have to shut them out because I don’t want any contradictions between my private interest and my duty as Chief Minister before,” he said.

“Today I am very happy to see CMS doing very well without taking advantage of its position and its link with the government,” he elaborated. [Borneo Post]

In the immortal words of the tennis player John McEnroe, Taib cannot be SERIOUS!

Just look at who owns CMS, which Taib happily announced is carrying out so much work on behalf of the state that it has not been necessary to create a public consortium to develop his so-called ‘SCORE master-plan’, into which huge sums of public money are being poured.

Majaharta belongs to Taib’s daughters – so 43% of the public shareholdings belong to Taib’s late wife Lejla and his children – what about the hidden nominee shares which comprise another 38% of the company?

“CMS has taken very bold steps in supporting SCORE and also helped the state government not to resort to creating another corporate government statutory body to ensure that SCORE will be a success!” [Taib boasted at the dinner]

In other words Sarawak’s proxy state development arm, the instrument of its public policy, is none other than a family company owned by the all-powerful Governor, which is getting virtually all the projects.

Going forward also, Adenan Satem has frequently made clear that changing the direction of SCORE is a no-go area for his administration. That was his deal with his oldest friend, Taib Mahmud, when he took office.

So much for integrity pledges.

Latest government contracts for CMS

Contrast Taib’s denials with the advice purportedly given to the federal low-price store initiative Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia, when it approached the Land & Survey office to look for a site in Kuching.

The Isthmus – Taib’s chosen development zone. Handily he has given most of the land in the zone to CMS at rock bottom prices as a ‘payment in kind’ for a past project for the state.

Their best strategy for gaining official approval, the officials advised, was to buy land off CMS and then appoint CMS to build the project!

After all, name any official project recently initiated in Kuching that has not been handed to CMS.

For example, the latest fat projects recently confirmed on behalf of two public outfits on the Kuching Isthmus, the so-called Kuching Gateway Towers.

The SEDC (Sarawak Economic Development Corporation) and LCDA (Land Custody Development Authority) have both been run with an iron fist by Taib for the past three decades.

Now each have kindly commissioned new headquarters buildings off his company at a public cost of RM70million each.

There was no public tender, naturally.

So, did either outfit in fact need a new headquarters in this as yet under-developed part of town?  Not according to the opposition DAP leader Chong Chieng Jen:

On his initial expectations of Adenan, Chong, who is also Bandar Kuching MP and Kota Sentosa assemblyman, said he would like him to scrap the proposed new headquarters for Sarawak SEDC and Land Custody and Development Authority (LCDA) at the Isthmus.

Chong argued there was no necessity to spend RM146 million to build the two structures, as SEDC and LCDA already have their own headquarters.

In addition, he claimed, Wisma Pelita, which is occupied by the Land and Survey Department, was very much underutilised.

“The RM146 million saved can be used for rural electrification to improve the living conditions of the rural people. It can also be used to implement a more effective transportation system in Kuching.” [Borneo Post, March14th 2014]

Clearly, Taib’s priorities have once again tended in favour of benefitting his own family companies, rather than the general public in this matter.

Little wonder he felt the need to assure his anniversary guests that this was not due to any “interest” on his part.

Taib also designated CMS to build the Borneo Convention Centre on the site – and gave it to his Sis Raziah to run

But, before getting on with their unnecessary building projects (sanctioned by their boss Taib) the two state corporations had first to also buy the land – again from none other, of course, than CMS Land Sdn Bhd.

The SEDC paid CMS RM5million an acre for its spot on the Kuching Isthmus.

After all, Taib has handily now designated the area to be the state capital’s premiere development site, with plenty of infrastructure money pouring in to support his drive and boost property prices.

So, CMS named its price and it was all ‘negotiated’ under the auspices of Taib himself, in the weeks before he left office.

No ‘contradictions’ there then.

Doubtless, the sprightly old pirate skipped out of the room while his underlings signed the final contracts, safe in the knowledge that the MACC’s legal advisors would thereby rule that he had not exercised any undue influence over the proceedings!

Running public policy to suit himself

Readers might ask, how come CMS owns all this land in Kuching’s priority development zone?

The answer is linked to the benefits accruing from over three decades of uninterrupted governing power by a self-serving kleptocrat.

Back in 1996 Taib had handed yet another controversial project to CMS, the so-called Kuching barrage, which was supposed to prevent flooding.

It hasn’t according to many inhabitants.

At that time the company was even more clearly in the hands of Taib’s own family, with his brother Onn as the ‘owner’ of 17% of the shares, which later passed to Taib’s own late wife.

Funny how the shares in CMS have passed around between Taib’s family members.

Yet, despite this “private interest” Taib was happy to hand the project (as usual without any public tender) to CMS for RM150million.

What’s more, he agreed with his cash rich brother and his children that part payment for the project should be ‘in kind’.

Vast potential for profit when you control the rules of the game – Taib and CMS’s British boss Richard Curtis play monopoly with Kuching’s real estate.

Under the deal he alienated 275 acres of land on Kuching Isthmus from the state.

He then valued it at RM60million, meaning a price per acre of RM218,000 and handed it over to CMS.

The company still had RM90million in cash from the state in order to build the barrage.

A few years later, after the designation of this very area as a ‘special development zone’ by himself, this became the same land that CMS was able to flog on to the SEDC (under a deal overseen by Taib)  for RM5,000,000 per acre!

No mean mark up at 23 times the original price and all determined by Taib’s own decisions in government.

Sarawak Report therefore challenges Taib Mahmud to sue us for saying that he lied to his audience at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of CMS.

This company, which started as a cement producer owned by the state, has grown to its enormous size and wealth under his own family ownership, almost entirely thanks to him “taking advantage” of his position in government.

First hand your private family company a chunk of state land, calling it ‘payment in kind’. Then turn that land into a development zone. Then drive all the state institutions you control to buy back the land at inflated prices and finally make those institutions pay your own company to build them projects they don’t need. No conflict of interest?

Arriving at Newark Airport, USA with PetroSaudi boss Patrick Mahony, July 1st

The boss of PetroSaudi International in London, Patrick Mahony, has recently been forced to deny rumours that he has been funding Hollywood’s ‘wild child’ actress Lindsay Lohan.

In an article entitled “Lindsay Lohan Sugar Daddy Revealed?” a publication named The Hollywood Gossip had said:

“For months now, we’ve been wondering how Lindsay Lohan finances her non-stop European bender, and it seems we may finally have our answer.

“Sources say that for most of the time she’s been in London, Lindsay has been living with Patrick Mahony – a much older investment banker with two daughters”[The Hollywood Gossip]

Lohan, who has been sent to jail for cocaine use and drunk driving and is regularly in rehab, is notoriously broke, despite her high earnings over the years.

The several articles on the subject, over August and September, speculated that Mahony provided the explanation for Lohan’s expensive partying around Europe, while she prepared for a part in a London West End play:

Sugar Daddy

The Hollywood Gossip elaborates:

“Given Lindsay’s long history of older male “supporters” there’s nothing surprising about the arrangement…

And who knows? Patrick and his kids could be a good influence on her. He clearly keeps her on a short leash financially. Just earlier this week Lindsay’s credit cards were declined after she racked up a $2,500 bar bill.

If there’s anyone capable of keeping Linds in check, it’s the guy who pays for her booze!” [Hollywood Gossip]

Sugar Daddy funded by Malaysian development money?

At 28 Lohan is considerably younger than middle-aged Mahony, who came in as the Chief Investment Officer of PetroSaudi International in London shortly after it scooped its $2.2billion ‘joint venture’ with 1MDB.

The couple were photographed arriving together at New York’s Newark Airport in July by the news service Getty Images, but have denied all speculation of a relationship.

Lindsay’s August holiday snaps on board a Mediterranean yacht. Was it funded by her ‘Sugar Daddy’?

Sarawak Report has noted that funds seemed pretty low at PetroSaudi before this injection of Malaysian public money from the so-called development fund, which was started up by PM Minister Najib Razak with the help of another party animal, Jho Low.

But, the present executives are clearly enjoying the good life.

PetroSaudi International started a variety of initiatives after the 1MDB injection of cash into its business, including buying out Taib Mahmud’s family bank UBG in 2009.

This presumably accounts for Mr Mahony’s description as an investment banker, although PetroSaudi appears mainly engaged in oil exploration.

But, what has baffled and infuriated many Malaysian onlookers is that so little of the RM2.2billion poured into the so-called ‘joint venture” with PetroSaudi back in 2009 has ever been satisfactorily accounted for.

It soon became apparent that all the cash injections into the JV had in fact come from 1MDB alone and that PetroSaudi was not an investor, as originally advertised.

As a result 1MDB extracted itself from the embarrassing deal in 2011, having first funded PetroSaudi to buy out the venture.

Yet, even now, critics are pointing out 1MDB have failed to provide any transparent indication as to what has actually happened to the original money, apart from a vague explanation that it is being managed from an anonymous Cayman Islands account!

So much for developing Malaysia.

Has Lindsay’s party life been funded by the investments sparked by 1MDB?

So, with this evidence of Lohan’s continuing high-living and her links to PetroSaudi, critics will be entitled to query whether once again, the main beneficiaries of 1MDB’s development money have turned out to be decadent party-lovers in Hollywood, Las Vegas and the Mediterranean hotspots?

1MDB appears to have created prosperity in all the wrong places

1MDB watchers have already noted Hollywood brat girl Paris Hilton’s antics around the wealthy Malaysian Jho Low, who himself has been closely linked to Malaysia’s indebted fund. He paid her a million dollars a show to attend his events.

Next came the film Wolf of Wall Street, which was allegedly bankrolled by Mohamed Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny, the CEO of Aabar Investments and another partner of 1MDB.

The $100million dollar movie was produced by Najib’s son

And, of course, PetroSaudi’s own star envoy, hired for a mere $65,000,000 a month, has turned out to be none other that the UK ex-PM Tony Blair.

To demonstrate a more philanthropic side, Jho Low has poured $50million into a cancer centre in Texas and $25million into a magazine at the UN, while PetroSaudi owner Tarek Obaid has got into Formula 1 and funded the wealthy US Mayo Clinic to the tune of $10million.

It is all a world away from the stated intention of the so-called development fund, which was to help bring prosperity to dirt poor Malaysians.

1MDB is currently over $40billion in debt on borrowed money.

Let’s hope none of it ended up Lindsay Lohan’s powdery nose!

Usual jokes, but no mention of human rights

London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, has been sweating round KL this week, trying to drum up yet more business for the British capital – and, of course, investment.

The dodgy money which has already been pouring into London from Malaysian sources during the depth of the recession may have come as a bit of a surprise, but it became clear that Boris is not in the business of asking awkward questions.

Instead, he bumbled on in his pantomime fashion, calling for the corrupted ethnic quota laws to be abolished, since they deter foreign companies from investing in Malaysia, but making no mention of human rights.

Neither did he make any public reference to Najib’s outrageous decision not only to break his promise to abolish the abusive sedition laws last week, but to even extend it to criminalise any talk of East Malaysian independence.

Tom Greatrex – called for UK response on sedition law

However, back home in the UK Parliament these matters were raised in today’s debate on foreign affairs, forcing the Mayor’s Conservative colleague to deliver an effective snub to Najib.

As recorded in Hansard, Tom Greatrex MP, a member of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Malaysia, questioned the Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire, who revealed he too will visit Malaysia at the start of 2015.

Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Anifah Aman is also due in London next week.

But, asked about Najib’s decision to retain the sedition act, the Minister said Malaysia should ‘conform to international standards’:

Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op):

When he next plans to visit Malaysia.[906377]

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire):

I plan to visit Malaysia early next year. My visit will coincide with the start of Malaysia’s chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its elevation to a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council. My discussions will focus on issues of mutual interest, including trade, security, the Commonwealth and human rights. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary looks forward to welcoming Malaysia’s Foreign Minister to London next week.

Tom Greatrex:

I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. He will be aware that last week, the Malaysian Government went back on their pledge to repeal the sedition law, and are instead entrenching and extending its characteristics. He will also be aware that there is growing international concern that the law is being used to imprison political opponents and religious minorities, particularly the Christian community. Will he and the Foreign Secretary undertake to ensure that those issues are raised with the Malaysian Government in their engagements over the next few weeks?

Mr Swire:

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary reminds me that such issues always are raised. He will certainly raise them. We are aware of the recent comments by Prime Minister Najib regarding the Malaysian sedition laws. We will look at his comments about the proposed legislation closely. We are clear that the Malaysian Government should conform to international standards and norms.

Malaysia should conform to international standards and norms

UK’s Foreign Office Minister, Hugo Swire

The snub from Swire will have been no surprise. Najib knows his decision is counter-productive internationally.

The sedition laws do not conform to international standards and Malaysia will be lowered in the eyes of the world.

His further move to extend the law to criminalise support for East Malaysian autonomy and independence also threatens the very legitimacy of the Malaysian federal arrangement.

After all, this was a deal done in 1963 between the British colonial masters and Malaya, without any genuine consultation of the Borneo states.

Negotiations took place in London without a single native representative of Borneo present.

The outcome was then described as independence, leaving Sabah and Sarawak to the greedy exploitation of the past 50 years.

One of the handful in Sabah who has grown better off in the past 50 years – Anifah Aman

What is plain to all is that if Najib were confident that the federation had proved to have been a great thing for Borneo, then he could have celebrated this half century with a referendum, which would have at last confirmed this supposed act of self determination by Sabah and Sarawak.

But, instead, he has criminalised anyone who speaks out against it and raised questions in the minds of the rest of the world about why he is so fearful of popular opinion on this matter?

Anifah Aman, whose own family has sucked out Sabah’s timber wealth in return for providing loyal cooperation for BN, will have to explain next week why his government is so fearful of talk of independence.

Sarawak champion or Malay imperialist?

Najib’s shock proposal to criminalise anyone who even speaks in favour of Borneo’s independence has been met with silence by Sarawak’s Chief Minister Adenan Satem and the head of state, Governor Taib Mahmud.

Both men have played on East Malaysia’s national feelings for decades, pretending that they are protecting locals from Malay imperialism, while at the same time acting as UMNO’s cat’s paws in Sarawak.

The recent leak revealing how overwhelmingly it is Malays/Melanau who are given promotion in the civil service, while Dayaks are side-lined, has not helped in hiding that reality.

So, Sarawak’s Dayak population is waiting to hear what Satem has to say about Najib’s threat to jail Borneo patriots.

Likewise, they want to know his reaction to the PM’s added threat to jail people who fail to sufficiently appreciate the sanctity of Islam – a direct threat against the non-Muslim populations of East Malaysia.

Shouldn’t the Chief Minister be sticking up for his local people and speaking out against such draconian innovations to cower and intimidate non-Malays, who might argue that things were better for the Borneo states before their ‘equal federation’ with a BN ruled Malaysia?

Filial advisor – why is Adenan taking his son on trade trips?

Instead, this self-styled champion of reform has rushed off to South Korea (with his son as his ‘advisor’ at his side) to drum up more investment.

A chemical factory is apparently interested in setting up shop in Sarawak, which opens up some other questions.

What perks will this chemical factory receive to move its operations to labour light Sarawak and what perks have been offered in return to attract Sarawak’s powers that be?

Precedent shows there will not be a single Sarawak job or a bent ringgit of benefit to the local communities from this sort of inward investment.

So, perhaps the CM’s ‘filial advisor’ will be able to announce where the money from such investments is expected to end up?

Aziz (and his whole family) accompanied Adenan to Korea. In what capacity and at whose expense?

What has Satem to say on Bangladeshi influx?

This brings us to another relevant issue.

Because, another of the Prime Minister’s utterances on which Satem appears to have no viewpoint is the outrageous announcement that 12,000 Bangladeshi workers are to be imported into the state, in order to run all the enterprises that the BN regime is operating on the Dayak homelands.

Rock bottom wages for foreign workers – no profit to locals. Who wins?

Armies of foreign muslim men have now been deployed across the state, without so much as a by your leave to the local people.

Predictably, they are causing all the problems that armies of men always cause when inflicted on a community and it doesn’t help that they are always being chosen from countries with a specific different religion.

They have cut down the timber, rolled out the palm plantations, sucked out the oil, dug out mines, worked on construction, powered polluting smelter factories…. and virtually none of the benefit has gone to locals.

These industries have delivered peanuts in terms of tax – and Christian locals are just treated as if they are largely incapable of being educated or employed.

James Masing, the Dayak BN Minister, has just frankly admitted the fact.

He and other Dayak leaders can wait to face their maker in order to explain their compliance with this exploitation of their own people – or make immediate amends by demanding that Satem speak up against Najib’s new law.

Oil palm mafia

Industry run for the benefit of locals or big business?

Conditions in Sarawak are even managed to the extent that if any local person wants to grow oil palm on his own land he has to go cap in hand to the MOPB.

If the powers that be don’t grant him a licence then he can’t farm the golden crop.

If he gets a licence he is told the limit he is allowed to farm.

And, if that farmer annoys one of the BN crony corporations, which have been given vast lands to exploit, for example by winning a court case against that corporation, then the MOPB will illegally act to prevent his access to mills to crush his fruit.

So, it boils down to those two questions, which will sum up whose side Adenan Satem really is on when he pretends to represent the locals.

What does the CM have to say about Najib’s plan to criminalise talk of East Malaysian independence and what does he have to say about the pre-election plan to import yet another 12,000 Bangladeshi workers?

Silence is not a credible option for Satem, so the answer should be forthcoming and immediate.

Sarawak Report has one last question for the CM – who paid for Aziz Adenan’s ticket and his expenses for accompanying his Daddy to South Korea?

Or, if he was there in an official capacity, how did he qualify for that position?

More silence is duly expected.

Borneo Post reporting on the trade visit – but no questions on sedition issue

ADDITION: RIMBUNAN HIJAU EXPORTS SARAWAK BUSINESS PRACTICE WORLDWIDE

See below how Borneo’s heart of darkness is spreading to other poor communities, as Sarawak companies deploy the same pattern of criminal greed and negligence as they move across the globe:

Pomio deaths further evidence SABL is a disaster for local communities
December 4, 2014

LOGGING

On Friday 28 November a local Pomio man, Leo Kaukau and a child, Roland Akin, died after eating crabs cooked in water contaminated through the SABL logging and oil palm operations of Rimbunan Hijau. Four others were hospitalized.

Rimbunan Hijau is clearing forests and exporting logs from three Special Agriculture and Business lease areas in the Pomio District of East New Britain.

The operations are opposed by local people who say they have not given their consent and the leases were obtained by fraud.

Serious human rights abuses by mobile police squads employed by RH to intimidate local people have been documented in an independent multi-agency report.

RH worker spraying herbicides with no safety clothing – photo Andrew Lattas

RH worker spraying herbicides with no safety clothing – photo Andrew Lattas

Roland Akin had left school and run away to the log camp where he was staying with Leo and his family but ended up losing his life.

Local people say Rimbunan Hijau has totally failed in controlling the management of the waste from their logging and oil palm operations and have failed to manage the safety of local people.

Locals report that empty chemical containers can be seen everywhere around the log camp where anyone even children can collect them to use for themselves.

Nearly all the households within the SABL area are using the empty containers but nobody from Rimbunan Hijau seems to care about their safety.

Local leaders say they are gravely concerned and that the SABL lease and logging operations are turning into a permanent disaster.

As well as the chemical containers, there is spilling of fertilizers and other chemicals and pesticides everywhere around the log camp.

When these spills are reported to the company or local officials there is always a cover up and no action is taken.

Back on sale, despite the threats and denials by Taib’s lawyers

According to a series of breathless reports in Taib’s family newspaper Sarawak Tribune, which is edited by his daughter Hanifah, Taib Mahmud has been touring India in his capacity as Head of State.

So far, however, the Taibs have been feasting not with officials or politicians.  Rather he has been entertained by the chairman of a major property developer ETA Star.

Is CMS looking for more investors in the “vast land bank” (to quote its own annual reports) handed to the company from the state while Taib was in office?

If so, the testimony currently being heard in court in the corruption case against the former Chief Executive of Sime Darby is instructive.

Sarawak businessman Chew Chiaw Ann testified yesterday that the Sime Darby CEO had a meeting with Taib and then said he would be willing to pay CMS RM400million to acquire plantation rights on native customary lands in order to access them.

Taib entertained by property tycoon in India

So, will ETA Star be building properties on Kuching Isthmus, thanks to land purchased from CMS at top dollar rates – land which Taib handed the company for relative peanuts?

These are the very corruption issues being explored in the key book on what has happened to Sarawak over the past decades, Money Logging by BMF’s Dr Lukas Straumann.

Taib has fired off legal letters and BN cyber-troopers are trying to allege that he has taken ‘legal action’ to prevent the publication, distribution and sale of this well-researched book.  However, Amazon has now clearly decided to ignore the threats and is selling the book.

Taib and his expensive lawyers now have to decide whether he wishes to take genuine legal action and face scrutiny in court or slink away with their tails between their legs.

Below is an excellent review of the book [see also Malaysiakini]

Exposing Taib’s corrupt and destructive reign

LEE HWOK­ AUN

As mafia stories go, this one has it all: fraud, ill­ gotten riches, intrigue, hidden loot, violence, privileged family, ruined lives of others – and a godfather.

But this plot bears a unique twist, for the godfather is the head of government, and the bounty is more than 100,000 square kilometres of virgin forest.

The result is devastating: 90 percent of that forest put to the chainsaw, to sell timber worth US$50 billion.

The scene seems unfathomable, the damage untold. And yet, such a tale of feudal kleptocracy, ecological catastrophe and heritage destruction unfolded in Sarawak over three decades under former Chief Minister Taib Mahmud (left).

An excellent and important, and gracefully written, the new book tells the story.

Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia, by Lukas Straumann, investigates the pillaging of Sarawak’s virgin forests and unveils shadowy dealings of Taib Mahmud and kin, compellingly documenting plunder, nepotism and corruption unlike anything we’ve seen in Malaysia.

The author is director of the Switzerland­-based Bruno Manser Foundation (BMF), which since 1990 has championed the protection of Sarawak’s verdant treasures and checked th machinations of Taib’s administration and the opaque money trail of the family’s obscene wealth.

Taib’s secret wealth detailed

Taib has persistently denied involvement in his family’s commercial dealings; he adroitly delegates and drives from the back seat. Company ownership profiles, which are not difficult to procure, show his immediate and extended family’s extensive holdings. But his name is conspicuously absent.

The campaign made a breakthrough in 2010, after many years of scrutiny and monitoring, when an informant came forth with a dossier of evidence and testimony.

The book opens with a riveting account of Straumann, together with Clare Rewcastle of sarawakreport.org, meeting Ross and Rita Boyert, who managed the Taib family’s assets through Sakti International Group, based in San Francisco.

In 2006, the Boyerts were abruptly dumped, then hounded and terrorized. They employed all sorts of tactics to make the encounter and information sharing clandestine. The outcome was a revelation: “Here, for the first time, we had proof of the chief minister’s secret wealth.”

The sources of the Taib family’s opulent lifestyles became much clearer. Besides Sakti, massive funds were also parked under the Sakto Group of Ottawa, where first daughter Jamilah Taib occupies one of the most expensive mansions in the city, have main vehicles for the family’s wealth.

The book furnishes black and white evidence. Boyert had disclosed a 1988 document, under California’s Corporations Code, showing Taib’s brothers and children holding the majority of Sakti’s shares “in trust for Abdul Taib Mahmud”.

Godfather Taib is in control. How could it otherwise?

Loot of the forest

The ultimate source of the loot is Sarawak’s once vast and pristine forest. In 1985, Taib dissolved Sarawak’s forestry department and placed logging concessions and plantation licenses directly under his watch.

Money Logging powerfully corroborates Inside Malaysia’s Shadow State, the ground breaking 2013 documentary by environmental NGO Global Witness, which highlighted the Taib family’s
land grabbing, financial scamming, and disdain for indigenous dwellers.

Money Logging meticulously weaves together the bewilderingly large and complex web of theft and deceit, lucidly explained and helpfully diagrammed.

The illicit flow of funds starts from the creation of a monopoly over timber exports from Sarawak, to the receipt of kickbacks from importers to a Hong Kong­based shell company, transfer of those kickbacks to an investment arm which then channels the money to real estate purchases in Canada.

Of course, the empire is also domestic – most of it, in fact – and leveraged across many sectors.

Combing through ownership profiles, Straumann and associates have found that the Taib family owns 333 Malaysian companies and 85 others around the world. The total wealth may exceed US$15 billion.

Through the Taib Family’s Cahya Mata Sarawak, the clan holds stakes in myriad industries, including cement and intimately related to that, dam construction. Sarawak is spiralling in a frenzy of dam projects and energy oversupply that must be the definition of insanity.

There is a broader madness and contempt for life demonstrated in the eagerness, even seeming delight, in mowing down forests, damming rivers and destroying livelihoods with impunity.

Money Logging also exposes Taib’s ignominious record of destroying human habitats and displacing indigenous peoples to make way for reservoir flooding, reaping a harvest of thorns after sowing promises of “development”.

The search for a sliver of redemption is fruitless. For over two decades Sarawak has been the largest exporter of tropical timber in the world.

The felled trees have predominantly been exported as logs – raw, unprocessed, with scarcely any value addition or creation of skilled jobs. No forward linkages to furniture or craft industries, no efforts at sustainable forestry.

In 2009, the state’s land cover consisted of just 11 percent virgin forest, 46 percent secondary forest, and 43 percent for other use, mostly for oil palm.

The policy – if one exists at all – has been to chop down as many trees as possible, replacing biodiversity with commercial crop monoculture.

Sarawak will still show shades of green from the sky, but the foliage has been comprehensively degraded.

Sarawak is being turned into an expanse of plantations and reservoirs. Malaysian logging
companies have rampaged across tropical forests around the world, now that there is little left to chop down in Sarawak.

Kingpins of the Melanaus

Money Logging is richly informative on recent environmental and commercial crimes, but Straumann, as an historian, ensures that the longer story is told.

He engagingly walks us through Sarawak’s past, from the positioning of the Melanau, one of
Sarawak’s smaller ethnic groups, as kingpins under Taib’s uncle Rahman Ya’kub, who was Chief Minister from 1971 to 1982.

Tab’s steep political ascent, involving stints in federal government, culminated with him taking the reins from Rahman.

Importantly, Rahman and subsequently Taib enjoyed unwavering support from federal government, laying the platform for Taib to pursue his ruthless ambition, hubris and greed from 1982 until he stepped aside in early 2014.

The book also takes us on a passage through Sarawak’s luminous heritage and pays tribute to its beautiful people.

The Penan, nomadic hunter gatherers from time immemorial, have perhaps endured the most grievous hurt from the massacre of Sarawak’s rainforests.

Straumann pays due tribute to the organization’s founder and namesake, Bruno Manser, who lived with the Penan for many years, became adopted as their son, spurred them to protest against the rampaging logging companies, and organized map­making as a means to claim ancestral, customary lands and international campaigns among importers of Sarawak timber.

We read as well of other fighters for justice, ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the deep hinterland, who have organized logging road blockades, and others who have fought in the courts for native land rights.

Their stories show how small communities in Sarawak, and a little band of Swiss activists, can stand up to big powers – even financial behemoths and the system that feeds them.

Complicity of Taib’s bankrollers, including Europe­based UBS and Deutsche Bank which BMF is well placed to scrutinize, shows that capitalism loves lucre no matter how filthy.

Glimmers of hope

It is impossible to read this book without high degrees of sadness, anger, even despair.

So much devastation and corruption, so little we knew, so late to get a full account.

Taib and his federal protectors have deployed various weapons: information control, suppression of dissenters, and development propaganda peddling limitless oil palm plantations and river damming. The peoples’ ignorance plays into the mafia’s hands.

Despair is a more natural response, optimism an intentional choice. The book underscores the importance of continuing the fight for Sarawak’s forests, rivers, and the rights and livelihoods of indigenous peoples.

We will do well to take heed: “The Sarawak rainforest is far too important a part of the world’s natural heritage for it to be left in the hands of the Taib circle, which has already wrought irreversible damage in the span of a single generation”.

There are glimmers of hope. In a small, autonomous act of in a resistance and restoration, communities have set up a self­governing Penan Peace Park. Native land rights cases have returned confiscated land back to rightful owners; many of these are ongoing in the courts.

In the public sphere, the powerful and vital contents of Money Logging more than deserve their place.

This is a book you want to read, and tell others to read. And while at it, spread the word on the Bruno Manser Fund and Sarawak Report, and support the valiant efforts of Save Sarawak Rivers Network and other groups striving for Sarawak’s better future.

The evidence and arguments have not been refuted – indeed, they meet a wall of silence and desperate attempts to suppress exposure.

Taib procures top legal guns, which reportedly warned Amazon against selling this book.

The Malaysian delegation to the International Tropical Timber Organisation barred the BMF from launching it at the body’s annual conference last month.

With only one local distributor, Money Logging is not so easy to find. But let not this riveting, illuminating, infuriating book elude our attention, the way Taib’s corrupt, destructive reign did.

LEE HWOK­ AUN is an economics lecturer. Money Logging is available at http://gbgerakbudaya.com/bookshop/.

Sarawak Report has formally responded to the feature length article in Free Malaysia Today, criticising this blog for revealing corruption on the part of Sarawak’s Governor Taib Mahmud and the current regime.

The two main arguments of the unknown author, named Winifred Poh, were that ‘foreigners’ have no right to comment and that readers cannot know if what is written by Sarawak Report and others can be believed.

“Powerful, almost manic voices of foreign activists” – Poh attacks our right to reveal corruption by Taib Mahmud

Dear Editor,

Ms Poh conceded some important truths in her article supporting Sarawak’s Taib Mahmud and his successor Adenan Satem in Free Malaysia Today last week.

In her own words, “in Sarawak, decisions are being made which are irreversible, at least for a generation. Valleys are being stripped and filled with water, populations moved, factory cities built, and a whole generation of Sarawakians are being sold an industrial future that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. And all the time we see huge areas of forest cut for palm oil, and yet more palm oil.”

Winifred admits the destruction at least.

So, is all this being driven by genuine policy or corruption, was the question she put, before launching into an angry tirade against what she described as ‘amazingly well funded foreigners’, who have criticized these moves and the motives behind them?

Winifred’s position appears to be that ‘foreigners’ have no right to voice an opinion about what is going on in Sarawak, whereas she does.

Her reasoning reflects one of Taib’s own favourite arguments, which is that there is nothing wrong with Sarawak’s democratic institutions, so outsiders should shut up and let the local people decide for themselves.

Sadly, this is simply not the case.  Thanks to Taib Mahmud, Sarawak’s democratic institutions have degenerated into a blatant sham.

Take the State Assembly itself, where the people’s representatives have seen their salaries go up in inverse proportion to the work they are able to do.

These salaries were tripled after the last general election, so that Sarawak’s YBs now earn roughly the same as a UK member of parliament, in a country where the cost of living is a mere fraction by comparison.

And yet, these representatives of the people are only permitted to sit on just 16 days a year (last year the UK parliament sat for 162 days, some years have seen as many as 240 days).

So, how much legislative scrutiny of Taib’s executive decisions does this allow for?  Pretty much zero, of course.

The two parliamentary sessions, lasting a mere 8 days each, are largely taken up with opening and closing ceremonies and tedious long speeches by establishment figures.

Usually empty – the new golden parliament building was of course built by Taib’s company CMS

If ever a YB does raise a topic that the Speaker (who is not appointed by his fellows, but by the Chief Minister himself) finds awkward, that YB has his microphone switched off or he is thrown out of the chamber – usually both.

By contrast, in the UK, the Prime Minister has to face weekly grillings from MPs about any issue they care to raise and must answer in person. Taib Mahmud did not deign to be subjected to unwanted opposition questions over three decades in office.

Adenan Satem can now try to play the reformer, but he has made no changes to the system devised by his predecessor and his best college pal.

For this very simple reason, the fact that the entire state is being chewed to bits and parceled out between political cronies and Taib family members through a handful of corporations is virtually never raised in the Sarawak parliament, which so rarely sits.

So, Winifred Poh, Sarawak is no democracy and its state parliament is a tragic travesty of the Westminster model that it was set up to reflect.

But, that is just the start of the matter.

Both Taib and Adenan Satem have further secured their undemocratic grasp on the levers of power by occupying all the key offices of state and controlling personally over 80% of the public budget.

Speaker Asfia is not appointed by YBs, he is appointed by the CM.

This means virtually the entire civil service views the Chief Minister as their ultimate boss.

Over the years BN have not failed to abuse this power in the most disgraceful fashion, sacking or moving civil servants, teachers or anyone else who ‘stepped out of line’

Time and again Sarawakians have told me that they feel they cannot speak out or openly oppose anything Taib does, because they fear for their livelihood or for the livelihood of a family member who works for the state.

In any genuine democracy there would be strong professional associations and established legal processes to prevent such an outrageous and dictatorial oppression of the rights of individuals and the independence of public bodies.

Yet, in Sarawak Taib has even been known to threaten and then move judges, who rule against his illegal land grabs, let alone anyone else who gets in his way.

Another arm of the public services, which has totally lost its independence to political control, is of course the Election Commission.

Taib was shocked to lose his near 100% control of seats in the 2011 election, after a series of corruption revelations (brought by ‘foreign voices’), with the urban vote no longer willing to be bribed or bullied into voting BN.

So, handily, the Election Commission (known for its army of electoral tricks) has just provided BN with 11 new safe seats, in order to swamp the vast majority of urban voters, who want them out.

There is no need here to launch into further detail about the wider concerns over vote rigging, bribes and blackmail in the conduct of Sarawak’s elections, since everyone knows about it.

Suffice it to ask in what genuine democracy has the same regime managed to hold sway for half a century?

Malaysia has not seen a single change of government since independence, in fact, making it the longest serving ‘democratic’ government in the world – all thanks to Sarawak’s reliable delivery of so many seats at every election.  For this reason the protests about cheating are just swept aside by grateful BN.

The Taib ‘Royal Family’ in a recent pose – do they think they own Sarawak after Taib’s 50 years in office?

No one is perfect, so let the media do its job 

None of this is to say there isn’t plenty to criticise and improve in all of the world’s other imperfect democracies.  Winifred is welcome to do so.

Should she care to set about criticising the UK, for example, no one would bother about that in the least.  Few would take notice of her, of course, because the UK is already full of its own far better qualified home grown critics, but no one would denounce her for ‘foreign’ interference.

The point is that in Sarawak there is no such local criticism because there is no free media, which is the cornerstone of a genuine democracy.

This is why Taib hates his ‘foreign critics’, because up till now he has managed to get away with his outrageous, corrupt and exploitative management of the state, thanks to his total control of all media outlets and the restrictions on the rights of people to associate with each other, either socially or politically.

In Sarawak you need a government permit to set up a political party or even an association of like-minded friends, let alone to actually print or broadcast anything.

It is a system deliberately devised in order to be abused, by a regime, which makes sure that no one gets a license who is not vetted.

The result smacks less of a democracy than a totalitarian state, where people can’t even set up a society of stamp collectors without government permission.

For this reason Malaysia, which has similar rules at a federal level, is now categorized as one of the most oppressive media environments in the world. Even the ‘independent’ satellite TV station Astra is owned by a BN business crony, who employs 24/7 ‘News Controllers’ to censor anything that might ‘bring the government into disrepute”.

In Sarawak itself, all of the local media is controlled either by Taib timber cronies or the Taib family itself.  The one exception has been Radio Free Sarawak (to which this author states a connection), which has been relentlessly jammed and criticised by Taib for ‘poisoning the minds of simple people’.

The attacks on RFS are a sure indicator of just how reliant Taib has been on his suppression of a free media and how vulnerable he feels to any dissemination of uncensored information.  Likewise, his furious denunciations of criticism by ‘foreigners’.

In all, therefore, Winifred’s suggestion that matters like SCORE have been openly and democratically debated, supported and decided upon by Sarawak’s citizens is mere fantasy.

Stand up to the loggers at your peril. Sarawak Report is being criticised for highlighting the plight of native people like Mingat and Surik (right) who were beaten within an inch of their lives for defending their lands against Taib’s ‘policies’.

Rules of procedure ought to be obeyed, especially by leaderships

The SCORE industrialisation drive was the so-called ‘brainchild’ of Taib Mahmud and as such has gone unquestioned, despite the planetary consequences of destroying this once pristine rainforest region with 12 mega-dams across all of Sarawak’s river systems and the tragic displacement of tens of thousands of people.

To understand the requirements of legitimacy, Winifred should study the research, consultation and debate that go into the construction of any major project of this nature in a genuine democracy. These procedures are designed to genuinely determine if such a project is properly in the public interest and, if so, what forms of implementation would be best.

By contrast, Taib has ignored all due process with regard to SCORE, which is a programme that clearly benefits his own family companies.  Before any official go-aheads have been reached for these dams he has already handed out concessions to clear vast areas of timber, licensed construction roads and he is now driving ahead with the dam building in the face of massive local opposition in places like Baram.

This simply is not democratic, whatever the claims Winifred likes to make about the supposed ‘support of the silent majority’ for his destructive plans.

Add to the above controls the draconian powers available to the state to clobber people who do, nonetheless, take up a position to oppose Taib’s will – the people who are now opposing the mega-dams, for example.

Under Malaysia’s ‘emergency laws’, which BN have hung on to for decades after the disappearance of the emergency they were brought in to tackle, any such protestor can still be arrested and imprisoned.  This form of harassment has been taking place with regularity, even though it is the state government that is in fact breaking all the rules by pressing ahead with construction.

Winifred, this is not how democracies function. Rather, it is the mark of a very draconian dictatorship.

Speaking out

What all this goes towards explaining is why so many people of conscience have felt motivated to raise their own voices in protest from safer regions of the world.

When, some years back, I learnt from local people in Sarawak about the shocking and corrupted state of affairs and the pillaging of the resources of the state for the benefit of the few against the interests of the many, I asked why did they not speak out or at least organise to vote out Taib?

They could not, they explained, because they have to live there.

Sarawak is a place where gangsters enforce timber concessions against local people and the police turn a blind eye to the situation and arrest people who annoy the company bosses instead.

It is a place where pesky journalists can be sacked by the politicians, who control their newspapers.

This is the reason why there is a role for concerned outsiders to speak out.  They are supporting local people who can’t and they are warning the wider world that while Sarawak may pretend to be a democracy, it definitely is not.

The power of the truth in the written word

So, why does this all upset Taib and Winifred so very deeply?

How come the all-powerful Taib, who claims to enjoy so much democratic endorsement, finds such criticism so incredibly dangerous that he protests so loudly against it?

Not long ago he used the state assembly itself (on one of those few days it was open) to lambast Sarawak Report and some other NGOs for being the greatest existing ‘threat’ to the stability of the state.

He even accused us of hatching a ‘neo-colonialist plot’ to steal Sarawak’s oil resources. Rare legislative time was expended on this extended invective against us.

Winifred Poh accused my blog of making ‘manic’ and ‘extreme’ claims for suggesting the Governor is corrupt, but is it not he who is the more prone to exaggeration, given such talk – or are we really that destabilizing for Taib Mahmud?

It is particularly revealing how Winifred and by extension Taib, obsess about how much money they imagine is funding his critics.  In her article Winifred repeatedly called Sarawak Report “amazingly well funded” and referred to the “Rewcastle Brown publishing empire”, which sadly is all nonsense.

This letter cost no more than the time it has taken to write.  The research that supports our articles, likewise, involves little more than time and brainpower.

So, why are we presented as some kind of powerful empire of moneyed rivals?

The answer is obvious, of course.  It is because of the power of the truth – the small voice that demolishes mountains of expensive propaganda.

This is why we are indeed regarded as extremely dangerous by Sarawak’s CM cum Governor.

Taib has used his powers to suppress the truth within the boundaries of his state, but, thanks to the internet, the truth is creeping in from the free world outside.

He cannot tolerate the idea that he has suddenly become accountable and he is becoming increasingly fearful that he cannot handle the consequences.

Winifred’s tactic, like Taib’s in this context, is to put it about that Sarawak Report and the other NGOs who are questioning Taib’s self-interested and extraordinarily self-enriching policies, ‘cannot be trusted’.

How are people to know if what we are saying is true, questions Winifred?  As she puts it:

“They [“the amazingly well funded Rewcastle Brown publishing group” et al] claim spectacular levels of corruption and fraud. Every argument about policy, about what we need for our country, gets soaked in the petrol of financial allegations and set alight. Their fixation is on the Taib family, and their allegations are spectacular and exhausting. The problem is that they expect us to accept their analysis and believe their secret sources”.

Winifred, the fact of the matter is that most of our sources are not secret at all.  We are merely presenting what is overwhelmingly a matter of public record and what in a free democracy would have been raised in any critical newspaper.

This is why the people who bother to read this blog believe it and why Taib is so upset about the impact.

As for our fabled resources, it costs RM15 to open a company record online, whereas public contracts, stock market (Bursa Malaysia) and public company information are free.  Land and Survey information, along with timber and plantations concessions are concealed as much as possible, but with a bit of digging they can be accessed.

So, anyone who knows their way around the internet and who understands basic company accountability can access and check the information being presented by Sarawak Report.

This is why other blogs and many journalists feel safe in reporting what we have revealed – as Winifred puts it:

“Their [Sarawak Report’s] power in turn is amplified by our own informal local media, which simply suck up their comments and faithfully reproduce them without question, debate or editorial oversight. Free speech and an open media should always be encouraged, but perhaps not at the risk of bad and fantastical journalism.”

Winifred is right that we are being quoted, but the the reason we so often are is the opposite to that which she claims.

Our information is not being reproduced ‘without question or oversight’ at the risk of ‘fantastical’ journalism – local blogs and news portals actually have to be very careful, given Taib’s wealth and influence.

Rather, it is because our information can be easily checked and verified to such an overwhelming degree, that local writers feel safe in quoting us.

By the same token, if Sarawak Report was really so completely wrong and inaccurate, as Winifred suggests, there would be a very simple and easy way to destroy our influence.

Taib could merely point out our inaccuracies in all the media outlets available to BN.

We have listed how contracts have been handed to Taib’s family companies without tender, how his family own huge shareholdings in Sarawak companies, how concessions and monopolies have all gone to his family and cronies and how family members control key areas of industry and utilities in the state.

If these details were in fact false, it would be incredibly easy to disprove our claims.  Indeed, on the few occasions where we have made a mistake Taib and his supporters have pounced like thirsty travellers and complained for all they are worth.

However, in the main, they have not disputed our evidence, because in the main it has been impossible for them to do so.  This is because it is true.

Taib has taken excessive powers over the state and he has abused them in order to make himself and his family fantastically rich.  Yet, until ‘foreigners’ started poking their noses in and speaking out about it he was able to get away with preventing any public mention of the fact.

Now he cannot bear to think that he has been exposed by such a simple ploy as the voice of truth or that the millions of public funds that he has poured into rigging elections and controlling local communities could be in any way outflanked by the written word.

Just last month his London lawyers threatened the publishers of the book Money Logging, which details his corruption, by saying since he is a very wealthy man he could demand huge damages should they lose a libel action by him.

Yet, Taib has no business to be so wealthy, after a lifetime on a fixed public salary.

No wonder then that, he has failed to carry through this and any similar threats.

Likewise, he has ample means to sue Sarawak Report and all the critical NGOs were our accusations in any way untrue.  Yet, he has failed to act.

He knows that an independent jury in the UK, US or Europe would look at the evidence and dismiss his claims.  Therefore, although he and his family have fired off plenty of threatening legal letters, he has never made good those threats.

So, Winifred should conduct a simple exercise, instead of huffing and puffing about grand conspiracies and not being able to believe ‘foreigners’.  She should take one of our key articles on corruption and disprove the findings.

Then she could evaluate the motives of Taib Mahmud, who is making billions out of his unrestrained exploitation of Sarawak and decide on the answer to her original question about whether his policiess are driven by corruption, without too much difficulty.

There is one final issue that I take with Winifred Poh, who arrived on the pages of Free Malaysia Today without a trace of any prior existence and so is plainly a pen name for some hired PR.

She claims to have lived 50 years in Sarawak, implying she was not born there, yet she reckons she is no ‘foreigner’.  I was born and spent my early years there, so I think I have a legitimate right to an opinion as well, as does anybody else.

Scenes that shocked the world

Malaysia’s political leaders have struggled to shift blame for the shocking floods, which have displaced a quarter of a million folk over the Christmas period.

Some even blamed women for not wearing veils and related ‘liberalism’ for the torrents of mud and water, indicating that God’s wrath was at hand over such a heinous sartorial negligence.

It is a disgrace that such leaders can act on the assumption that enough Malaysians have been so poorly taught in science to let them get away with such nonsense – guesswork explanations that are two thousand years out of date.

In fact, there is no secret about what made this flooding so much worse than it should have been in this monsoon season.

Bad behaviour is certainly at the root of the problem, but it has nothing to do with modesty and all to do with greed.

Bare hillsides cause floods

Logging and deforestation in the hilly regions of the country has dramatically reduced the ability of the earth to soak up large amounts of seasonal rain.

Instead, without roots to hold it all in place, the earth itself has been washed away and become part of the muddy deluge that has engulfed homes and villages for all to see.

This earth is now lost for ever as a bed for future vegetation and crops to grow.

Mudslides and bursting reservoirs have already become a theme of recent years.  The Christmas floods were just another manifestation of the same deeply dangerous problem.

Since the earth is thinner in tropical regions, this has multiplied the serious long-term consequences in Malaysia’s and Borneo’s case.

Observers have noted the muddiness of the water being carried down by these floods. As with Sarawak’s once crystal rivers – the earth is now eroding into the water and being carried out to sea.

In this manner, grave wrongdoings have indeed been meted with a form of retribution, where some might see a divine hand or just punishment.

However, there is little karma in the fact that the actual perpetrators have jetted off scott free, investing all those millions raised by logging into foreign properties, while the people who have taken the punishment are the poor, who gained nothing from the destruction of Malaysia’s forests.

Lay blame where it is due and leave innocent women alone

How not to handle a crisis – how the BBC and the rest of the world’s media featured Najib’s reaction to the floods back home

It is the political classes, entrusted with the proper running of this country, who are responsible for this debacle.

Yet, predictably and disgustingly, it is these same fellows who have queued up in recent days to print their faces on the rice bags (provided at the taxpayers’ expense not theirs) which were handed out to the victims of the consequences of their own failures and corrupt actions.

And of course, when the disaster started to swell, the Prime Minister himself was content to tarry on a golf course on the other side of the world, currying favour with the American President, who has so far found it convenient to ignore the growing evidence of gross UMNO corruption and the suppression of democracy on Najib’s watch.

Why? Because, Obama is keen to get the US corporate control of Malaysia’s markets promised by the TransPacific Partnership, and Najib is willing to sell his country out in return for the sort of special status that gets you a game with golf with the US President on Christmas Day.

Najib and BN politicians allegedly held up rice distribution so their pictures could be plastered on the packets

After all, given the situation unravelling beneath him in Malaysia, he knows he needs powerful friends in the sorts of places he likes to live…. i.e. where government is conducted by and largely for the benefit of the population, unlike in Malaysia run by him.

Well known scientific facts on deforestation

In fact, the realities are so stark that UMNO politicians have started lining up in recent days and weeks to admit the genuine cause of the problem and condemn excessive logging.

The former PM Dr Mahathir has had his say, now Najib has taken his own turn.  Over in Sarawak Adenan Satem has postured as a man gravely concerned by illegal logging (to the outrage of the opposition, who say he is worse even than Taib when it comes to land grabs).

But, these are the very men responsible for the problem that now exists.

This logging took place under their watch as senior leaders over the past many decades.  It is only now that the trees have gone that they are willing to talk about ‘stopping’ the problem.

BN/UMNO should not be permitted to get away with such duplicity.

They have been warned and told by environmentalists and scientists and native protestors for decades about the consequences of their greedy rape of nature’s buffers and the answer has always been the same.

“You did it, so why shouldn’t we?”

By ‘you’, they meant some long dead bunch of long forgotten Europeans from centuries ago.

As, Adenan’s mentor and protector Taib Mahmud was so fond of arguing, Europe ‘destroyed its own forests’, so why should Sarawak not also ‘develop’?

Beyond compare – these fountains of life have been turned to paper.

But, these politicians did not develop the country for the benefit of the native people.

They just grabbed all the timber and ran off with the money.

Does one act of pillage (by anonymous people in the historical past) justify another…. and another?

More to the point, the tropical jungle paradise of Borneo, which is unequalled for its biodiversity and planetary significance, cannot begin to be compared to the sparse northern vegetation of the temperate regions, where the earth is deep and covered with grass.

The consequences of these politicians’ greed, which has reduced forests of unparalleled significance to pulp and paper in less than a generation, have only just begun to manifest themselves as the full effects of climate change have begun to impact on our weather.

Tropical deforestation, after all, is of itself one of the greatest single drivers of climate change and it is all going to get worse.

Yet, while some of these culpable politicians are at last starting to talk of halting the logging, others, like Sarawak’s Land Development Minister, James Masing, are even now poking their heads up to say that all we need is more dams to allegedly solve the flooding problem.

For more dams, read more logging still!

Dams are dangerous

James Masing – suggests more dams and logging should stop flooding

Dams, where the crucial water catchment areas are stilll being logged, as is the case above Murum, for example, are perhaps the most dangerous flooding threat of all.

It is here that heavy rains can wash in and overwhelm the barriers – just as happened last year in the Cameron Highlands disaster condemned by Dr Mahathir.

Another mudslide took lives a few weeks back.

A breached dam makes normal river flooding into a minor issue by comparison.

So, Malaysians and Borneans should have no truck with the belated pleas of the likes of Najib, Adenan and Mahathir, when it was their profligacy that caused this dreadful problem and when some of their colleagues are already now suggesting that more destruction not less is actually the answer to this man made nightmare.

These blame pushers all deserve to be washed away themselves, in a flood of political change.

Book signing – author Lukas Straumann launches Money Logging in Malaysia

Following a barrage of threats against their publishers and distributors like Amazon, the Bruno Manser Fund has issued a challenge to Governor Taib Mahmud’s London lawyers to either carry through with their complaints or to stop trying to bully third parties into suppressing the book Money Logging – On the trail of the Asian Timber Mafia, which will be launched in London next week.

We print the text of the letter to Mishcon de Reya, which is self explanatory.

The legal firm, which boasts of the “Ultra High Net Worth” of its Asian clients and has bragged about its defence of a Malaysian “UHNW individual”, assumed to be Taib, from criticisms by journalists, started issuing its threats for “immeasurable damages” in October.

The legal firm told Amazon and the publisher Bergli Books that given their client’s extreme wealth the cost of the “defamation” would be all the higher, because of the damage to Taib’s “business reputation”.

Reputation management for an Ultra High Net Worth Malaysian wrongly accused by journalists….

BMF have pointed out that Taib has no business to be wealthy and no legal right to be in business, given his years of public office.

The NGO says that Mishcon de Reya should now make good their threats on behalf of their client, because no one has taken any notice of their demands to withdraw the book.

The latest from Winnie Poh

The news portal Free Malaysia Today has hosted a number of recent attacks on Sarawak Report, in particular by a new mystery commentator named ‘Winifred Poh’.

Her latest offering was entitled “Stunning indictment of Sarawak Report – The ugly story about the faking of evidence in Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib’s divorce case”.

This article attempts to smear Sarawak Report and myself the editor by alleging that we paid a fraudster to illegally hack Abu Bekir’s bank accounts.

The allegation is untrue and our rebuttal to FMT is reproduced below.

Dear Editor of FMT,

‘Winifred Poh’ is clearly on a long-term contract for the Taib Mahmud cyber-trooper team and has found a useful platform in FMT comment pages.

Her latest salvo, which she describes as an ‘ugly story’ about me and my blog, turns out to be a re-hashed allegation by the Taibs, which I had already comprehensively rebutted some two years ago.

So why doesn’t Winifred get to the point in her defence of Taib Mahmud – why is she trying to attack me personally, instead of just proving me wrong?

I have already pointed out that her best way to discredit me and my reports on corruption in Sarawak would be to show that my evidence is false.

But, instead, she has resorted to re-publishing one of the many illegal PR attacks that have been commissioned by the Sarawak government against me and this blog.

One can only conclude that Taib and Winifred find it too hard to disprove my articles and have resorted to slinging false accusations instead – stale ones at that.

A truly ugly story of black propaganda

So, let me relate the real story about the Canadian private investigator/ fraudster Cullen Johnson, whom ‘Winifred’ alleges I hired to access the bank details of Taib Mahmud’s elder son, Abu Bekir.

Abu Bekir, despite being very rich, does not apparently want to pay maintenance to his deserted ex-wife and son.  This has resulted in a prolonged court case focused around how much he is worth.

In 2012 Johnson contacted Sarawak Report some time before the general election, purporting that he had accessed bank account information about Abu Bekir.

For several months this fellow continued to contact Sarawak Report, having mysteriously gained access to a private mobile number, which the Sarawak authorities had also obtained during a visit to the state in 2009.

For this reason we treated Cullen’s approach as suspicious throughout.

However, journalists are always willing to listen to people who claim to have information and for several months we engaged with Johnson (mainly via Skype messages) and waited to see where it all might lead.

Cullen Johnson made several contacts with Sarawak Report – but we did not publish his claims.

This does not mean we believed the information or that we printed it.

To the contrary, we published nothing of what Cullen Johnson said and paid him nothing either.

After all, we couldn’t prove if what he was saying was true.

Moreover, his information appeared to have been illegally obtained.

Why bother with stuff like that when there are plenty of public records, which had already provided us with ample information about Abu Bekir’s wealth?

This was all legally acquired information, which we could prove and which we had already published to make our point about the Taib family’s riches.

Therefore, it was only after strikingly similar financial information was submitted in a court hearing related to Abu Bekir’s divorce and then printed in all the Malaysian media, that we too subsequently quoted what the Malaysian media reported had been said in court.

To repeat, Sarawak Report published only what had already been stated in court and then already printed in the Malaysian media.  We did not quote what Cullen Johnson had skyped to us, which had been similar.

This truth can be easily checked and proved against the dates when we published claims made in court about what was allegedly in Abu Bekir’s bank accounts.

The claim, which has just been repeated by Winifred, that we had commissioned or paid the suspicious Mr Cullen Johnson or that we published information that he had volunteered to us simply cannot be substantiated.

This is because it didn’t happen.

Had he been hired to entrap us by Taib’s PR teams?  We have no idea.

However, when we learnt Cullen Johnson had been arrested for fraud we did indeed immediately contact the authorities in the United States who are behind the prosecution and they have assured us that they have no interest in speaking with Sarawak Report, because Sarawak Report has no involvement in their case.

Robbery and dirty PR tactics

Considering Sarawak Report never commissioned Cullen Johnson nor published his information in advance of similar figures being produced in court, how come numerous Taib related bloggers and newspapers, like Winifred, have been trying to make out that we did?

Here is the full story of what happened and readers should indeed prepare for a truly ugly tale, involving theft, hacking, dirty PR and smear tactics.

It all began when shortly before the general election in 2013 my mobile phone was pickpocketed at night in my home street in London.  On this phone were my skype and gmail messages.

Just a couple of days after this robbery an exclusive report appeared in the Taib family owned newspaper, the Sarawak Tribune (edited by his daughter Hanifah) drawing attention to the fact that those stolen emails could now be read on a new website that had popped up in Malaysia.

What a coincidence!

What’s more, this Sarawak Tribune article for the first time drew public attention to the arrest of Cullen Johnson and falsely alleged that we had commissioned him to hack Abu Bekir’s bank accounts.

All this was bad enough, but it soon emerged that the criminal behaviour involved in these acts was even worse, because the phone thieves had also resorted to malicious distortion and misrepresentation.

The stolen email messages, which had been placed on the Malaysian website referenced by Sarawak Tribune, turned out to have been deliberately tampered with.

Gmails had been chopped about and combined with other emails written weeks apart to different people, all in an attempt to given an impression that I had said things that I had not.

In particular, the hacker website ludicrously attempted to suggest that I was personally plotting to take control of Sarawak’s oil wealth (something that the Taib family’s business cronies are in fact in the process of doing, as we have already published).

[these articles and the relevant Sarawak Tribune article are no longer available online]

In our immediate rebuttal, therefore, Sarawak Report explained the truth and published the original emails to show how they had been maliciously tampered with by the thieving hackers.

As a result, no one in Malaysia took much further notice of this story at that time.  Readers know the sort of tactics that BN “PR” people get up to.

Dirty UK PR campaign

However, the thieving ‘PR team’ did not give up here.

After all, someone had been hired to go after me in London using pickpockets and phone hackers. They meant business, for which they had clearly been very well paid.

The next thing I knew was that I started to receive calls from UK press writers, asking if the allegations by Sarawak Tribune and the Malay website were true.

It turned out that these writers had been systematically approached by a retired UK journalist, who had been commissioned to place a story attacking me on this issue in the British newspapers.

The people behind the thieves and hackers clearly hoped that if they could get a UK paper to run the story then they could report back in Malaysia that I had been ‘exposed’ and ‘discredited’ back home.

But, the ploy didn’t work.

Unlike Winifred Poh, professional journalists in the UK check their facts.   They also make contact with the target of any story to allow right of reply – it’s part of their code of conduct.

So, when I was duly contacted by a number of journalists I was able to spell out to the Sunday Times and to the Daily Mail and other newpapers exactly why the allegations did not add up and why they could not print this untrue story.

They accepted my fact based rebuttals and nobody printed the story in the UK.

Sarawak Report has now obtained a copy of the “briefing paper” (see extracts below) that this agent was circulating around Fleet Street to try and entice British newspapers into destroying my reputation.

Who do we think hired that agent?

Malaysia is “quite naturally very corrupt” – the ‘brief’ handed round Fleet Street, by a hired journalist. It is littered with mistakes.

…….

He thinks the story about Cullen Johnson and Abu Bekir is interesting, because he thinks SR can be accused of using Cullen Johnson’s fraudulent material

The above extracts contain a fatal error, because Sarawak Report did not reproduce any of Cullen Johnson’s supposed allegations – we only printed very similar information which had been produced in court and then printed throughout the Malaysian media.  This fact can be proved by the date we ran our story, which was after the similar information was produced in court.

Black and illegal PR

So, let me sum up what these hirelings did in the course of this dirty PR attack designed to smear my reputation.

First, they stole my phone and illegally hacked my emails and messages.

Second, they doctored those messages and placed them online in a malicious attempt to misrepresent and defame me.

Third, they used a newspaper that is edited by Taib’s daughter, The Sarawak Tribune, to draw attention to these untrue, illegally obtained and malicious lies and to link Tribune online readers to a Malaysian website, which was posting this stolen and distorted material – all within just a few of days of my phone being robbed in London.

When all this failed to draw significant attention in Malaysia itself, these operatives then hired a former UK crime journalist to try and get the same lies printed in newspapers all over Britain.

It is a vindication for Sarawak Report and my own reputation that not a single newspaper in the end would print these allegations, even though many had been initially interested in the “scandal” and called me for my response.

This was because it was all untrue.

And if this Cullen Johnson nonsense still remains the best ‘dirt’ that Taib and his team can come up with, after having stolen all my personal email messages and Skype messages, then readers are entitled to draw their own conclusions.

Because, I have no hesitation in alleging that the then Chief Minister was behind this black propaganda – after all I have documentary evidence that Taib has already commissioned a number of previous, similar, illegal smear campaigns against me.

History of illegal PR and dirty tricks

The Cullen Johnson episode was just one in a string of illegal and malicious actions against my projects, mainly carried out by highly paid foreign operators.

I have already proved how the now disbanded UK PR firm FBC Media was paid $5million a year to conduct a campaign to discredit Sarawak Report – we exposed the contract and the BBC and others were forced to apologise for airing FBC’s ‘news documentaries’, which had in fact been paid for by the company’s PR clients (including Taib).

Then the UK PR firm Bell Pottinger was hired to sneakily alter our Wikipedia and other online sites to try and make us look bad.  This also hit the headlines in the UK when investigative journalists exposed the underhand “sock-puppet” tactics and Bell Pottinger was humiliated into apologising. Wikipedia has now altered its systems to counter such deceitful manipulation.

Meanwhile, as we have further demonstrated, Taib also hired radio jammers to push Radio Free Sarawak off the air and cyber attackers to bring down the Sarawak Report website through so-called DDOS assaults.

It seems that playing dirty is all Taib knows when it comes to public relations and now ‘Winifred’ has been sucked into the same game.

Yet frankly, this latest ghost writer on FMT seems tame by comparison. ‘Winifred Pho’ is just re-cycling discredited old dirt.

Afterword

With regard to Sarawak Report’s connections with other NGOs.  We take pride in working closely with as many NGOs as possible who are concerned about the human rights, corruption and environment issues in Sarawak. There is nothing to hide about this, so it is no great discovery that we attempt where possible to work together and not against each other.

Spending time in India with the ETA Star Group, a company that has had extensive business ties with members of his family in Sarawak.

When he is not castigating NGOs for daring to suggest that he cuts too many trees, Taib can generally be found pontificating about Sarawak’s ‘industrial development’. At least, that is when he is back home.

However, in his recent tour to India it turns out that the Governor was prepared to be more frank with his audiences.

Sarawak Report has found the press releases issued by Taib’s Tamil hosts last December, which detail the claims he was making to this key market for timber as a raw material.

In a speech to the Governor of Tamil Nadu he plainly advertised that Sarawak is still the world’s largest exporter of tropical hardwood:

“H.E.The Governor of Sarawak said that his state looks forward to start new ventures and it is the world’s largest exporter of tropical hardwood timber. He added that tourism plays a major role in the state’s economy” [8/12/2014]

So, there we have it.  Little Sarawak is still yielding up more timber than the Congo or Amazon or indeed anywhere else in the world, despite having long since passed its peak in timber exports during the early years of Taib’s own period as Chief Minister.

Taib’s family paper The Sarawak Tribune (edited by daughter Hanifah) claims 84% of Sarawak is still “covered by forest” – Taib “looks after its forest very well”

Of course, those widespread reports of timber siphoning out from Central Kalimantan across Sarawak’s porous borders and mysteriously acquiring official government stamps must have a good deal to do with the seemingly endless supply of Sarawak’s timber to the outside world: because, owing to the growing blanket of oil palm, the opportunities for local regeneration are increasingly limited.

However, Taib has another plan for boosting the dwindling supplies of raw timber, should anyone forget.

His blueprint for a string of mega-dams across the state offers the very lucrative potential for clearing all the once protected river buffer zones, which will now be flooded.

Plus there is the clearance of the huge areas of reservoirs themselves to be undertaken.

The Bakun Dam, completed 2011, provided billions of ringgit worth of timber in this way, cleared by the contractor Ting Pek King, who is a well known crony of Taib.

Researchers have examined that contract and it is interesting to see whom they discovered to be one of the major beneficiaries of these clearances. The company contracted by Ting to do much of the logging was called Pacific Chemicals.

Pacific Chemicals has the rare distinction of having not bothered to register its shareholders, which is a legal requirement, in the Register of Companies:

Mystery ownership….

However, useful research was provided by amongst others an American author Edmund Gomez in a book entitled Chinese Business in Malaysia, published in 1999.  Gomez ascertained that while 7 out of 10 of the company’s top shareholders were nominee companies, almost 20% of Pacific Chemicals was controlled by the company Majaharta Sdn Bhd, owned at that time by Taib’s four children (now it is in the hands of his two daughters).

Pacific Chemicals not only got the contract to clear nearly 18,000 hectares of jungle, but it was awarded the RM1.2billion contract to install the Bakun transmission cables as well.

Gomez says that, perhaps not surprisingly, Pacific Chemicals immediately ditched its original core business of producing agricultural chemicals and focused on its sudden logging opportunity and finding a foreign partner to help it build Bakun’s transmission cables instead!

Chinese Business in Malaysia – Accumulation, Ascendence, Accommodation – Edmund Gomez 1999

Does this not explain above anything else Taib Mahmud’s insatiable enthusiasm for building 12 new mega-dams in Sarawak, despite the fact that Bakun is by no means working at full capacity and that the already completed Murum Dam has virtually no current functioning purpose whatsoever?

And does it not speak volumes that Taib on his recent trip to India last month, for all his talk of industrialisation back home, was still in fact concentrating on flogging Sarawak timber to this foreign market?

After all, even though the proposed future Baram Dam has yet to gain any form of legitimate approval and is being heavily contested by the local population, Taib has already contracted his current to crony company, Shin Yang, to strip out the entire region of timber.

The same company ripped out the timber from Murum last year and, according to the New Zealand expert brought in to manage the building of that dam, Andrew Pattle, it is continuing to conduct dangerous logging practices in the key water catchment area above the Murum Dam basin.

As Pattle explained in a recent speech to fellow engineers, tearing out the trees from the catchment of the Murum Dam is exposing it to the effects of erosion.  Mud will silt up the reservoir and the catchment area will no longer be able to absorb the same level of rainfall.

Murum stands a hundred miles up-river from Bakun, which is not designed to sustain any kind of breach cascade that might be created by the failure of Murum, according to the dam’s own environmental impact assessment.

But, hey ho, what does any of this matter to Taib and his logging friends when there are still billions of ringgit to be squeezed out of removing Sarawak’s last trees and flogging them to India’s ready markets?

The real question is how does this former Chief Minister, who is still the driving force behind SCORE, manage to have the brass neck to claim that Sarawak has managed its forests wisely and that over 70% of the state is still “virgin forest”?

70% “virgin forest” said Taib!

Tourists?

Taib’s second claim about tourism is also noteworthy.  The Governor does not appear to have been pitching for his much vaunted industrial development at all on this visit.

Nor, of course, was he seeking any of those thousands of workers that BN are planning to import into Sarawak from this region – after all Tamil Nadu is not Muslim.

But, how on earth does Taib square his plans to destroy Sarawak’s remaining areas of interest with tourism?

Does he seriously think that people will travel half across the planet to visit factories, oil palm plantations and new tall buildings that are complete old news elsewhere?

Does he not understand that Sarawak’s interest for tourists lies in its unique native culture, its unparalleled forests, rivers, scenery, unspoilt tropical views, wildlife and the rest?

Of course he does, which is why tourism is a sham in Sarawak and the figures on foreign visitors are as much to be believed as the claim that 70% of the state remains virgin forested or that exports have not made timber companies much in the way of taxable profits.

Taib is not interested in tourism.  It is far less lucrative for politicians than straightforward resource extraction and as an industry it shares the profits more widely. Remember, the people must stay poor for this regime to continue its ‘model of development’.

In an exclusive personal interview granted yesterday to Sarawak Report, former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad has made clear that he is not satisfied with the latest announcement by 1MDB, claiming that the US$2.32 billion (RM8.24 billon), which was supposedly parked in the Cayman Islands, has now been “fully redeemed”.

“The explanation does not enlighten us on anything”, the veteran politician insisted. “I want to know which bank it’s kept in now.  A billion dollars, you must keep it somewhere, you see.  I don’t know where the money is – that is part of transparency.”

Dr Mahathir, who has been the most powerful and vocal critic within BN over the management of the so-called

Receiving a copy of Money Logging, the book about timber corruption in Sarawak

sovereign development fund, had invited the Editor of Sarawak Report to the Perdana Leadership Foundation in Putrajaya to discuss issues relating to Sarawak’s environmental and human rights record.

However, he readily showed willing to also discuss matters of corruption and his public concerns about the management of the so-called One Malaysia Development Fund.

For months Dr Mahathir has joined opposition spokesmen in demanding an explanation as to why billions of ringgit were first invested in a little known petroleum exploration company called PetroSaudi and then afterwards parked in a mysterious investment fund, allegedly in the Cayman Islands.

The first move of the fund’s new CEO Arul Kanda Kandasamy, who was appointed in the wake of the shock resignation of Mohd Hazem Abdul Rahman just last week, was the surprise announcement over the sudden supposed repatriation of the missing money.

SR questioned the former PM and Finance Minister whether he was now satisfied that the matter was closed. To the contrary, he insists that the mystery remains and told Sarawak Report that he is by no means satisfied by the evidence that the money has indeed been fully repaid.

“I question the explanation, it’s not something I can accept.  It is very shallow…. I question the creation of 1MDB and how it is managed. They [the managers] came to see me, but they couldn’t explain how the money was raised and why the power plants were brought at such high prices and the commission that was paid to Goldman Sachs”, Mahathir elaborated

Interview at Perdana Foundation

The refusal of BN’s most powerful and vocal critic on this matter to be convinced presents a major challenge to the fund and its chief manager, the Prime Minister.

Can they present concrete evidence to back up the claim that all the missing millions have been returned?

In the course of the day the DAP politician Tony Pua has also weighed in with a similar demand for transparency.

Dr Mahathir is believed to have inside information that raises serious questions about the integrity of the fund’s investments and is refusing to let the matter drop it seems, even though the fund appears to have now plugged the most controversial gap in its accounts.

“I don’t think that it serves any purpose.  That’s my difference with the government.  I don’t think that it is necessary for us to have a fund like this.  We are doing well enough without a fund… in the first place they got the money to lend to the Saudis and they they put it in hedge funds. The government should not be gambling money in hedge funds”, Mahthir said, reiterating his main arguments against the development fund.

However, yesterday the former PM acknowledged a major structural issue with the way that Malaysia’s public finances are managed, which is the lack of transparency which has allowed such scandals to develop with little or no outside scrutiny of the 1MDB fund.

Mahathir agreed that there is a greater need for transparency in order to prevent mismanagement of funds on the scale of 1MDB and it is plain that he is not in the mood for accepting assurances that Malaysia’s public funds are in proper safe-keeping without proper evidence being provided.

More from the exclusive interview with Sarawak Report later.

Who’s still the boss? State Assembly opening pomp – but for just 8 days a session!

Sarawak is already suffering from constituency inflation.  Its population of 2.4million now has 71 State Assemblymen, on top of its separate tally of 31 parliamentary seats, providing a heavy financial burden on the state.

These local representatives saw their salaries increased threefold after the last election to around RM20,000 each per month, even though they are only allowed sit for a laughable 16 days a year – two sessions of just 8 days.

Despite the fact that these ‘representatives’ rarely ever get the chance to represent, the Election Commission has just announced the creation of  yet 11 more seats in its latest proposed amendments to the electoral map of Sarawak, which has to be one of the most suspicious documents ever put forward in a proclaimed democracy.

This proposal was secretively drawn up and has now been thrust on the public, giving people just 30 days to raise objections to matters they have had little chance to consider.

Contrast this process with the workings of the Boundary Commission in the UK for example, which undergoes an extensive process of consultation with voters and affected parties, using clearly transparent procedures before publishing its proposals.

Not only did the Sarawak election commission refuse to consult with any of the voters to whom they are legally accountable, they also ignored carefully compiled advice and suggestions put forward by organisations like Bersih and Tingat Malaysia about how the seat distribution could be improved and made more democratic.

The EC even mismanaged the announcement of the changes, breaking their own rules on notification in the process.  The requirement is for proposed changes to be made public in a widely circulated newspaper available to members of the public throughout the state at least 30 days in advance.

But, officials initially preferred to print the notice in the Taib family’s own Sarawak Tribune paper, which has limited circulation in the state.  When this was pointed out they then published the notice in the Borneo Post – but only the Sabah edition!

Why print details of boundary changes in Sarawak in the Sabah only edition of the Borneo Post?!

Breaking the constitution

However, it is the seat changes themselves that are the most blatant affront to democracy, because the Election Commission has succeeded in making already existing violations of the constitution over seat distribution even worse in Sarawak, not better.

The constitution lays out clearly that there should be no deviation greater than 33% from the average with regard to the number of voters in each seat.

This is in fact a very large margin that is allowed for under the law, compared to any normal democracy. In the UK for example the rule is that mainstream seats should not differ in size by more than just 5% (with a few exceptions for outlying island populations).

And in Sarawak there is already a glaring problem, with a far greater differential than this highly generous 33% between the numbers of voters in tiny rural seats and those in heavily populated urban seats.  The rural seats are closely controlled by the BN government, whereas the urban seats are home to more independent voters, who tend to side with the opposition.

Yet, in their latest so-called reforms the EC have made this democratic deficit even more pronounced, creating even more tiny rural seats, while doing nothing to increase the number of seats in the main population areas!

How could they be more obvious about the real motivation for creating these changes, people might ask?

Under the changes the 3 smallest seats now contain just 6-7,000 voters, while the 3 largest contain above 30,000 voters, making them 5 times the size.

No surprise that the smallest seats are controlled by PBB and the largest by the opposition DAP!

As observers have pointed out only 36 of the new seats fall within the 33% variation from the mean, as required under the law, whereas 46 are outside of the legal requirement in terms of voter numbers.

What on earth did these Election Commissioners think they were up to with their so-called improvements, therefore?

Thanks to the EC it is no longer a case of one man one vote in Sarawak, because one rural voter is worth 5 urban voters.  The irony being that a rural vote can be bought for RM10, whereas an urban vote costs at least five times as much, if it can be bought at all.

The only conclusion that can sensibly be arrived at is that these ‘independent’ officials were under instructions to carve out more seats for BN loyalists in the rural areas, while keeping opposition seats to the minimum.

After all at the state election of 2011 BN won just 55% of the vote and yet secured 77% of the seats (giving them the 2/3 majority they need to keep changing the constitution to serve their purposes, despite the fact they have no where near that level of electoral support).

These latest proposals by the Election Commission will make this unfair and illegal  imbalance far worse not better!

Excuses won’t wash

There have of course been plenty of excuses brought forward.  The favourite one is that provision has to be made for far flung rural constituencies with sparse populations of voters, who are supposedly too difficult to reach in elections.

However, the smallest of the new seats carved out of this new electoral map is not a far flung rural seat at all.  It is the new seat of Gedong, with just 6,340 voters a mere hour long drive from Kuching.

See Chee How – time to make the Sarawak Assembly more in line with democracy, not less

Gedong is regarded as being in a secure PBB area.

So, the EC has little chance of persuading anybody that this ‘delineation exercise’ is anything more than a crude and tawdry gerrymander on behalf of the ruling party.

Anyone tempted to believe that Taib’s successor as Chief Minister is genuinely the reformist he claims to be should take this as the test of his metal.

Opposition Assemblyman See Chee How, in London this week visiting Foreign Office officials, summarised the position, telling Sarawak Report:

“What we should be looking at is making the elected representatives more responsible, rather than making all these new seats to satisfy the system of patronage run by BN.  This is about creating more seats to help BN maintain their power and it is in total violation of the constitution”

The ‘reformist’ Chief Minister now has his opportunity to act to rectify this affront and to prove that Sarawak is a democracy after all.

Who made the money?

A decade ago the concept of zero logging would have been treated as inconceivable by Malaysia’s ruling establishment, who rounded on concerned observers and the opposition for suggesting that the destruction must stop.

But now a growing number of voices are beginning to support the prospect of a moratorium on logging, in order to try and save what is left of Malaysia’s once world class forests and to re-grow them.

After all, this would provide a sustainable industry for future generations, rather than the wasteland that is being currently created.

This year’s appalling floods in Kelantan have provided a wake-up call for many.  Previously, the world’s worst ever log jam along the Rajang River in 2010 had laid international shame at Sarawak’s door, with the shocking extent of the secretive timber pillage in that state at last exposed to all.

The driver of deforestation is corruption

Sarawak Report has painstakingly detailed the driving motivation behind Sarawak’s excessive logging, which is the corrupted self-enrichment of the politicians who have sanctioned it.  In Sabah the story is no different and now fingers are being pointed in the same direction in West Malaysia also.

Ignored – Sarawak Report photographed these native blockaders against logging in 2008

The problem is focused on the secretive disposal of logging concessions to political and business cronies at the total whim of the politicians entrusted with the administration of the state.

In Sarawak there has been an excessive accumulation of power in the hands of one corrupt man.

Kickbacks, nominees and party ‘donations’ are the hidden currency of these concession deals, creating enormous wealth for politicians and their business partners and cutting out the Rakyat completely.

Logging in Sarawak has made virtually no money for the state: it has created virtually no jobs for locals.  It has merely enriched a handful of people and poured money into the ruling parties, so that they can continue their grip on the Sarawak cash cow.

If the logging stopped tomorrow in Sarawak, therefore, the impact on the people would be minimal.

It would be nothing that could not be mitigated by a fairer disposal of some of the wealth that is being sucked out of the state’s other natural resources, such as its oil which has been taken by West Malaysia for the last 50 years.

A restitution of the billions that have been stolen as a result of logging kickbacks would also provide a handy source of income during any transition period towards a more sustainable management of Sarwak’s forestry on behalf of its people, rather than a handful of billionaire oppressors.

After all, Sarawak is a large, rich state with a tiny population.

Dr Mahathir – it is not just ‘illegal logging’ that presents the problem

Prepared to change policy – Dr Mahathir accepts a copy of the book that exposes timber corruption in Sarawak

Sarawak Report is no longer a lone voice in these matters, as the daily news is making clear.

And the latest traditionalist who has started to speak out for a change of policy is Dr Mahathir.

Just last week in an exclusive interview with this blog the former PM, who is without doubt Malaysia’s most influential leader since independence, confirmed that he also believes that enough is enough when it comes to logging.

Crucially, he put his finger on the false distinction that certain politicians try to draw between so-called “illegal logging”, as opposed to logging sanctioned by corrupt ministers in shady deals that benefit themselves and not the community:

“Excess cutting is something I am not for and am very much against.  Whether it is legal or illegal I think even the legal logging should be reduced, because while it may be ‘legal’ it is destroying the environment”, he told Sarawak Report.

The former Prime Minister was making this point within days of a trade visit by his once close political ally, Governor Taib Mahmud, to India, where Taib boasted to his hosts that Sarawak is still the largest single exporter of tropical hardwood in the world and urged for more business.

Yet, while Sarawak’s Governor may indeed not rest content until the last tree is felled and his rake-off has registered in a foreign bank account, Dr Mahathir now demands caution:

“Until they have found other sources of income they are entitled to export some of the hardwood, but of course we want them to be very careful about how much of the forest they should cut” he confirmed.

The former PM will be criticised by many as a ‘Johnny come lately’ after years of condoning Taib’s timber corruption and he will also be attacked for speaking like the opposition.  However, he is joined in his change of heart by a growing swathe of the establishment.

As the floods roared round Kelantan in West Malaysia a Federal Minister from the Prime Minister’s own office, Shahidan Kassim also last week proposed a ten year moratorium on logging in order to try and sort out the environmental disaster in that region.

And even Sarawak’s new Chief Minister himself has now frequently acknowledged the problem, despite also being a close adherent to Taib.  Adenan Satem has already made moves to show that he is ready to clamp down on the so-called illegal logging, but this week has made similar noises about stopping so-called legal concessions as well.

Poacher turned game-keeper or merely terminating licences so they can be re-issued to friends? Adenan needs to introduce checks and transparency in order to achieve genuine reform

All those familiar with the problems of logging in Sarawak know that chasing after a few illegal loggers is mere gesture politics, given the vast destruction being waged by the big six BN crony companies Shin Yang, Samling, Ta Ann, WTK, KTS and Rimbunan Hijau.

These have all evolved into major international logging giants, thanks to their exploitation of Sarawak and they are now exporting their corrupted practices world wide to the detriment of the whole planet.

They need to be brought under control and all their licences terminated.  Likewise, the corrupted politicians who have taken concessions and contracts should be sacked, not asked merely to sign pledges!

Has Satem really got the strength to carry out these further steps, when his former boss still controls the state economy through his own companies and when an election is looming? After all, BN traditionally looks for huge subsidies from the timber barons to pay the millions in bribes generally handed out in state elections.

Politicians of course tend to say one thing and do another.  Taib withdrew timber concessions in 1987 in order to hand them to closer allies to consolidate his power and wealth. Is this Adenan’s game?

To prove it is not this Chief Minister must change the model right now for the timber trade. Sarawak should stop selling off its valuable timber cheap as matchsticks, just so that a handful of businessmen and politicians can make a quick fortune and buy a new life abroad.  It should stop hiring in thousands of foreign workers to do the job cheap.

No more….

The whole industry should be transformed, so that it produces the most money and benefit possible for the people and the least possible destruction.

All it takes is an honest and transparent administration of open tenders, consultations and public accounts.  No more transfer pricing in Singapore, so that the timber company declares a loss in Sarawak and avoids even tax!

As for Adenan’s much proclaimed ‘integrity’ pledges, let’s see actions on top of words!

All those politicians, whose wives, brothers and children are sitting on top of hefty timber concessions and companies with huge state contracts should resign immediately and hand the money back. Read Sarawak Report and challenge these characters to abide by their pledges.

The forests are Borneo’s greatest glory and the treasure trove for its people.

Politicians know what they should do. Adenan is admitting to all the failings of the past by acknowledging the truth of our criticisms over logging and corruption and calling for these reforms.

So, it is time for them to put their duty before their greed with actions not just words or to step aside for others to clean up the mess.  Then they can once more properly open their country to visitors, instead of hiding from tourists because of their dirty secret destruction of the state.