Enough is enough
In a dramatic move, a group of NGOs have today called on the Malaysian Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police to arrest Abdul Taib Mahmud!
A letter drawn up by the Bruno Manser Fund and signed by a number of Malaysian and international NGOs, including Greenpeace, requests “the immediate arrest and criminal prosecution” of Taib, along with 13 family members, whom it names as “co-conspirators in the illegal appropriation of public funds”.
The demand represents the culmination of evidence against the Chief Minister, who is now internationally recognised as one of the world’s most corrupted leaders and as being personally responsible for much of the destruction of the Borneo jungle. [For full text visit stop-timber-corruption.org]
Plain evidence
The letter makes clear that so much evidence about the corruption of Taib and his family members is now publicly available that it is no longer acceptable to leave the matter with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), which announced an investigation into the Chief Minister last year.
The letter says:
“We firmly believe that it is not enough for the MACC to announce a public investigation and immediate police action should be taken. Ample evidence of Mr Taib’s and his co-conspirators’ offenses is available, and the above-mentioned suspects might use their remaining time in freedom to destroy evidence, to intimidate possible witnesses and to transfer their substantial illicit assets out of the country”
Enough is enough! - Time to arrest Taib.
Obligations
Are times are coming to a close for corrupt dictators?
The letter, backed as it is by a mountain of evidence that has been compiled and made public over the past year, places the Malaysian government in an awkward position.
As a party to the UN Convention on Corruption, Malaysia is committed to combating corruption and to assist investigations by external authorities. Taib is being investigated in Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Canada.
The letter points out that the evidence against Taib is clearly available by virtue of the enormous wealth he has accumulated, along with his family members, during his 30 years in office. They point to the Taibs’ stake in over 400 companies in 25 countries and to the $1.5 billion asset value of just 14 of those companies.
Backed by NGOs from Malaysia, Australia, The UK, Germany and Japan, the letter claims such wealth could only have been accumulated by a holder of public office “by a systematic breach of the law and the use of illegal methods”.
Family affair
The letter does not spare Taib’s mass of wealthy siblings and his four children, who it points out are now adult and able to distinguish criminal behaviour. It lists the family members who have benefited from Taib’s hand-outs of state owned and native customary lands, as well as public contracts and timber concessions. They include his siblings, his children and also his top business confidant, cousin Hamed Sepawi.
The letter singles out the Taib family’s control of Sarawak’s largest company Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) and also Achi Jaya, the company which Taib handed a monopoly over timber export licences, which is owned by his brother Onn Mahmud. One other company Ta Ann, which is controlled and largely owned by Taib’s cousin, Hamed Sepawi, has received over 362,439 hectares of logging concessions and 313,078 hectares of plantation concessions from the Chief Minister.
The letter backs its allegations with figures and tables and even helpfully provides the names addresses and ID numbers of Taib and his family members in order to assist in their arrest!
Taib family gathering - how come they are all so very rich?
2 comments:
$150 billion of black money a year disappeared from Malaysia, that’s RM 400 million a day.
Reports: Malaysians mourn the "the lost decade of corruption", where RM 1,077 billon of illicit money had been illegally siphoned out of our country from 2000-9. According to the Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI), in 2009 alone RM 150 billion (US$47 billion) in illicit money was illegally siphoned out of Malaysia.
The latest GFI report, ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009', is penned by economists Sarah Freitas and Dev Kar, who is a former senior economist at the International Monetary Fund. They stressed that these illicit outflows are basically "unrecorded capital leakages through… illicit transfers of the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks and tax evasion." In other words, it refers to corruption money or black money that is obtained illegally and worse, not even re-circulated into our economy.
All the Tuns, Tansris, Datos, Datuks…, well done!
With 31 yrs of abuse of power, mutli-billion $ plunder and over 10 years of the same by his Uncle before him, the Sarawak CM must be arrested now. His morality, integrity; legitimacy & right to lead are ZERO.
UMNO is equally corrupt. Nothing will be done, unless Arab Spring type pressures are mounted beginning with:
Blockade of all logging & oil palm accesses.
Blockade of all CMS & related’s access & movements.
Work stoppage. Sit-ins in offices, transport hubs & airports.
If the police intimidates.....Good! That’s the beginning of the end of Sarawak’s great tragedy & BN’s stranglehold in Malaysia.
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