“Arrest Taib”! – NGOs Call For Action

http://www.sarawakreport.org/2011/12/arrest-taib-ngos-call-for-action/

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?

Running Scared?

http://www.sarawakreport.org/2011/12/running-scared/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lost for answers!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The questions that Taib is frightened of being asked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jobs for the newsmen

Sarawak – full of stories for newsmen

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

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

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

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

Progress and development? Sarawak’s dreadful roads

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

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

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

Suspicious Secrecy From the Swiss!

http://www.sarawakreport.org/2011/12/suspicious-secrecy-from-the-swiss/

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still on the hook!

Swiss Finance Minister, Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf

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

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

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

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

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

How long are his secrets safe?

Maya Graf – Green MP, Swiss Parliament

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what about Monaco?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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