Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| Keeping It In The Family! – How Taib ‘The Godfather’ Corruptly Controls CMS Posted: 01 Dec 2011 08:40 AM PST To the contrary, we can name him as the 'Godfather' who blatantly controls most of the shares in Sarawak's largest public company, CMS. We can also show that he has further manipulated that power to produce maximum wealth for himself and his family, by ensuring that CMS does as much of its business as possible with other family firms. This practice is against stock exchange rules, because it is at the expense of other shareholders and the wider public. Mafia-style business boss This matter is all the more disgraceful, because CMS is a conglomerate that Taib himself created by privatising key assets that used to belong to the State of Sarawak. As Finance Minister and Chief Minister he caused valuable state interests like PPES, Steel Industries Sarawak and PCMS to be sold for knock down prices to CMS and then engineered extraordinary 'share-swaps' with cheap companies belonging to his own family members. This enabled the Taibs to take control of the majority of CMS shares by 1996! CMS continues to make its huge income from state monopolies and the massive public contracts handed to it (without proper open tendering) by Taib himself. By these means he has blatantly exploited his political power to enormously enrich himself.
Thus, although the Chief Minister has admitted it would be corrupt for him and his family to be involved in Sarawak business, our revelations show that this is exactly what he does on a massive scale through CMS, exploiting his political role to act as the mafia business boss of the State. Passing around the shares – and the top jobs! Our most recent revelations are based on the publicly recorded movement of shares within CMS. These show how huge chunks of the company have been passed round Taib's close family members, providing only one feasible explanation, which is that it is Taib himself who is controlling their ownership. To all intents and purposes, therefore, he created the company and he IS the owner! To cement this control over the company, Taib has also made sure that his family members occupy all the key management roles. However, again he has shifted round these positions between close family members, once more revealing the pattern of ultimate control by him. Onn Mahmud
Public documents show how in the early years, while his children were still students, the largest shareholder and main Director of CMS was Taib's brother Onn Mahmud. Onn was Taib's original key business proxy in Sarawak and abroad, until the brothers fell out in 2003. His name can also be found on all the documents relating to property companies linked to Taib's children in Canada and the US and also to Taib related companies in Hong Kong. According to research available at the London School of Economics, Onn acquired the family's first 27% stake in the publicly-owned CMS in 1989 for an undisclosed sum. This followed a shadowy deal with the Sabah Economic Development Corporation, which was reported as a 'share swop' between Sabah and Sarawak, but turned out to be a private acquisition by Onn (the Sarawak's Chief Minister's brother). According to CMS records, by April 2002 Onn, as Director and Group Chairman, owned over 30% of CMS shares. At that time Taib's two sons Sulaiman and Abu Bekir (Deputy Group Chairman and Group Executive Director) also owned a further 12% each.
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| Umno’s Cow Dung, No wonder fall in graft index Posted: 01 Dec 2011 08:30 AM PST Khalid was seen to be doing "Umno-putra service" by suddenly making the comment that critics said was meant to assure Umno members that Women's Chief Shahrizat Jalil and her family were innocent of any graft in the cattle livestock project. Khalid's remarks and Umno's strident defense of Shahrizat comes smack in the face of another sharp decline in the internationally-followed Corruption Perception Index. Malaysia fell to 60th position from 56 last year, and the result marked the third straight year of worsening on the widely-followed graft index. "It is suspicious that on all days, Khalid would choose to reveal the progress of the police investigation on NFC today when the Umno AGM goes into full swing. It shows that Umno is still abusing the institutions especially the police to do their dirty work for them," PKR vice president Tian Chua toldMalaysia Chronicle. "As for the CPI, it is a real warning. Umno is dragging down the country. It is the source of the greatest corruption and its refusal to admit it and put a stop to it will bankrupt us all. It is not the Pakatan, as Muhyiddin claims, which is trying to accuse the BN of wrongdoing. The CPI results speak for themselves. The index is is managed by Transparency International, which is a well established organization. "But to the Umno elite, there is corruption everywhere except in their party. Malaysians especially Malays must reject this sort of mentality and they must reject Umno for their own sakes. Till now, Umno defends Shahrizat and uses the police to make excuses for them and then lie to everyone that they are not guilty. It just shows how corrupt and immoral they have become." 74 people interviewed According to Khalid, the police have so far interviewed over 74 people in connection with the probe, including Shahrizat's family although she herself has not been asked to give a statement. "However, we are still continuing our investigation into the issue and will call the minister to record her statement if the need arises," said Khalid. The project was awarded to Sharizat's husband and children in 2006 and the Auditor-General has warned that the project was in a "mess" and could downspiral even further. Shahrizat has denied any involvement in the scandal, saying NFC had "nothing to do with me" although few Malaysians would ever believe her family – which has no track record in cattle breeding – could have won the project without her influence. PKR leaders have led the charge on NFC, which was launched to enable everyday Malaysians to buy beef at affordable prices. However, a shocking trail of revelations show that instead of using the RM250 million soft loan to set up satellite cattle farms and structure an effective distribution and supply chain, Shahrizat's family allegedly bought two super luxury condos in Bangsar for RM6.9 million each, gave a RM3 million discount to a family-own firm, bought a Mercedes CLS350 and residential land in Putrajaya worth some RM3.3 million, channeled half a million ringgit to a family firm in Singapore, as well as paid huge sums to a tour agency for alleged family holidays. Shahrizat's husbang Salleh Ibrahim has not denied the transactions occured, but insisted there was no corruption and that all the deals had the approval of NFC. However, critics point out that it did not make sense for a pilot livestock breeding project to plumb for plush condos, a super-high-end Merc and upmarket residential land – not mention why were discounts given and holidays charged to public money.
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