No escape for Taib Mahmud

COMMENT The embarrassingly weak retort by Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud to the recent crystal-clear Global Witness video expose of his timber corruption virtually confirms his guilt.

The video produced by the London-based NGO Global Witness captures the conversation between its undercover investigator and Taib's first cousins,.

It stunningly reveals the truth about how Taib and his family make illicit fortunes from the illegal disposal of Sarawak's vast timber land. The video was posted on YouTube, and featured in global TV network Al Jazeera on March 18.

Posing as foreign investor to buy timber land for oil palm plantations, the Global Witness investigator speaks to Taib's cousins Fatimah Abdul Rahman and her sister Norlia, who are daughters of Taib's uncle Abdul Rahman Ya'acob, who preceded Taib as Sarawak's chief minister. The conversation runs as follows:

Fatimah: Ample Agro belongs to my family, but my sisters, my four elder ones are in the company. The Land and Survey Department, they are the ones who issue this licence... Of course, it's from the CM's directive, but I can speak to the CM very easily.

Global Witness: Can you?

Fatimah: Yes.

Global Witness: And you think he will agree?

Fatimah: Yeah. He was the one who gave us the land. He is my cousin (laughs). His mother and my father are sister and brother, siblings. He is my cousin, so it's quite easy.

Taib has no answer to revelation by cousins

Fatimah and Norlia said Ample Agro, a shell company, owns 5,000 hectares of land given by Taib at a nominal sum. They now propose to sell the company rather than the land, and they are shown in the video to have asked for RM4,000 per acre (fetching them a total price of RM50 million).

Among the joint owners of the cvompany are Norah Abdul Rahman who is also the MP for Tanjong Manis, and Khatijah Abdul Rahman who is a sister-in-law of Prime Minister Najib Razak.

And what has Taib got to say about his cousins' claims in the video, when he was cornered by reporters, coming out of a meeting on March 20?

He is shown in a video clip, saying: "Do you know that cousin? Did you find out what is the relationship between their father and me... is it friendly or not? We were fighting at one time. That cousin cannot be my most trusted... but it's up to you."

What Taib implied was that he is in bad terms with his cousins, and hence what his cousins said could have been maliciously conceived and should not therefore be given credibility.

But nothing is further from the truth.

Granted that Taib did cross swords with his uncle Abdul Rahman Ya'acob. But that was in the Eighties, when they clashed over overlapping interests in the award of government contracts and timber concessions.

However, the duo subsequently reconciled, and in a highly publicised event in 2008, they hugged each other, and declared that "blood is thicker than water".

The fact that the bad blood between the two is already history and that Rahman's family has been enjoying the largesse dished out by Taib is manifested in their beneficial interests, found in the Taib family's sprawling business empire.

Another indication of the excellent relationship between the two families is Taib's personal preference for Rahman's daughter Norah to stand in the parliamentary constituency of Tanjong Manis in the last general election

In short, Taib has told a blatant lie when he claims his cousins are still estranged from him. In fact, there is absolutely no reason why his two cousins should vilify him with concocted tales such as these. After all, the ownership and nominal premium paid for the 5,000 hectares of land can easily be ascertained in the land registry, and it would be extremely unwise to lie over matters such as these.

The fact that Taib has to resort to such an obviously false defence to shield himself is the clearest indication that he is guilty as charged.

Lawyers expose Taib's corruption

The 16-minute video also shows the separate conversations Global Witness had with two lawyers, which further incriminates Taib over his personal corruption and appalling breaches of law.

One conversation is with Alvin Chong, lawyer for the businesses of Taib's family as well as for the Sarawak government; and the other is with Huang Lung Ong, a lawyer who is trying to sell land for his tycoon uncle, Hii Yii Peng, who is a close associate of Taib.

In the conversation with Chong, the lawyer amplifies what the Rahman sisters had already told Global Witness earlier about the illegal methods traditionally used by them to evade the property gains tax. Chong also outlines a safe but illegal method commonly used by them to beat the government rule that local shareholdings in a company must not be less than 51 percent.

The other lawyer, Huang, tries to sell a 32,000-hectare land owned by Billion Venture, in which his uncle Hii is the majority shareholder, for RM230 million. Huang tells Global Witness point blank that for the deal to go through, the vendor has to give Taib a personal commission of some 10 percent of the sales value, which is considered a standard practice.

When Taib was pressed by reporters to comment on these video revelations, he admitted that he had seen the video, but dismissed it as "naughty" and not credible, and denied that he had any intermediary.

He said: "Could it not be someone trying to promote themselves to become an agent to get favours from me? It has nothing to do with me, right?"

Such an irrelevant and vague answer to specific details of corruption, abuse of power and illegal evasion of taxes and statutory requirement explicitly exposed by prominent persons is as good as telling the world: "I am guilty, so what?"

It is pertinent to note in this respect that lawyer Huang did not deny the veracity of the video conversation. In a phone interview with The Malay Mail on March 19, Huang described the conversation as mere "coffee shop talk" with the "foreign investor".

Huang explained: "I was trapped. I was consulted on legal matters regarding land.

"I may have uttered some words out of frustration as he (the 'foreign investor') kept on asking me many questions. I was pressured."

These words speak for themselves the truthfulness of Huang's revelation of Taib's corrupt practices.

Last straw for Umno?

As the corrupt ruler of Sarawak for 32 years, Taib Mahmud is of course no stranger to scandals.

On the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's (MACC) shelves, gathering dust, are thousands of pages of reports chronicling Taib's sins in devouring the world's richest rainforest to almost extinction, and in carving its vast territories to his family and business cronies for profiteering, at the expense of the desolate indigenous inhabitants.

But Taib has stood unscathed, despite numerous reports lodged against him over the years, protected obviously by his talisman, which is his unbroken record as champion politician delivering complete electoral victories to the ruling BN - election after election.

However, this is extraordinary time, and the Global Witness video is an extraordinary expose.

Since the video went viral since it was released, its YouTube posting has attracted close to a million hits, meaning the vivid and irrefutable evidence of Taib's mega corruption has already been exposed to more than a million homes, and it will continue to spread like wildfire until polling day.

Can Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak afford to do nothing against Taib and allow him to stick out like a sore thumb and a living monument of the BN's corrupt rule in the run up to the coming election?

Wouldn't a defiant and unshakeable Taib as chief minister symbolise a corrupt BN regime that is unrepentant and cannot be salvaged?

Would this be the last straw that breaks the camel's back on Umno's half-a-century of political hegemony?

KIM QUEK is a retired accountant and author of the banned book ‘The March to Putrajaya'.