Sarawak Report Exposes Sean Murray’s Kuching Construction Connection

Kuching
Saturday, 5th November 2011

The latest article by Sarawak Report make me lost confident in MACC ( Or are this Commission really mean Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission or just Malaysian Anti-Car and Cow?). Despite so many revelations being made but this Commission still not taking any action. Are they waiting for people power like in Egypt and Libya to punish this family?

Sean Murray and Jamilah Taib (Taib Mahmud's eldest daughter)

We can reveal that the husband of Taib’s eldest daughter, the Canadian, Hisham (Sean) Murray, has grabbed control of one of Kuching’s most lucrative property developments on the so-called Kuching Isthmus, a venture sponsored by the State Government.

The RM380 million luxury hotel and office complex was announced at the end of last year as a key initiative on the site, which has been designated by the State Government as a ’Special Development Area’ and is being touted as the new Central Business District for the capital.

CMS Land Sdn Bhd, a joint subsidiary of the largely Taib family-owned company CMS and the State Government, acquired ownership of the entire 240 acres of development land on the Isthmus, after it was alienated from local title-holders through a series of controversial forced purchases, in the late 1990s.

‘Ripe for development’ – the whole area just outside Kuching has been turned over to the Taib family firm CMS in a ‘joint venture’ with the state

If that was not favouritism enough, the company has now been granted numerous incentives to build through the injection of huge sums of public money into the area.

CMS Land has officially estimated that the project has a “gross development value of RM2.8 billion“!

However, we can demonstrate that this latest major construction project on the site is actually being driven forward by a mysterious off-shore company, run by an inner-circle of Taib’s immediate family.

The controlling share in the Joint Venture, which is situated on 10 acres provided by CMS Land, belongs to a company called Premier Cottage Sdn Bhd.  The Director of that company is Sean Murray, along with Taib’s other daughter Hanifah and his favoured sister-in-law, Gertie Chong.   However, the sole shareholder of Premier Cottage is an off-shore company, Pioneer City Enterprises Limited, which supplies no profile or country address, despite having been awarded a significant public project.

The planned Kuching Tower - projected to be the tallest building in Sarawak

This is not the first time that the Murrays have claimed a stake in the Isthmus. Their company City Gate Corporation (part of the Sakto Group based in Ottawa) also snaffled a $110 million dollar contract to design the much talked about Kuching Tower, together with another company called ZW Group.

ZW Group, interestingly, shares the same address as the Ottawa-based Aberdeen Project Facilitators Inc, who were formally awarded the management of the Kuching Tower project back in 2006.

The Director of Aberdeen Project Facilitators and the Project Manager of ZW both happen to be one Thady Murray.

Thady Murray also acts as the President of City Gate Corporation and is one of the many members of Sean Murray’s family, who work out of the Sakto/City Gate Headquarters in their Preston Tower building, Ottawa!

Fat contract – the Kuching Tower project is also being managed by the Murrays in Ottawa

 ’My family don’t do business in Sarawak!’ 

These discoveries make a further mockery of Taib’s claims that his family ‘does no business in Sarawak’.  During the recent State Election campaign the Chief Minister countered critics of his family’s wealth by claiming his children and relatives had earned all their money through business activities outside Sarawak and that he had never exploited his political position!

One of Canada's richest couples - but the Murrays claim it is all self-made !

What Taib Mahmud Said :

“I don’t want conflict of interest to haunt me all the time. [if] I do business inside the country, people will say I use my influence to enrich myself, so we did it outside the country” [Taib Mahmud]  

Taib went on to claim that the reason why his eldest daughter Jamilah and her husband Sean (Hisham) Murray are amongst the flashiest and richest couples in Ottawa, Canada, likewise owes to their business acumen in that country and not to wealth gained from Sarawak:

“Jamilah’s business in Canada is successful because she is good” [Taib Mahmud]

To the contrary, it is well known that Taib and his children each own scores of companies in Sarawak, all of which prosper owing to key monopolies, state contracts, timber and plantation concessions, which he himself has granted.

Taib & Sons - Chief Minister turns the earth for CMS Land with son Abu Bekir (CMS Chief) at his side

All Taib’s brothers and sisters have equally benefited from the same corruption, so it is small wonder that there is little opportunity left for anyone else.

Indeed, Taib’s statement that his family do no business in Sarawak is no more truthful than his claim that 80% of Sarawak’s jungle has been left untouched.  Clearly, the Chief Minister follows the principle that if you are going to tell a lie, you should make it a big, fat lie!

Murray family business?

It would seem that a similar approach is being taken by the Taib family regarding their explanations for the millions of dollars worth of property investment in Canada and beyond.  The multi-million dollar enterprise Sakto has been consistently portrayed as a ‘Murray family business’, which has expanded into the UK, US and Australia.

A Murray family company? – from Chris Murray’s Wikipedia entries

Numerous members of Sean Murray’s family now work in Sakto and Murray’s cousin, Christopher Murray, who runs the subsidiary Ridgeford Properties in London, told one journalist that the whole enterprise was started by a previous generation of Murrays and was a ‘Murray family company’.  This impression is maintained, for example, in Wikipedia entries like those above.

But, in fact Sakto was started by the Taibs in 1983 with an initial shareholder investment of over $4 million, all before Jamilah met with her future husband Sean.  Those interest-free and unconditional shareholder loans increased every year, amounting to over $9 million dollars by the time Sean gained a foothold in the company as a Director following his marriage to Jamilah in 198.  By 1993 those shareholders (who can remain anonymous in Canada) had incresed the investment to over $25 million and the company now has properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Shareholder loans rose each year in the first 10 years for Sakto, whose first Directors were Jamilah, Mahmud (Abu Bekir) Taib and Onn Mahmud

Likewise, the sister company Sakti was started in 1987 by three of Taib’s children and two of Taib’s brothers in the US.  And Ridgeford Properties in London was established by a company called Astar Properties in 1996, which operated out of the same BVI Trust as the CMS Trust Fund.

Ridgeford still benefits from a multi-million pound interest-free loan provided by a company called TESS Investments, which operates out of that same BVI office, even though formal ownership of the company has been transferred to City Gate International Corporation in Canada, which is directed by Sean Murray and his wife Jamilah Taib.

In fact, despite claims that Sean Murray ‘owns’ Sakto and related companies, available documentation indicates a pattern where he acts as a Director of these companies, while actual ownership remains with the Taib family into which he has married!

Early days – Sean married Jamilah in 1987, becoming Hisham Murry and earning his first Directorship in one of the Sakto Companies, which had been running since 1983

Thus, although he is a Director of Sakti in the US, court records in 2008 demonstrated that the company shares belonged to his wife and other Taib family members. Likewise Sitehost Pty in Australia, where he is a Director, but it is his wife who is the shareholder of the company that owns the Adelaide Hilton and the surrounding city centre shopping complex.

Profiting in Sarawak

Vision for a hotel to overlook the Borneo Convention Centre, whose Chairman is Taib’s sister Raziah Mahmud!

Given the claims about Jamilah and Sean’s ’self-made’ wealth, it is therefore surely surprising that they have taken such opportunities in Kuching’s biggest building project for the next decade.

Surely, to avoid those accusations of conflict of interest, they should be seeking to invest in projects anywhere else in the world, apart from their father in law’s own capital city on a state sponsored development?

Likewise, for a Chief Minister anxious to show that he is not favouring his family or allowing them to do business in Sarawak, is not it extraordinary to have awarded the latest multi-million ringgit project to a company Directed by his Canadian son in law Sean Murray?

However, of course there is no shortage of precedent . On the Isthmus, as elsewhere in Sarawak, all the money-making opportunities have been given to Taib’s family, with the full authorisation of his Planning Ministry.

Indeed the only projects that have been started so far have all been funded by the State, including the RM200 million Borneo Convention Centre, the only building so far completed, and the  RM 230 million Sarawak Energy Building.  Both contracts were of course awarded to CMS, whose Managing Directors are Taib’s son and son-in-law and whose largest shareholders are Taib’s children and late wife.

In the case of the Joint Venture Hotel project a CMS announcement last December revealed that the  new hotel project would be carried out by a private company Isthmus Developments Sdn Bhd. CMS Land (49% owned by the state body SEDC) would provide the land, but the controlling 51% shareholding of the Joint Venture would go to the previously unheard of Premier Cottage.

Isthmus Developments is the government-backed joint venture company set up by CMS and SEDC to build the major hotel complex

Premier Cottage is in turn owned by the mysterious Pioneer City Enterprises Limited, which is a non-Malaysian company that offers no details about itself in the Register of Companies!

Who owns Pioneer City, the company which has been given control over the state-backed hotel and apartment project on the Kuching Isthmus? Are they a suitable construction company? - there are many questions, but no answers given Sarawak's lack of transparency

Time for Murray to explain Sakto’s fortune

As one of the three Directors of Premier Cottag, along with Hanifah and Gertie, Sean Murray is one person who IS in a position to tell the people of Sarawak who owns the company that is now about to control one of Kuching’s major investment projects.  After all, it is taking place on land that was alienated by the government, in the name of the public interest and development.

Key man – Sean (Hisham) Murray has become the Director of a growing number of Taib’s foreign property companies

He and the Chief Minister should also surely explain, why they think this example of the Taib family doing business in a Sarawak Special Development zone, should not be considered a conflict of interest or an abuse of power by family members of the Chief Minister?

As this is a publicly backed investment, made possible by the alienation of land from its original owners and assisted by all manner of state support, the public is entitled to know about the suitability and track record of the company that has been entrusted with the job.

They are also entitled to know who is involved in order to ascertain whether dealings have been above board.

Furthermore, the shareholders of CMS, as well as the taxpayers funding the SEDC (Sarawak Economic Development Corporation), should also be entitled to know who owns Pioneer City Enterprises, because their Directors have provided the valuable building site in return for a joint shareholding with an anonymous venture!

Winners and losers

Taib & Sons – the Chief Minister and son Abu Bekir Taib (Chief of CMS) with a model of their planned CBD

While we wait for answers, it is worth remembering who loses and who gains from Sarawak’s so-called ‘Development’ projects.

The Kuching Isthmus was first earmarked for possible development back in 1973 and subjected to a notorious Section 47 Order under the Land Law.  However, for the following two decades nothing at all was done with the project and the government issued numerous long leases on the land to unsuspecting purchasers.

Then suddenly in the mid-90s Taib, in his role as Planning Minister, decided to revive the project and move on with alienating the land.  Under any principle of natural justice or good governance the original order should have lapsed, but Taib and his henchmen took the opportunity to demand the land at the original 1973 prices!

In one case a land-owner, who had invested all their savings in the district of Muara Tebas, was kicked off their land for a mere RM 6,628.78 per hectare.  This is land that CMS Land simultaneously evaluated at roughly RM 1 million a hectare, according to the details laid out in the Joint Venture Agreement - over a hundred times as much!

The dreary reality – So far virtually no development has taken place on what is now scrub-land, except for the public funded BCC and SEB building.

The Kuching Isthmus Development, therefore, represents just one more example in Sarawak, where development has meant fabulous wealth and opportunities for Taib’s inner-circle of family and cronies and destitution and disaster for the smaller people he has been willing to exploit.

Time and again DAP and PKR opposition politicians have demanded an explanation for the disgraceful treatment of the Malay and Chinese inhabitants of the Kuching Isthmus, many of them fishermen who have lived there for generations.

Now they have further confirmation that the continuing enrichment of the Taibs is the driving pattern behind this development, and that includes their overseas family members.

End timber corruption

Canada HQ – how many hectares of priceless Borneo jungle were sacrificed to build this?

Campaigners across the world are currently stepping up their campaign to force world governments to implement the UN’s anti-money laundering legislation and investigate the Taib-related multi-million dollar property portfolios in Canada, the US, UK and Australia.

Most of these investments are now directed by Sean Murray from his Ottawa base in Canada, through the companies he runs with his wife, Taib’s daughter Jamilah, and a string of his own family members. 

All of these companies can be traced to original investments by the Taib family, whose entire wealth has been founded on Taib Mahmud’s corrupt exploitation of the State of Sarawak.

Read More HERE

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SOLID SUCCESS – BAKUN DELIVERS ON REQUIREMENTS

Kuching
Tuesday, 21st September 2010

News publications have been chewing over the figures as Bakun waits to be flooded and have come to some inevitable, long-predicted conclusions.

Firstly, the Dam has no genuine economic purpose. Sarawak already has more electricity than its impoverished population can afford to use and the plans to send it to Malaysia by undersea cable was a fantasy by technology-illiterate ministers.

Secondly, the dam will actually make electricity more, not less expensive for ordinary Sarawakians, as existing power plants will be shut and Sarawak Hidro are desperate to claw back some of the RM 7.3 billion costs.

Thirdly, the public worker pension funds, which were arm-twisted by politicians into funding the dam to the tune of RM 5.75 billion, are now left facing an appalling loss. This means either a whole generation of hard-working public servants (teachers, nurses, clerks, firemen etc.) will now lose their savings for old age, or the Malaysian taxpayer (the next generation of workers) will have to find the extra money to bail them out.

Pensioners’ loss is Taib family gain

plenty of cement and steel

Therefore the all-round conclusion has been that Bakun is a monstrous, multi-billion dollar disaster. Southeast Asia’s greatest ‘White Elephant’ foisted onto Malaysia Peninsular by Sarawak’s ‘Chief Executive Officer’ Abdul Taib Mahmud. Perhaps, it is speculated, at least tourists will come to visit such an appalling example of state planning gone spectacularly wrong?

However, these commentators are neglecting to point out that from the point of view of Mr Taib’s personal finances and those of the Taib family, the Bakun Dam has been a stunning success.

Much of the RM 5.75 billion siphoned out of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP) by this project has gone gushing straight into the Taib bank accounts – and then presumably straight on out of the country to fund their private foreign investments.

CMS saved from bad business judgements by Bakun

Researchers have long since detailed how it was the decision to revive the Bakun Dam project, after it was shelved during the Asian Financial Crash, that rescued Cayha Mata Sarawak (CMS), the business the Taib family ‘privatised’ from the state into their own pockets, in the late 1990s.

By 1999, CMS, which had over-stretched on ambitious projects, was facing terrifying losses of RM 787 million. The Chief Minister (whose late wife and two sons owned most of the shares of this ‘public’ company) was even more alarmed as the share price collapsed as a result. The ‘CEO of Sarawak’ was facing personal bankruptsy, since most of his family company’s borrowings were based on the value of these CMS shares.

Environmental catastophy - an area the size of Singapore has been stripped bare for flooding

So it was the political decision by the Malaysian government to pour RM 1.6 billion of taxpayers’ money into Bakun (a sum which has since escalated to 7.5 billion and rising) that saved the Taibs’ from ruin (and kept BN in power in Sarawak). Everyone knew that the Chief Minister would award his own company the lions share of the contracts for this glorious mega-project (CMS specialises in producing cement and steel) and that the company would go from strength to strength.

Endless profit to be made

The Chief Minister does not miss a trick when it comes to making money and Bakun has gone on to provide wonderful further opportunities for abuse of public trust. Thus, his own company CMS has now gone on to further establish itself as the biggest private customer of the publicly owned venture that it built.

The company has done a deal with Rio Tinto Zinc (despite the horror of environmentalists) to build a vast aluminium smelter to soak up Bakun’s excess power. This consortium is currently playing hardball with Sarawak Hidro, the Federal government body in charge of the dam, to get a preferential deal for electricity. This at a time when Taib is negotiating on behalf of the State of Sarawak to buy the project off the Federal Government.

This means clever Taib has set himself up as the biggest client of the state venture that, as Finance Minister and Chief Minister, he is going to be entrusted with managing of behalf of the interests of the taxpayer! As far as conflict of interest goes that is about as big as it gets!

Aluminium smelters - get ready for the pollution

Meanwhile, Sarawak Report wonders whether his business partner, Rio Tinto Zinc, has considered dusting off its own ethics book on this issue, and leafing through to the section on doing business with corrupt tyrants?

Clearly, the opportunity to move politically sensitive and highly polluting aluminium smelting plants out of Australia, where the mineral is mined, and into Sarawak is tempting. Taib, of course, plans to cover the whole of this once pristine rainforest state with filthy foreign industries to foul up what remains of the dammed up river basins – the so-called Sarawak Corridor of Energy.

However, while the Chief Minister regards himself impervious to criticism and bullet proof at the ballot box (no fool like an old fool), the business executives at Rio Tinto have learnt the hard way about the dangers of deals such as these. Their local back yard environmentalists in Australia may be happy to see them move off, but the global environmentalists will be only too ready to hold such actions to account. And the native peoples of Sarawak are not that happy either, to put it gently.

Moveable inconvenience – displaced people at Sungai Asap camp, Bakun

No benefit to Sarawak

Citizens of Sarawak have also learnt the hard way that the jobs from dirty industries such as these will go to foreign workers and the money will go straight back out again. They know that ’Progress and Development’ , Taib-style means environmental destruction, land seizures and poverty for the many and vast riches for….. well Taib.

All of which explains why the multi-billion dollar plan to go on building pointless dams across the whole of the rest of Sarawak, displacing tens of thousands more indigenous people and destroying vast areas, while appearing to be the strategy of a mad man makes enormous economic sense personally to Abdul Taib Mahmud.

This is because China has agreed to invest US $11 billion to do it. Most of that money he reasons will go to him and after that who cares that the people of Sarawak will be in debt to China and therefore under China’s control for ever more?

Original article was published in Malaysia Report

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Another Stunning Revelation By Sarawak Report On Taib Mahmud Corrupt Practice

Kuching
Thursday,9th September 2010


RM 78 million from Sarawak’s Sewers – Taibs’ Shitload of profit!

It has emerged that Abdul Taib Mahmud and his family have conducted a massive raid on the public funding for Kuching’s new sewerage system.

Figures show that out of a total 530 million ringgit handed out from taxpayers’ money to pay for the project, a staggering 78 million ringgit has been siphoned off by the Taib family and a crony company called Nishimatsu Construction (Nishimatsu’s parent company is currently being prosecuted in Japan in connection with a massive bribery and corruption scandal).

The theft is just the latest example of the so-called ’skimming’ of publicly funded projects by using bogus sub-contracts, which has become a standard form of abuse in Sarawak under Taib. Critics have condemned it as the crudest possible form of corruption.

”Even a child could understand what is going on”, complained one outraged opposition figure last week, “the only reason Taib gets away with it is because he would sack any newspaper editor who dared to print what is going on. If the people knew the extent of it, the billions he has stolen in this way, they would be marching in fury!”.

Skimming using bogus sub-contracting is now standard practice in Sarawak

The method of theft is indeed astonishingly simple and the Chief Minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, has made it common practice during his thirty years rule over the State of Sarawak. First he abuses his position of power by placing a project in the hands of a company run by an unqualified member of his own family or a friend. Then the crony sub-contracts the project to another company that is capable of doing the job, but for far less than the original amount. This way the Taibs pocket the difference.

'Businesswoman' - Raziah Mahmud

In the case of the Kuching Sewerage System, therefore, it came as little surprise to insiders when it was announced on 30th September 2008that the Chief Minister had awarded the 530 million ringgit contract to a consortium of three companies that included Kumpulan Construction, which is run by his sister, Raziah Mahmud. She and Taib’s brother Onn own 87.5% of the shares in the company.

So what does Raziah Mahmud know about building a public sewerage system?

Kumpulan construction reportedly has no construction equipment and Raziah Mahmud is not qualified to build a modern sewerage system. In fact, her meteoric ‘business career’ developed shortly after Taib Mahmud became Chief Minister, when numerous public contracts started coming the way of companies suddenly started up by herself and other Taib family members.

Onlookers point out that Raziah Mahmud has only developed one area of evident expertise, which is her ability to rapidly sub-contract projects which have been handed to her by her brother. Thus, on 21st October 2008, less than a month after the original government contract was awarded to the consortium of Kumpulan Construction, Nishimatsu Construction and Hock Seng Lee Bhd (HSL) it was further announced by HSL that the project had now been sub-contracted to them alone, but at the much reduced sum of 452 Million Ringgit. This leaves 78 million ringgit unaccounted for in the hands of the other two companies, Kumpulan and Nishimatsu.

Unsavoury business partner?

Ichiro Ozawa - Japanese opposition leader forced to resign over Nishimatsu funding scandal. Who next?

Sarawak Report would therefore like to know how the missing 78 million ringgit was divided between Raziah Mahmud and the Japanese-owned Nishimatsu Construction Co?

Nishimatsu Construction hit the headlines last year when the Japanese authorities arrested its Chairman for operating a I billion Yen slush fund, which he admitted he had used to make bribes to gain foreign contracts and to make illegal political donations. The scandal forced the resignation of the Japanese opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.

Therefore, it is only fair to demand a clear explanation of the relationship between Nishimatsu and the Taib family and to ask what work could have been carried out by Kumpulan/Nishamatsu during this three week period that could have merited a payment of what is around US $25 million?

If such enquiries have brought a top political resignation in Japan, what might a proper investigation produce in Sarawak?

Taibs’ long-standing ties with Nishimatsu

Nishimatsu admitted paying 400 million yen bribe to build this water tunnel in Thailand. What was the deal in Sarawak?

Our researches have further shown that the Kuching Sewerage project is just one of several large-scale public construction projects that have been handed in much the same way to the same consortium of Kumpulan Construction, Nishimatsu Construction and HSL.

Since Raziah’s take-over of Kumpulan in June 1986 (up to which point it was a dormant company) the projects awarded to the same three companies have included the 40,000 seat outdoor stadium at Petra Jaya worth RM105 million and The Senari Deepsea Port valued at RM160 million.

Unfortunately for the public purse however, the level of profit that Kumpulan has been able to register from these major ventures has been minimal, according to figures obtained from the Register of Companies. For example, in 1991 a turnover of MR8.5 million produced only MR 249,474 in profits and in 1991 a turnover of MR 5,811,443 produced profits of just MR 23,451. In fact for five of the years between 1986 and 1998 the company actually registered a loss for tax purposes.

How much went to Taib himself?

Given that Sarawak Report has now established that Taib family members operate a system of secretly holding shares in their companies in trust for the Chief Minister (see Unmasked – Taib the Godfather, Sarawak Report), the people of Sarawak can assume that in fact a large chunk of the money skimmed off from the sewerage project has gone straight into Taib’s own foreign bank accounts.

Wealth - Raziah and her family pose in their sumptuous surroundings

The vast ‘cut’ taken by the Chief Minister’s family for this project means that either the people of Sarawak have paid MR 78 million too much for the job in the first place, or that the contract is now short of money and will be inadequately carried out.

Worringly, the most likely answer is a combination of both, meaning the people of Kuching have paid too much money for a sub-standard sewerage system purely in order to further enrich the Taib family.

Reform of the system could immediately be carried out by returning to the conventional system of open tendering for public contracts, which is the globally-accepted method of preventing fraud of this nature and is supported by the main opposition parties in Sarawak.

Read More Report at Sarawak Report

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