Abdul Taib Mahmud
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Pehin Sri Dr. Haji Abdul Taib bin Mahmud (born 21 May 1936 in Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia) is the current Chief Minister of Sarawak of Melanau descent.
Personal life and education
He undertook his early schooling at the St. Joseph's Schools in Miri and Kuching, before receiving a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Adelaide in South Australia in 1960.
Returning to Sarawak, he worked in the judiciary until 1963 when he joined the State Legislative Council of Sarawak, where he held various ministries in Sarawak and the Malaysian Parliament, before succeeding his uncle, Abdul Rahman Ya'kub, as the Chief Minister of Sarawak.
He is the father of Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib. He is better known as "Bai Mao"(白毛)in Chinese which means "White Hair". Among Malay speaking communities, he is known as "Pak Uban", which translates as "Old Man with White Hair". Being the Chief Minister of Sarawak for almost 27 years, he has successfully and securely made Sarawak as a kingdom of corruption.
Corruption and Sarawak's logging industry
Charges of deep corruption have surrounded Taib Mahmud on numerous occasions and the dominance of Sarawak's political elite including Taib Mahmud's family in the logging industry is well documented [1]. Most recently a foreign wire agency reported on March 29 that Taib has been implicated in a 1.1 billion yen (RM32 million) timber export kickbacks.[2] It said nine Japanese shipping companies, which transported timber from Sarawak, had allegedly failed to report some 1.1 billion yen in income over a period of up to seven years.The report claimed the money was paid as kickbacks to Sarawak officials via a Hong Kong agent linked to Taib and his family.
The results of the logging industry under Taib Mahmud is that less than 10% of Sarawak's primary forests remain, logging many of the ancestral lands of many of Sarawak's indigenous communities, despite their continued petitions and road blockades [3] where forceful dismantling has led to several deaths and regular violent coersion by the Malaysian army, police and logging company enforcers [4].
Ever since good Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s exciting anti-corruption programme saw the arrest of Eric Chia and Kasitah Gaddam, “Why only hunt ikan bilis in KL and Sabah? Why not also audit some bigger fish in Sarawak?” For example, many know that the Chief Minister (CM) of Sarawak since 1981, Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud’s family, has a rags to riches story. Abdul Taib Mahmud insists his family made their money via hard work in business. But many observers remain sceptical and wonder how his siblings and children came into all that wealth, both locally and overseas.
Born into impoverished circumstances in 1936, Abdul Taib Mahmud is an ethnic Muslim-Melanau who traces an aristocratic link to the Royal Court of Brunei. But since becoming CM, Taib has been previously described, at various times, by the international media in the following terms: He is “flamboyant with expensive tastes” and is said to have “purchased the piano of the late American showman Liberace for close to US$2 million”. He “lives in a well-guarded palatial home in Kuching and rides in a cream-coloured Rolls Royce. A dapper dresser, he is partial to double-breasted suits and sports a ring with a walnut-sized red gem surrounded by small diamonds”. Presently, he lives in a palatial private estate outside Kuching along Jalan Bako in a choice location called Demak Laut fronting the Sarawak river.
In the late-1980s, clients loyal to Taib collectively were estimated to control 1.6 million hectares of timber concessions. By 2000, Mahmud family members had major investments not only in Sarawak and Malaysia but also in other parts of the world. Taib Mahmud’s sons, Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib and Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, are the two key directors of Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS), a multi-million ringgit financial and infrastructure conglomerate listed on the KLSE that thrives because it receives lots of patronage projects from the Sarawak government via PPES Works, a CMS subsidiary company jointly owned with the State government. CMS also owns Bank Utama that engineered a reverse takeover of RHB Bank in 2003. And CMS continues to eye the Bakun mega-project.
Abdul Taib Mahmud’s spouse, Laila Taib, and his children are the majority shareholders of Sitehost Pty. Ltd., Australia, a company which owns the Adelaide Hilton Hotel. Company records dated December 2000 show them holding 95 percent of the company or 9.5 million fully paid up shares of Sitehost. Onn Mahmud (Taib Mahmud’s brother), Taib’s daughter Jamilah Hamidah Taib and her husband Sean Murray, are listed as director-shareholders of SAKTO Corporation, a major real estate operator of non-residential buildings in Ottawa, owning and managing over half a million square feet of prime office space with affiliate offices in the US, Asia, the UK and Australia. As well, they own SAKTO Development Corporation, a multi-million dollar development and construction company in Ottawa, while Jamilah is the sole director of SAKTO Investment Corporation.
Now, it may well be that the Mahmud family is one of the best and most astute business families in Malaysia. And more power to them on that account. But much of their known wealth has arisen during the tenure of Abdul Taib Mahmud as Sarawak CM. Is there then any wonder why there exists so much public scepticism about the sources of Abdul Taib Mahmud’s family wealth? Would not a transparent audit do well to quash such obviously unscrupulous rumours once and for all?
Corruption and Nepotism
In 2008, Mahmud gave his son Sulaiman a seat in the Malaysian parliament. After the son was elected, he was made a deputy federal minister despite not having any political experience. It is almost certain that the son would not even have a political career if the father was not the chief minister.
Mahmud's sister Roziah is one of the most powerful businesswoman in Sarawak with extensive holdings in property and timber business.
Mahmud's brother in law, Tan Sri Aziz Hussain, was appointed state secretary by Mahmud and when he retires, Mahmud appointed him executive director of Sarawak Energy and other companies.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
How much is Taib Mahmud worth?
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Politics, law and the logging industry
The influence of the logging industry on the politics and laws of host countries should not be underestimated, particularly with regard to obtaining licences to log and to forest policy more generally. There is often a mutually beneficial relationship between logging companies and political elites, involving the acquisition of large private wealth for both parties through bribery, corruption and transfer pricing, at the expense of public benefit through lost revenues and royalty payments and at the expense of social, environmental and indigenous communities' rights.
At the very least, these relationships equate to a conflict of interest; at worst, they suggest an institutionalisation of cronyism and corruption. In most cases, there is a fundamental imbalance of power between economic interests, the State and civil society over the control, use and exploitation of forests. The long-term consequences of this are logging at unsustainable rates for quick profit; illegal felling and illegal trade; disruption of successful local economies; social instability; environmental degradation; and social, cultural and political oppression.
The awarding of concessions and other licences to log as a result of political patronage, rather than open competitive tender, has been the norm rather than the exception in many countries. All too often, the identity of concession holders is surrounded in secrecy, as is the actual location of concessions. Occasionally, this information has been leaked from forestry departments or made available through unofficial channels.
Sometimes, the only information available is a list of the local concession holders rather than the identity of the ultimate owners and/or the sub-contractors who usually reap the rewards. In the case of Sarawak, for instance, the publication of a concession map became a political tool in 1987, when the present Chief Minister succeeded his uncle after an election campaign full of accusations of cronyism and corruption on both sides.
Trans-national logging companies, including Malaysian-based ones, often operate abroad through numerous private, locally-registered companies or as subcontractors to national concession holders. In this way, not only are each company's financial details difficult to track, but the actual links between operations (both nationally and internationally) are also obscured.
On paper, for example, the licence holders may appear to be separate entities. These practices have enabled companies to dominate the forestry sector of a country, for instance Papua New Guinea, or to circumvent maximum concession holding limits, such as those in Cameroon.
In countries which are now opening up their forests to timber exploitation (Guyana and Suriname, for instance), huge concession areas are sought by Malaysian and other trans-nationals. They put pressure on governments to issue logging licences over these areas despite the inadequacies of forestry departments to monitor operations effectively or to enforce legislation, despite indigenous and other local peoples' titles or claims to land and despite the lack of enough state forest to cover their requests.
Companies are not the only beneficiaries of patronage systems which facilitate the obtaining of concessions and other licences to log. Political elites—at both the national and local levels—also benefit through the receipt of funds and the support of wealthy patrons. Whilst these are inevitably difficult to prove, especially in a secretive licensing system, allegations of bribery and attempted bribery of government and community representatives have been made in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands on several occasions.
The world's largest trans-national logging companies are headquartered in a number of home countries, including: USA, Japan, Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Indonesia and Malaysia. Many have poor environmental and social records in their host countries. Malaysian-based companies have expanded both in size and in geographical spread over the last five years, and now represent a significant presence in the forestry sectors of a number of countries.
A national forest policy was promulgated in Malaysia in 1978, but forestry is managed by the separate state governments. Most tax revenue is collected by the national government, but state governments are allowed to collect land-related revenue, including timber export duties. These policies have encouraged state governments to maximise these revenues, in some cases to the detriment of sustainable forest management.
The development of export-oriented forestry industries in Sarawak first began in the 1950s, with the export of round logs and, to this day, log exports still dominate the state's timber interests. Log production has increased dramatically from 4.7 million cu m in 1970 to a peak in 1991 of 19.5 million cu m. In 1996 it was 16 million cu m, still double the rate recommended by an ITTO mission of 1990. Logging activities have continued at high rates and are widespread all over the state.
About 70% of Sarawak's land area has been licensed to logging companies.
The rapid expansion of the logging industry in Sarawak, including the rise of a few dominant players, is the result of co-operation between corporate leaders and politicians who have control over access to the forest resource.
The top politicians in Sarawak have long been awarding logging concessions to themselves, their families and their supporters. In the 1987 state election, the present Chief Minister, Datuk Patinggi Abdul Taib Mahmud, accused his predecessor of awarding 1.25 million ha of logging concessions worth RM22.5 billion to himself and his relatives. In retaliation, the previous Chief Minister, Taib's uncle, accused the incumbent of awarding 1.6 million ha to his own friends and family. Datuk James Wong holds at least 180,000 ha in logging concessions himself.
In 1992, a Malaysian academic institute published a detailed study of the relationship between loggers and Sarawak politicians and their families. A case study of Belaga district identified successive forestry ministers from 1966 to 1992, all of whom held shares in companies that had been awarded logging licences. The Lembahan Mewah timber licence, for instance, was 70% owned by the daughters of Rahman Yaakub, Chief Minister from 1970-81. The remaining 30% shares were held by the wife of Tajang Laing, state assemblyman for Belaga district.
Where politicians and their families hold concessions, they take no risk; they invest nothing in the logging operations and pay nothing for the logging licence itself. Some of the licence holders who subcontract logging simply collect a percentage of the income from logging operations as set out in the agreement made with the logging subcontractor.
Such connections between the political elite and logging companies persist to this day. Besides the fact that licensing decisions are made by the Chief Minister in his additional function as state Minister of Resource Planning, new legislation has been introduced that grants the Chief Minister alone the power to revoke timber concessions. No legal challenge to the revocation of licences is now possible and no reasons need be given. This ensures that anyone with a logging interest remains loyal to the Chief Minister or risks losing their licence. Such close connections between politics and timber exploitation means that there is little incentive to protect forests or to protect and enforce native people's rights.
