Taib Mahmud, Sarawak’s Chief Minister for the past 30 years, is allegedly Malaysia’s most corrupt leader. His days are most likely numbered as his ill-gotten gains are now, slowly and systematically being made public.
Thanks to the two unlikely people behind the Sarawak Report and Radio Free Sarawak that started the ball rolling:
In a flat above a restaurant in Covent Garden, an investigative reporter called Clare and a tribesman from Borneo covered in tattoos prepare to transmit their daily revolutionary radio broadcast deep into the Borneo jungle.
They make for an unlikely double act – she is a white, middle-aged Englishwoman, and he the proud grandson of a Dayak headhunter who broadcasts under the pseudonym Papa Orang Utan. Their aim is no less outlandish: to expose the alleged corruption of Taib Mahmud, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo 6,500 miles from London, and bring an end to his 30-year rule.
Until recently, the people behind the Sarawak Report and Radio Free Sarawak were anonymous but things changed:
She says their decision to go public was prompted by death threats posted to the Sarawak Report website and by the mysterious fatality of her chief whistleblower in America. “Before Christmas, Taib’s disaffected US aide Ross Boyert was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room with a plastic bag around his head. The inquest is still pending but there was a sense that Peter and I could be in danger. Rather than hide, we’ve decided to come out fighting.”
Read the full expose here.
Another organisation working on Sarawak issues, The Bruno Manser Fund, recently released a report tracking corporations that Taib Mahmud controls globally and is seeking to blacklist and freeze their assets (details are available here and here).
Things are really not going too well for this corrupt dictator. Prime Minister Najib had to warn explicitly that he will not tolerate any Egypt-style overthrow of Sarawak’s Chief Minister.
Will the people of Sarawak think otherwise?
A dictator in distress?
Weeks ahead of the elections in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in Borneo, the Malaysian police are fearing public protests against incumbent Abdul Taib Mahmud, one of the longest-serving and most corrupt politicians in South East Asia. (Read here)
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The thing is, it was East Malaysia’s vote that kept BN in Putrajaya. The news on the ground says that the reason why Najib has yet to call for general elections is because he is uncertain of 2/3 majority. He needs Taib Mahmud as much as he needs to win the next GE to avoid being another lame duck as the previous premier.
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Stop Timber Corruption Freeze Taib’s assets now!
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“Last October, a few weeks after he gave us his story, he was found dead in a rare form of suspected suicide with a bag taped around his head in an LA motel room”. An extract from: Film tribute to Ross Boyert, for openly speaking out against Taib.
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Extracted from, “Down but not out: Najib and Taib to launch 2nd wave media warfare“, Sarawak Report, Malaysian Chronicle, 14 October 2011.
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Enough info for MACC to arrest Taib Mahmud now!
http://www.sarawakreport.org/2011/12/keeping-it-in-the-family-how-taib-the-godfather-corruptly-controls-cms/
“The above information, which is publicly available in company and stock exchange records, is quite enough for the MACC to issue a warrant for the arrest of Taib Mahmud. He and his family have not only done business in Sarawak, they have run Sarawak as a business along the lines of a family mafia, using his political power to extract virtually all the country’s wealth.”
Time for stop work & street protest to begin!
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$150 billion of black money a year disappeared from Malaysia, that’s RM 400 million a day.
Reports: According to the Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI), in 2009 alone RM 150 billion (US$47 billion) in illicit money was illegally siphoned out of Malaysia.
The latest GFI report, ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009′, is penned by economists Sarah Freitas and Dev Kar, who is a former senior economist at the International Monetary Fund. They stressed that these illicit outflows are basically “unrecorded capital leakages through… illicit transfers of the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks and tax evasion.” In other words, it refers to corruption money or black money that is obtained illegally and worse, not even re-circulated into our economy.
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US$150 billion of black money a year disappeared from Malaysia, that’s RM 400 million a day.
Reports: According to the Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity (GFI), in 2009 alone RM 150 billion (US$47 billion) in illicit money was illegally siphoned out of Malaysia.
The latest GFI report, ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009′, is penned by economists Sarah Freitas and Dev Kar, who is a former senior economist at the International Monetary Fund. They stressed that these illicit outflows are basically “unrecorded capital leakages through… illicit transfers of the proceeds of bribery, theft, kickbacks and tax evasion.” In other words, it refers to corruption money or black money that is obtained illegally and worse, not even re-circulated into our economy.
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