Sarawak Cable’s new “White Knight partner” has been issuing legal warnings to media seeking to research the company. Serendib Capital announced a plan to inject RM250 million to ‘resuscitate’ the company which sent share prices rocketing after being rock bottom……
If this advertised Christmas time removal of CSR cash to the nation’s poorest people in the name of a “poor financial situation” by this super-wealthy family company is true it deserves global opprobrium.
If it is not true then Samling must act urgently to reassure the poor communities who have been sent this appalling Christmas kick in the teeth……
Hammered for damages over a contested defamation claim in Malaysia, Sarawak Report has just been honoured with a major award from a global anti-corruption platform supported by the UN for its reporting and exposure of 1MDB…..
Sarawak Cable was the centre of controversy a decade back as an emblem of the self-dealing management of the state by former chief minister and present governor Abdul Taib Mahmud. He liked to be called the ‘CEO of the State’ and handed the massive Bakun cable project to a company owned by his son. That company is now apparently failing badly….
The Appeal Court has issued an award for costs of RM120,000 and damages of RM300,000 against the author of The Sarawak Report and two fellow defendants.
This amounts to a thousand times less than the astonishing RM300 million that the wealthy royal was demanding for a case of harmless mistaken identity, yet it is a ruinous sum for the three defendants targeted in this case.
Did the arrival of a certain journalist effect an alternation to the plans for a question and answer session at Sarawak’s ‘MINTRED Connects’ event in London?………..
Najib’s undeniable involvement in the murder of his former translator on his most notorious defence deal must now be fully examined after years of closing down proper investigations. She was threatening to expose the now proven fact that he, together with his aide Razik Baginda, had taken massive kickbacks from the French Scopene submarine deal, which provides a motive for her murder by his two bodyguards that could never be otherwise explained…..
The perils of Taib family exposure are mounting now that the Governor’s two sons have named Taib himself as a defendant in their lawsuit over millions of CMSB shares, signed over to his second wife from his first wife’s estate. But it is not the only family lawsuit that threatens to spill a heaving can of worms….
Hidden from the official video release of Sarawak’s KL based Independence Celebrations were troubling scenes of the 87 year old TYT Taib Mahmud as he struggled to perform his role as ‘Birthday Boy’ in his simultaneous birthday celebrations……..
How is it that under Malaysia’s reformist government draconian behaviour has raised concerns and does this bode badly for the country’s new budget that is targeted to open up a new era free from cronyism and corruption?………
As Sarawak leaders stand on the brink of an announcement of plans for further dam building, a shocking report has confirmed that the monstrous Bakun dam is critically in need of repair along with others in Malaysia. This has to happen before a single stone is laid to choke more rivers in the state …..
This latest all round episode of further hoodwinking presents just one more reason why the people of Sabah, particularly the short-changed indigenous landowners who are being siren’d with seductive promises of making “billions from zero”, should (like climate NGOs) take everything Kitingan says with a very large pinch of salt.
Norway’s state bank has just bought a commanding shareholding of 54 million shares in CMSB which is a strikingly similar amount to the shares contested in a Taib family row. In June the Malaysian court barred Taib’s wife Ragad from selling them until the dispute was settled ……..
The new Chairman of Nat West, appointed as a “safe pair of hands” in the wake of the scandal over Coutts, has erased mention of his former employment as COO/President of 1MDB JV partner, PetroSaudi International. At the time he suggested an off-shore tax avoidance scheme for the payment of his bonus …. to be managed by Coutts Zurich, the bank later fined for money laundering Jho Low’s ‘Heist of the Century’ from 1MDB….
The present leadership of the hotch potch Sabah State Government – made up of party hoppers who then passed an anti-hopping law – seems bent on parcelling off the state’s resources through schemes that mysteriously fail to benefit the state as much as private concerns…….
Sarawak, along with West Malaysia, needs to examine with urgency the conditions affecting millions of foreign workers in the country who are being used to strip out its valuable resources by ruthless operators. All the evidence shows that human trafficking and human rights abuses have become rife …..
The terms ‘Human Trafficking’ and ‘Migrant Labour Abuse’ sum up slavery in the modern world. And, with a rich country to exploit and a low population to do the work, greedy and lawless criminal ‘entrepreneurs’ have been tricking people into just such slavery in Sarawak. Those in authority have for too long taken the money and turned a blind eye ……
Azmin Ali plans to return as MB to Selangor in the embrace of PAS. However, allegations of political backhanders in return for contracts that sullied his previous tenure of the role, may come back to haunt him. Sarawak Report has obtained new evidence of an alleged plan involving over RM45m in donations for a 100 acre ‘direct nego’ development dismissed by the courts as fake ……..
Samling is one of the biggest bully boys in the Sarawak logging industry. However, when faced with pushback or a threat to their dubious profits they have proved remarkably thin skinned and ready to cry ‘victim’ against the poor folk who want them off their lands…….
Why Sarawak Report is not placing bets on sighting Jho Low anytime soon, if ever…….
The high life turned into life on the run for Jho Lows gang and now these prime witnesses are turning themselves in……
Samling’s egregious greenwash campaign just plumbed new depths as the company claims validation from Save Rivers, the NGO it has simultaneously sued for criticising its operations. Branding entities must not be taken in ……
It seems that all the Taib offspring, even the step-offspring, entertain fantasies of succeeding to his level of power and most certainly his wealth. Their suitability is another matter as they start to scrap amongst themselves……
Sarawak’s premiere land grabbing Taib family may be shocked to learn that ‘stepmum’ Ragad has been grabbing land off them. This comes just days after SR revealed that Taib had allegedly also signed over 50 million CMSB shares to his second wife ……
Something is clearly amiss in the Governor’s mansion. Decisions must be taken as it appears the looters are being looted and the Governor is ‘out to lunch’……..
A secret court hearing this week launched an attempt by Taib’s younger son to freeze 50 million CMSB shares obtained by the governor’s youthful second wife that were originally left to the four children from their mother Leila Taib’s estate …..
Top UEA Ambassador to Washington Finds Himself Exposed Over Acknowledged 1MDB Kickbacks From Jho Low In A Swiss Court……..
The Beckenham MP, Bob Stewart, a frequent guest and parliamentary supporter of the Bahrain government, condemned by human rights groups, has been charged with abusive behaviour towards an activist who criticised those links. Is this another consequence of the influence of foreign money on UK politics and parliamentarians?…….
1MDB Plus involved $2 BILLION more of Malaysia’s money to cover up the theft. Whilst the Malaysian authorities have tarried over action to get that money back, it seems that once again US investigators have got in ahead of the game, while the UN has cast opprobrium on Kuwait for its treatment of the whistleblower in this case…….
Almost daily a new ‘blue sky vision’ is promoted from the Sarawak ‘Premier’s’ office, as greedy businessmen troop through with their latest money-spinning projects for turning Borneo’s lifeblood into gold. ‘Green’, however, these plans are not. And, as ever, they present little care for the real needs of the increasingly impoverished and neglected indigenous people…….
Money Politics was once a phrase adopted by frustrated Malaysians sickened by graft, backhanders, bribery and all the rest. Now, ever more clearly, a British version of the problem has started to emerge and it often starts with donations of foreign money with a murky past…..
After years, even decades, hundreds of Sarawak Land Grab cases are still wending their way through the courts, long after the native lands in question have been plundered and destroyed. The glaring issue in these David and Goliath battles is that the concessions themselves were almost without exception the product of corrupt cronyism and nepotism under the rule of the former chief minister and current billionaire Governor of the state, Taib Mahmud……….
The mystery ‘NGO’, Advokasi Pribumi Sarawak (Sarawak Indigenous People’s Advocate), has complained SR “discredited” it by suggesting it was a PR outfit for the logging giant Samling. Why at the same time has the PR company behind the outfit pulled its client portfolio off the web and changed its contact numbers?….
When it comes to ripping out forests, dodging environmental restrictions and heavy handed tactics towards indigenous protests, the global timber giant, Samling, leads the field. However, when it comes to the subtler arts of communication, specifically disinformation known as ‘Black PR’, the Sarawak loggers appear out of their depth…..
Jho Low’s celebrity pal cum business partner had pleaded innocence over his role in laundering money looted 1MDB and the attempted corruption of the US government on behalf of Najib and then China. The jury decided otherwise….
Swiss prosecutors have moved to indict the managers of PetroSaudi, Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony, who for eight years have managed to spend 1MDB’s stolen money and live unpunished for their role in aiding and abetting Najib and Jho Low in pulling off Malaysia’s Heist of the Century….
Migrant rights campaigner Andy Hall has exposed numerous forced labour scandals in Malaysia. He says modern slavery has become endemic in the country owning to the corrupt abuse of regulations imposed on guest workers to the country, which land them in debt and beholden to their traffickers and employers. He has condemned the recent hand out of vast new quotas for extra workers without sufficient planning to ensure they are protected from the entrenched corrupt practices that need reform…
More toe curling details on how Malaysia’s stolen money was employed in attempted bribes to influence successive Presidents of the United States have emerged from the New York trial of hip hop star Pras Michel…..
Detail from the Jho Low money laundering trial in Kuwait has provided new information about how China worked to assist Najib Razak at the highest levels to raise stolen money from projects in Malaysia in order to cover the thefts from 1MDB…..
It was Sarawak Report that first spotted the 1MDB linked donations into Democrat campaigns, alerting investigators in the United States. The present indictment against Pras Michel and Jho Low claims they funnelled $100 million in illegal cash to gain influence over President Obama and the US government. The rap star recruited his friends as “Straw Donors” to hide the the real source of the prohibited foreign money….
The Kuwaiti criminal court has now published its judgement against what it describes as an “organised criminal group” consisting of Jho Low; Sheikh Sabah, son of the former Kuwait prime minister; his lawyer, Saud Abdelmohsan; a former businesss partner, Bachar Kiwan and Jho Low’s Kuwaiti friend, Hamad Al Wazzan who shared the proceeds of “funds seized from the Malaysian government” totalling in excess of a billion dollars. How much will Malaysia get back and what about the damages?…….
The son of Kuwait’s former prime minister, Jho Low’s college mate and Malaysia’s own top fugitive, Jho Low himself, have all been found guilty of laundering hundreds of millions in stolen Malaysian money used by Najib to cover up 1MDB in a landmark ruling by the Gulf state…….
The UK media regulator OFCOM’s rules preclude the awarding of broadcast TV licences to any entity that holds a party political or public policy agenda. But it appears that is exactly what has been allowed to happen after the recent takeover of GB News….
SR has received an anonymously written email, purporting to be from GT Plywood, angrily refuting that the activities in Baram described in our previous article were linked either to that company or to the wider group controlled by the KTS Lau family. So, will KTS give us a full interview about their actual operations? So far, no answer……
The pictures say it all and in this item we will use a lot of them to show Malaysians just what the greedy logging group behind GT Interhill are doing in Middle Baram as, once again, the desperate blockades put up by local people have been torn down by the bully interlopers with their heavy machines, thugs and tame police force…..
As the latest prosecution over 1MDB begins next week in the United States there is a glaring inequality over who has been punished and who has not……
Abu Dhabi’s IPIC has eaten humble pie, having climbed down from demanding $6 billion it had claimed 1MDB owed and instead ponied up $1.8 billion in reparations to 1MDB over its criminal complicity in the heist from which senior figures in the Gulf state raked hundreds of millions of dollars. It is a stunning victory for Malaysia, but it was owed so much more…..
Back in 2020, the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Goldman Sachs’ lightening resolution of its dispute with the Malaysian company 1MDB shortly after the coup led by Muhyiddin Yassin raised several eyebrows. Did the cut price settlement involve a violation of its recently concluded Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the US Dept of Justice? It is time to reveal exactly what happened …….
The whistleblower couple Xavier and Laura Justo lift the lid on their personal story after being targeted to cover up the scandal of 1MDB. Their book is online and will be available shortly in KL bookstores….
The latest Penan blockade against loggers in the Baram area, and the way it has been handled, highlights a host of injustices facing the native people of Malaysia which this new reforming government must start to tackle. They must begin by according indigenous peoples their most basic rights of identity, something that plundering state officials have been reluctant to do …..
The mentor and patron behind Nadhim Zahawi’s early political career was disgraced Lord Archer whose record is dogged by controversies. One of these was the Anglia TV share scandal where Zahawi’s brother in law and close colleague on Archer’s campaigns, Broosk Saib, acted as proxy on what appeared as insider trading but was never prosecuted….
As HMRC boss says there are “no penalties for innocent errors” Sarawak Report learns the reported NCA investigation was closed the day Zawahi became chancellor. Were the millions earned by his Kurdish family company from Western financed reconstruction projects part of that investigation and did money pass to his London property portfolio?…..
The UK Conservative party is waging war on poor immigrant arrivals, yet Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, was eager to paint his colleague Nadim Zahawi (fined for dodging taxes whilst Chancellor) as a shining example of a penniless refugee made good…. except that’s no more true than Zahawi’s “erroneous” claims about his company!
SR gets to the bottom of Najib’s latest twisted attempt to create yet a further appeal (following the loss of his last legal avenue through the Federal Court) against conviction over his multi-million ringgit theft from a public pension fund through SRC……
