Bank Bumi Mystery Figure Dies

The late Lorrain Esme Osman (center)

The man at the center of what was then the world’s biggest bank failure and Asia’s biggest corporate failure takes his secrets to the grave

Was Lorrain Esme Osman the man who ordered the death of Bank Bumiputra auditor Jalil Ibrahim in Hong Kong in 1983? The death on Aug. 8 of Osman, the onetime chairman of Bumiputra Malaysia Finance, makes it ever less likely that the identity of the culprit will be revealed.

But Osman always ranked high on the list of suspects of those behind a murder that sparked the collapse of the Carrian Group, a Hong Kong corporate edifice created by Malaysians but built on bogus accounting, corruption and sheer bravado and which ensnared numerous greedy or gullible international bankers, auditors and lawyers. Carrian was the biggest Asian corporate collapse of that era, seriously blackening the reputations not just of Malaysian companies but the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank – through its investment banking subsidiary Wardley -- and the accounting firm then known as Price Waterhouse, which not only audited Carrian’s dubious accounts, but whose then-senior partner John Marshall was appointed managing director of the major Carrian companies for 18 months before they collapsed.

The Carrian disaster also resulted in the near collapse of BMF’s parent, Bank Bumi, which required nearly US$1 billion in recapitalization by the Malaysian government. It was the biggest bank failure in the world at the time. It is unique for another reason. Despite considerable suspicion of fraud and corrupt payments to officials, the Malaysian government, then headed by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, declined to attempt to prosecute any of the bank’s officers or government officials. It was the first major milestone in a culture of impunity that has handicapped Malaysia’s ruling Barisan Nasional ever since.

Lorrain Osman already has a place in history but for a different if related reason. He spent a record seven years on remand in London’s Brixton prison fighting extradition to Hong Kong to face various charges related to BMF and its relationship with Carrian. That he managed to fight for so long against extradition to what was then a British colony with an almost identical judicial system was thanks to apparently limitless access to funds for legal plus friends in high places in Kuala Lumpur and London. Although he was eventually extradited to Hong Kong he only served a few months in jail there because of his period on remand and he left Hong Kong owing a million pounds sterling to the government in legal fees.

For most Malaysians, and in particular Jalil’s widow, the issue was who and what caused him to be murdered. A small-time Malaysian businessman named Mak Foon Than was convicted of the actual murder, which took place at the ultra smart Regent Hotel (now the Intercontinental) on the Kowloon waterfront. Although Mak denied the murder but only confessed to helping dump Jalil’s body in a banana grove, he was convicted. (Mak claimed that a Korean hit man had done the deed but no such person was traced). Mak served his sentence and is now a free man living, apparently prosperously, in Penang. He has always kept his silence – doubtless wisely.

He had no obvious motive for being involved other than as one who performed errands for more important Malaysians. So which important Malaysian was desperate to see Jalil dead? Or was Jalil killed by mistake, the cord around his neck being intended to frighten, not kill?

Osman, who was staying in Hong Kong at the time, was an obvious suspect. Jalil, sent from KL to find out more about what was going on at BMF, was obstructing a big new loan by BMF to parties related to the Carrian group needed in a last-ditch effort to prevent it from going under. Osman was BMF chairman but Jalil insisted on approval from KL. Another was the founder and head of the group, George Tan, also a Malaysian, who was even more desperate for the life-saving cash but had no evident connection to Mak. More distant suspects included the bankers, lawyers and accountants who had taken Carrian kickbacks or made unprofessional judgments for money. One lawyer, a senior partner in Hong Kong’s largest law firm was found dead in his swimming pool with a concrete manhole cover around his neck. This was deemed suicide.Read more.

Malaysia's Sub Scandal Resurfaces

French prosecutors edge closer to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak

The noose could be tightening on one of Malaysia’s greatest military procurement scandals, the US$1 billion purchase of French-built Scorpène submarines commissioned by then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak in 2002.

The latest developments come at a time when Najib, as prime minister, has been touring Europe, meeting with Queen Elizabeth and Pope Benedict XVI in an effort to repair an image battered by an ugly crackdown on July 9 against tens of thousands of protesters asking for reforms of Malaysia's electoral system, which is regarded as rigged to keep the ruling national coalitoin in power.

The scandal allegedly involves French politicians, the giant state-owned DCNS defense contractor and politicians and military procurement units across the world. The scandal netted a company owned by Najib’s close friend Abdul Razak Baginda, €114 million in “commissions,” according to testimony in Malaysia’s Parliament. Some of the money is rumored to have been kicked back to French and Malaysian politicians.

French investigators have been poring over DCNS records for months in connection with the larger scandal. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has declined to investigate the scandal, maintaining that the giant commission was payment for legitimate services.

“It is likely that in September we should have access to the first police conclusions from all the investigations that have taken place over the last 18 months,” Paris-based lawyer William Bourdon told Asia Sentinel Tuesday. “We know that the police seem to have obtained quite crucial documents.”

Bourdon, the leader of a team of lawyers investigating the case, is to visit Kuala Lumpur on July 20 to confer with Suaram, the NGO that has filed a complaint with French authorities over the scandal. The question in France is whether under French law an NGO can act as a complainant. That will be decided in coming days by a French judge, Bourdon said. He added that he is confident that he will succeed.

For years, Malaysian authorities have been trying to keep the scandal under the carpet. The matter broke into the open in 2006, however, with the gruesome murder of Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu, who had served as a translator for part of the submarine deal. She had been shot in the head and her body was blown up with military explosives, Her last words, according to a confession by one of her killers, was that she was pregnant. The fact that her body was blown up has led to suspicions that the killers were trying to hide evidence of who the father might be.

The French prosecutors are not expected to investigate Altantuya’s death as such. Instead, they are following the case on the basis that it is illegal to pay or take kickbacks in France. If the €114 million is found to be a kickback, the French prosecutors can act, Bourdon said.

According to Altantuya’s final letter, which was found in a hotel room after her death, she was supposed to have received a US$500,000 fee for her work. After a whirlwind courtship in which she was given thousands of dollars and whisked off to Paris and other destinations by Razak Baginda, who is married, according to testimony, Altantuya was jilted by and ended up in front of his Kuala Lumpur house, calling him a “bastard” and demanding that he come out to face her.

Shortly after that, a sedan full of Malaysian police officers pulled up and took her away. She was never seen alive again. In the letter left behind at her death, she said she had been blackmailing Razak Baginda, at that time a well-connected political analyst.

Two of Najib’s bodyguards have been convicted and sentenced to death for her murder. Abdul Razak Baginda was acquitted in a trial seemingly held to make sure top government officials’ names would not come out. He fled to the UK and has not been back to Malaysia since.

French investigators have been going through the state-owned DCN's records for months. In France, the scandal has major implications. Tied to the global sales of weaponry have been deaths and scandal not only in Malaysia but in Pakistan, Taiwan and France itself. Allegations of kickbacks being examined by French prosecutors go clear up to former French President Jacques Chirac, former Prime Ministers Dominique de Villipin and Edouard Balladur and the country’s current president, Nicholas Sarkozy in addition to an unknown number current and former French defense executives. Military procurement officials in Taiwan, India, Chile and Brazil may be involved, in addition to Malaysia.

Lawyers for the families of 11 French engineers killed in a 2002 bomb attack in Karachi were quoted in April as saying they would file a manslaughter suit against Chirac, allegedly because he cancelled a bribe to Pakistani military officials in the sale of three Agosta 90-class submarines to that country’s navy. Sarkozy was Minister of the Budget when the government sold the subs, built by the French defense giant DCN (later known as DCNS) to Pakistan for a reported US$950 million.

Prosecutors allege that Pakistani politicians and military officials and middlemen received large “commissions” with as much as €2 million in kickbacks routed back to Paris to fund Balladur's unsuccessful 1995 presidential campaign against Chirac. As budget minister, Sarkozy would have authorized the financial elements of the submarine sale. At the time he was the spokesman for Balladur’s presidential campaign and, according to French media, has been accused of establishing two Luxemburg companies to handle the kickbacks.

It is alleged that when Chirac was re-elected, the president canceled the bribes to the Pakistanis, which resulted in the revenge attack on a vehicle in which the French engineers and at least three Pakistanis were riding. For years, the Pakistanis blamed the attack on fundamentalist Islamic militants, including Al Qaeda.

L'affaire Karachi, as it is widely known in France, has been called the most explosive corruption investigation in recent French history. It may well be far bigger than just the unpaid bribes to the Pakistanis. Executives of DCNS embarked on a global marketing drive to sell the diesel-electric Scorpène-class subs, a new design. They peddled two to the Chilean Navy in 1997, breaking into a market previously dominated by HDN of Germany. Read more.

Tan Sri Robert Phang Goes Round and Round Again

At Killiney Kopitiam on the evening of Thursday 17 March, 2011, barely two days away from the UNSC-endorsed military intervention in Libya the world knows as “no fly zone”, about 50 persons listened to the good Tan Sri Robert Phang, the contrast to the bad guy Attorney-General (AG), Gani Patail, in the sock-it-to-me fight over Tajuddin Ramli’s Mas-Kebab swop.

Tajuddin, Executive Chairman of the Malaysian Flag-Carrier, Mas, from 1994 to 2001, was said to have caused the company to lose about RM 8 billion. Though said to have been recommended to be charged in court by the former head of the Commercial Crime Division, the AG hasn’t acted on it yet.

As this saga began to unfold its new chapter in 2009 when well-known blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, ran a series of 10 installments on the Tajuddin’s Mas story, few would have expected the recount of Tajuddin’s embarrassment would light a fire that combusted in the MACC, causing two advisors to burn.

That was the subject of a “Kopitiam Discussion” my old friend, Baha Zain, organized through his outfit, Malaysian Digest, at Killiney Kopitiam on Thursday, a topic few Malaysians followed because of the bad journalism it drew, the bulk of writings on it showing the writers’ emotions and flaunting the what, when, where, who and why that are basic to reporting.

Raja Petra and a few others are exceptions, the former better described as exceptionally gifted.

The discussion at the Kopitiam was not a curtain-raiser. It served instead as a discussion with Tan Sri Robert Phang, and enabling us to see the woods from the trees pertaining to the new chapter of the Tajuddin Saga the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) would want us to believe was intimately interwoven with the selective prosecution of the senior police officer who had recommended that Tajuddin be charged.

Ours is a troubled environment. Trouble has been brewing all over the Muslim world, the new sets in the Mena countries stemming from complaints about police states, dysfunctional institutions, ethnic, religious and gender discriminations, income inequalities and rising prices of food and essential items, all of which are residing in this country too.

Closer to home, in Indonesia, where Muslim extremism has been clobbering the Ahmadiyya and Christian minorities over and over again, someone sent parcel bombs to “moderate Muslims” several days before, taking the country into Takfirism which may lead her into the kind of purgatory Pakistan has become.

There the moderate Muslim Governor of Punjab and a Christian Minister had been killed.

It is turmoil.

The Killiney Kopitiam session with Robert Phang on Thursday, which was somewhat of a jumble because of the varying foci, should have been finally about these – the rotting images of our institutions, beginning with the Police Force which we have been given to believe is divided into factions and a part of which is corrupt or is corruptible.

Then the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has been soured by the death of political assistant, Teoh Beng Hock, in its custody.

Several big fishes the Commission charged failed to be secured by a guilty verdict in court. That brings us to the disappointment with the Attorney-General (AG), Gani Patail.

The AG, Gani Patail, and the former Inspector-General (IGP), Musa Hassan, were implicated in Anwar Ibrahim’s Black Eye Incident in 1998 by the testimony of a senior police officer.

This rounds up why Anwar’s outfit wants the AG and the former IGP dissolved in vitriol, but says nothing about why the MCA big shot, Robert Phang, would want to ride on the fame and flames Raja Petra stands for, first in the making of the Free Anwar Campaign and now in gunning for the people who were believed to have conspired to reduce Anwar to political ashes.

Robert Phang, a big operator in the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and an advisor to the MACC, walked straight into the amazing swirl of terribly sensitive political events the Anwar outfit had been conjuring, causing a question mark to arise like a zombie in Haiti.

He is a social activist. He continued to crusade until after he had resigned in a huff in January 2011 following a blog accusation he had tried to corrupt a high government official involving a business deal.

He is a big man, a rag-to-riches story that may have once been the president of Magnum and is still the publisher of The Star.

Why did such a big guy take issue against the AG following the writings of the blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin? Is he in the outgoing camp in MCA? Or is it about putting the pressure on the government for action to be taken?

Gani, having gone to Mecca for the Hajj last year with Shahidan Shafie, allegedly Tajuddin Ramli’s proxy, was suspected to have become obliged to the businessman who was once a police officer.

But Robert Phang should have been well-disposed to know Raja Petra and his friends in the blog merely suggested Shahidan must have paid for the trip involving Gani and his family.

They had no supporting evidence.

They were again guessing when saying Shahidan had meant to persuade Gani not to prosecute Tajuddin Ramli.

But while Gani Patail had obviously attracted suspicion for the pilgrimage with Shahidan and family, he quickly reacted to a call from the MACC and attended a tell-all meeting on 4 January.

He submitted the receipts collected in his Mecca trip to show he paid for his family from his own pocket.

More than a decade ago the then Chief Justice, Eusoff Chin, had gotten into a crap for his family tour of New Zealand together with Berjaya Corporation lawyer, V.K. Lingam.

It was clear the events were good meat for the PKR spinners and if Phang chose to stay his ground he would be drawing the kind of flak Muammar Gadhafi would not want to think about in Libya.

But he did just that. No matter the fact that Gani Patail had submitted evidences to show he was clean concerning the trip to Mecca, and said he was willing to cooperate should he be investigated, Robert Phang and one other of the attendees were apparently not satisfied.

Chairman of the MACC Corruption Prevention Panel, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, issued a statement to the effect that the MACC members who attended this meeting were satisfied with Abdul Gani’s explanation.

There were 30 attendees of 42 invited. As far as this writer is aware, only two persons, i.e. Robert and one other, had protested the statement Ramon made on 4 January after the meeting.

The statement came close to exonerating Gani. Ramon said there was no need to investigate the allegations of Abdul Gani’s connection with former MAS Chairman, Tan Sri Tajuddin’s proxy, En Shahidan Shafie.

Robert Phang blew his top.

But was Ramon’s statement conclusive? Did Ramon carry such weight as to enable him to open or close an MACC enquiry?

Robert Phang was a member of the MACC panel Ramon chaired. He should know the limits of Ramon’s power. Still he acted quickly to reply on 5 January. His statement is given in full below.

I regret Ramon’s statement that - “ MACC members were satisfied
with Abdul Gani’s explanation and found that there was no need to investigate
the allegations”. I also resent Tan Sri Ramon’s statement that - “We found that
there was no case at all to accuse him of being linked to Tajuddin just because
of this Haj trip. It was irresponsible to allege that he was in any way linked.”

I consider Ramon’s statement to be a direct attack on me as I had
earlier called on Abdul Gani to clear the air over public allegations of his
relationship with Shahidan and the Mecca Haj pilgrimage. I was concerned that
Abdul Gani’s silence would fuel deeper suspicions and confusion. (Italics mine)

Ramon can speak for himself but he has no mandate from me or the
other panel members to make that statement on our behalf. That was not how I
perceived the meeting. What was certain was that my esteemed colleagues who
attended the meeting did not want to humiliate Abdul Gani any further. It was
not our intention to humble the Top Lawyer of the country.

It is therefore imperative for Abdul Gani to dispel any suspicion
surrounding his conduct of consorting with Shahidan Shafie and [sic] the Mecca Haj
pilgrimage. The public needs to be satisfied as to why Abdul Gani had not acted
on the recommendations of the then Director of Commercial Crimes Department,
Dato’ Ramli Yusuff, that Tajudin should be prosecuted. Inevitable [sic] the public
already perceived that the AG’s decision to prosecute Dato’ Ramli as an attempt
to cover up the MAS scandal. (italics mine)

Robert Phang invited the fires of hell to be flung at him. It was Raja Petra and several others in Anwar’s outfit who “ …perceived that the AG’s decision to prosecute Dato’ Ramli as an attempt to cover up the MAS scandal,’ but certainly not “the public”. Read more.

LAND OF THE FROGS

Hantu Laut

When Agnes Keith wrote the book "Land Below The Wind" in 1939, she won $5000 award for winning the Atlantic Non-Fiction Prize Book.

Agnes Rothery of the New York Herald Tribune, in her book review said " For every one who reads "Land Below The Wind" (Borneo) will never again be a mere name in a nursery rhyme --
whose climate where 'the warm humid air seems to promote longevity in germs'......

It was Sabah (British North Borneo then) that she referred to in her book, where she and her husband worked and stayed for almost twenty years.

Now Sabah would be better known as the 'Land Of The Frogs'. The 'Politicians For Sale' campaign has started.The three days cooling off period will surely see some candidates dropping out and giving undivided support to the BN and money in their pockets.

PKR suffered a hiccup yesterday when the political secretary to PKR Vice President Datuk Dr Jeffery Kitingan resigned from the party with immediate effect.He said he has lost trust in the party's Federal and State leadership adding that more leaders and members would follow suit.He accused the leadership as untrustworthy. He further said the BN is the best choice and the only one that can bring development to the state.

Frogs abound every time there is general election in Sabah.Some will join as independents hoping to be bought by the ruling party. The price ranges from as low as RM20,000. for the 'kucing kurap' to a few hundred thousands for potential 'giant killer'. Those sure of winning will wait until after the election and offer themselves for sale if the ruling party gets less than two-third majority.

It does make economic sense for the ruling party to buy off opponents.It would worked out to be much cheaper than having to fight them and spend millions on the campaign trail.

During the Mustapha's era it was not money that stopped opposition candidates from contesting in an election, it was gangsterism. A gang of people would waylaid the candidate on his way to the nomination centre, beat him up and detained him until the nomination centre closed. It was even cheaper and most of the candidates would be unchallenged.That's why during USNO time almost all seats were uncontested.

The state seat of Pensiangan that go uncontested has now created a furor. PKR claimed there was a conspiracy involving the EC and the Returning Officer of the Nomination Centre.A police report was lodged and PKR has filed an election petition to declare the result null and void.

The Election Commission's cooling off period is the most viable project for the buying and selling of politicians. It was probably put in place for that purpose.

GO SAMY GO

Hantu Laut

"Even an army can't stop me" he said in true Alexander the Great style.

Yesterday he changed his tone to “I will contest this term and next term I won’t go for it. This may be my last term,” he said.

On the Hindraf supporters who blocked his car in Prai last Saturday, he said they “asked me to tell Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to release the 180 people detained for taking part in an illegal assembly in Kuala Lumpur.”

“They did not talk anything about politics. This does not indicate that they hate me,” he said.

Great ! Than how the hell did Hindraf come into existence and the Indians were on the streets feeling agrieved, neglected and abandoned by the government.

Greed is the selfish desire for or pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others. It is generally considered a vice,...(Wikipedia).

Samy Vellu is the longest serving president of MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress), held the position since 1979. He is also the longest serving minister and the only Indian minister in the Malaysian Cabinet.

He was born in 1936 to rubber tappers parents at the Rengo Malay Estate near Kluang, Johor.At age 14 he left for Kuala Lumpur with his father and worked as a bus conductor with GTC transport company (now Syarikat Sr Jaya).His fortunes took a turn for the the better when he met a construction engineer who got him a job as an office boy in a well-known architectural firm. For a salary of RM9.00 a month he has also to clean the engineer's house, wash his car and water his garden.

While at the architect firm he studied English and attended night classes in draughtsmanship.In the early 1970s, Samy Vellu left for London and returned a qualified architect.

During his younger days, before becoming an architect, he and some friends formed a theatre group that staged dramas in rubber estates and small towns.The group's leading actors were Samy Vellu and V.Govindaraj.Ironically, both entered politics and stayed loyal to each other until they fell out dramatically and played out a real-life drama in 1984 that ended with Samy Vellu expelling Govindaraj from the MIC.Govindaraj, however, was readmitted in the party a few years later, and was appointed to the Central Executive Committee where he served until 2006, following his open support for Samy Vellu's opponent, Datuk S.Subramaniam.

Disloyalty, animosity,betrayal and gangsterism are indispensible commodities and trademark of MIC. Samy should know better why many poor and downtrodden young Indians are turning to crime and gangsterism.

Controversies surrounding Samy Vellu

Since holding his post as Works Minister of Malaysia, Samy Vellu is alleged to have been involved in several money scandals and work defects in several prominent construction projects in Malaysia by cover up the bumiputera contractor anc companies, which included the discovery of fungus growing in the air-conditioning system of the operating theatre in the Sultan Ismail Hospital in Johor Bahru as well as long closure cracks on MRR2, an overpass highway in Ampang[2].

Samy Vellu is often accused of sucking up shares of many of Malaysia's companies[3]. And the MAIKA Telecom Share Scandal continues to haunt him. Samy Vellu is alleged to have siphoned off 9 million (of the original 10 million) Telekom shares that were allocated to MAIKA. He had allegedly used three companies -- Clearway Sdn. Bhd., S.B. Management Services, and Advance Personal Computers Bhd. -- linked to Samy Vellu, his son S. Vell Paari, and brother-in-law to carry out his misdeed. When the scandal broke in mid-1992, the shares were valued at RM 120 million.[4][5][6] In 1994, the then Chairman of the MIC Public Claims Committee, V Subramaniam (aka "Barat" Maniam), charged that the accounts have been fabricated to make it appear that the profits from the sale of the Telekom shares were channelled to MIED. He declared, "Samy Vellu is a thief. He has stolen (Telekom) shares from the Indian community."[7].

Some believe that Samy Vellu had sold the Indian-Malaysian community off in order to save himself from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency. They allege that he did not do enough or protested loud enough when the Indian-Malaysian situation worsened, or when the Malaysian government dissolved the South Indian Labour Fund.[8] Currently, he has committed his energy to building the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology (AIMST). However, AIMST, built with donations collected from the Indian-Malaysian community, too, is riddled in controversy, as its shares are owned by Samy Vellu's associates, Tan Sri K. Ambikaipakan and Datuk Dr. T. Marimuthu[9][10].

Samy Vellu is also often criticised for his leadership style. As one critic put it, "He (Samy Vellu) is very much in control of the party (MIC), and the party's run almost [as a] feudal organisation where almost all decisions are made by the President himself. A lot of Indians are critical of MIC's role in the coalition government ... the Indian middle class does not want to associate itself in the MIC and largely making the MIC a working class party."[11]

There have also been allegations that Samy Vellu uses thugs to intimidate his political opponents, and that he uses phantom voters to win elections both at the party and the parliamentary levels[12]. A petition by Samy Vellu's challenger, Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, to the election court alleging electoral fraud during the 1998 General Election at Sungai Siput constituency, however, was dismissed by the presiding judge, Justice Wan Adnan, on technical grounds.(Wikipedia)

Samy, you don't seem to get the message that you have ran out of your usefulness, the Indian community have had enough of your neglect and contempt for them and what is even more pathetic, you have forgotten your humble beginning.

Samy, least you forget, nothing is for free. You have gone through the experience of having to pay back for the help and kindness of another person. What have you given back in return for the Indians votes that kept you in office all this while?

Go Samy go, before you fall in disgrace.

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