Sarawak Chieftain's US$1 Dollar Mansion

Written by The Sarawak Report

Thursday, 26 August 2010

We've heard of falling housing markets, but this seems extreme The Sarawak Report, (http://sarawakreport.org/) an NGO based in the east Malaysian state, has uncovered exhaustive evidence that the chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, has looted Sarawak of hundreds of millions of US dollars and hidden the wealth in Canada, the UK, Australia and the United States. It now has found indications that Taib may have received a US$7 million home from a timber company which depended on Taib for a license to harvest timber. Asia Sentinel is pleased to print the latest of the Sarawak Report's examinations of the Taib family's wealth. Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, appears to have acquired a Seattle, Washington, mansion valued at nearly US$7 million from one of his state's biggest timber barons for just US$1, records in the United States say, according to the NGO, Sarawak Report. Taib has controlled the issuance of timber licenses in Sarawak for the past 30 years. The Seattle property, which covers 26,000 square feet in one of the most prestigious areas of the northwestern US city, was passed to a company owned by Taib in 1991 by a California corporation called CSY Investments, set up in 1988. CSY acquired the property in 1991 and then registered it under subsidiary company called WA Boylston Inc. CSY are the initials of Chee S Yaw, who signs himself as the company's president in documents publicly available at the King County Land Registry. Yaw is one of the younger sons of Yaw Teck Seng, founder of the massive logging conglomerate Samling Global. Yaw Teck Seng is regularly featured in Forbes Asia's Rich List of Malaysia's top 40 richest individuals, as does his eldest son, Yaw Chee Ming, establishing them one of the richest families in Asia. Details of a very nice property Described as a "Top Grade Mansion" in 'very good' condition by the King County Department of Assessments, the property was valued at more than US$6.8 million in 2008. It has 6 bedrooms and 5 main bathrooms and an enormous living space of 9,020 square feet, plus a basement of 2,120 square feet. The house is surrounded by a large open porch and there is a big basement garage for the car-loving Taib family, plus a second, attached garage. The mansion is surrounded by gardens kept in manicured condition on grounds totaling 26,172 square feet. Mysterious acquisition The property, registered under the company W A Boylston Inc (California), has been in the possession of the Taib family since the early to mid-1990s. Family portraits of the chief minister, his deceased wife and four sons and daughters as small children adorn the elaborate rooms. They have all spent time in the mansion, which is not occupied by anyone else. The property forms part of the family's Sakti International Corporation, incorporated in California and managed by Hisham (Sean) Murray, Taib's son-in-law, out of his offices at 333 Preston Street, Ontario, Canada. However, there is confusion in the Seattle public records as to how the property passed to the Taibs. Sarawak Report has been unable to obtain any clear record of the transfer from one owner to another or, importantly, the register of any payment that would normally be eligible for taxation. We have requested a statement from the Taibs to explain the situation. 'Unethical' Earlier this week Samling made international headlines when the Norwegian Government Pension Fund withdrew all investments after condemning the company as 'unethical', owing to illegal logging and environmental devastation in Sarawak. Taib's control over the issuance of Sarawak's timber licenses leaves clear questions over his incentives for favoring such a company. It is no secret that Samling has based its business success on achieving numerous logging concessions in Sarawak. Over the period of the chief minister's rule, companies operating under his licenses have razed virtually all Sarawak's virgin forest, much of it taken without compensation from the indigenous peoples who had been granted these territories under Native Customary Land Rights. Samling is one of the main companies involved in this destruction and it has used its base in Sarawak to launch similar logging operations in the Congo, Amazon, Russia and elsewhere, many of which have been heavily criticized by concerned NGOs across the world. The US $1 Sale How and why did the chief minister come by a mansion formerly owned by Samling? The only official record available of a transfer of the property in the King County Land Registry from CSY is the granting of a so-called Quit Claim Deed for just US$1. The transaction on 19th September 1991 placed the property into the subsidiary company W A Boylston Inc, incorporated a few days earlier on September 5th by CSY at its registered address, 2260 Douglas Boulevard, Roseville, California, which was the headquarters of CSY. CSY and Boylston then immediately filed a joint letter to the King County Real Estate and Excise Tax Department declaring 'under penalty of perjury' that W A Boylston was a wholly-owned subsidiary of CSY Investments, thereby making the Quit Claim transaction exempt from excise tax. However, our investigations have shown that there is no subsequent record in the Land Registry of the later transfer of ownership of W A Boylston from CSY (Samling) to the Taibs. According to rules published by King County such a transfer would normally require the payment of thousands of dollars of excise tax. Proof of Taib ownership Despite the lack of open records, Sarawak Report is able to confirm that there is definitive proof that the Taibs did take over the property from Samling's CSY. In fact they took up residence as the effective owners not long after the property was placed in the hands of the CSY subsidiary W. A. Boylston. Rahman Taib had an insurance assessment drawn up in 1996 (see above). Furthermore, a significant alteration was made to the company's official address and official representative in 2000. In that year W A Boylston's annual Statement by a Domestic Stock Corporation to the State of California noted a change of address to that of the headquarters of Sakti International (the property company, which Sarawak Report has recently proved to be majority owned by the chief minister). Likewise, the company representative was altered from a CSY official to Rahman Taib, the Chief Minister's younger son. How much did it cost? Taib's salary as chief minister of the state of Sarawak is about RM50,000 (US$15,900) per month. If he had bought the Seattle home, the cost would have been about US$3 million at the time to purchase it from Samling. If he acquired it for US$1, there could well be tax implications for Samling and Taib in the states of California and Washington as well as the federal government. There is a second Seattle Mansion! If the Boylston mansion was indeed a 'gift' from Samling to the Chief Minister, then one cannot expect such a thing to be done by halves. Indeed, a second, equally gracious and prestigious mansion has also found its way from the Yaws to the Taibs in Seattle, by what would appear to be exactly the same route. W. A. Everett Inc 2222 Everett Avenue East, worth $2,854,000 at its peak value in 2008, was also originally purchased by the Yaws. It was then registered under another California corporation, W A Everett Inc, set up on the same day as W A Boylston (5th September 1991). W. A. Everett Inc is likewise listed as a subsidiary of CSY in the King County Land Registry. This mansion also ended up in the hands of the Taibs. The property is smaller, with four bedrooms and bathrooms, but has famously sought after views over the City. Sarawak Report understands that the Taibs have mainly rented it out over the past two decades, but as with Boylston, the only information about a transfer of ownership of the company from Samling to the Taibs comes with an identical change of address and officers in 2000, from the CSY address in Roseville to Rahman Taib, at Sakti International's Headquarters in San Francisco. This leaves many questions about how the Taibs have acquired their wealth and property. Asia Sentinel

Malays Beware: A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

Hantu Laut

It is up to the Malays whether to agree with this man or not.Mahathir has always been consistent with his beliefs.

It was also during his time that Malaysia achieved high economic growth.Those were times when Malaysians do more work than politicking and wasteful bickering.

Mahathir may not be the man to many who sees him in their own perspective but he has kept racial and religious tension under the lid.If the end justifies the means, so be it, at least the people have no fear of dark clouds looming over their heads.

Today, ordinary Malaysians live in fear of their peaceful lives being thrown into the hellfire of sectarian violence because someone has pushed the button that may trigger the countdown of the time bomb.

Nothing else has done more to divide the country than Anwar Ibrahim's ambition to absolve himself and seek the highest political office at a high cost to the people and nation.

Have you seen a chameleon missed its step climbing a tree? I have.

I live in a very wooded area with plenty of trees, insects, birds and small animals like iguanas, snakes, monkeys, pangolins and once in a while sea otters.The ones that I see almost every day are the squirrels and chameleons and, of course, the birds.

Fooling Malaysians may be one thing but trying to fool the rest of the world is another ball game all together.

Anwar Ibrahim was caught out by the Jews of his true colour.

You can ignore Mahathir at your own risk and if you wish support Anwar Ibrahim by all means.

After all this is a free country.

Remember Abraham Lincoln's "A house divided against itself cannot stand"

Unite or lose country, Dr M tells Malays

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 24 – Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today warned the Malay community that they risked losing political control of the country if they remained disunited, pointing to the fate of Muslims in the Middle East.

The former prime minister said Malays ruled because they were in the majority but said infighting would lead them to slowly cede power to non-Muslims, who may not have their best interests at heart.

“Before, we only talked about the problems of the Muslims in the Middle East, but now the Muslims in Malaysia, too, are facing a great challenge.

“If we are divided, we lose our majority power,” he said, referring to how the Malay support was split three ways between Umno, PAS and Keadilan.

“In an apparent reference to the opposition-led Selangor state government, Dr Mahathir (picture) said there was already an example of a Muslim mentri besar who took orders from a minority-dominated state assembly.

“He’s forced to bend to their will to the point where it’s as though he no longer cares about his race and religion,” he said, before breaking fast at Felda D’saji here with the Muslim Welfare Organisation Malaysia (Perkim).

He added that it was not unlikely that the country could end up the same way if Malays kept eroding their demographic clout by bickering among themselves.

“Other parties have the opportunity to use this bad blood between Muslims to strengthen their position and even seize power,” he said, citing historical examples of how foreign powers managed to take over Malaysia with ease.

“Maybe one day the Friday sermon will feature the name of a non-Muslim head of state.”

The former Umno president gave the example of Penang chief minister Lim Guan Eng’s name being used in sermons to show what the future held for Malays if they gave up power to non-Muslims, saying he believed sermons in mosques should cite the name of a Muslim head of state.

“I’m not a racist who wants to incite Muslim hatred towards non-Muslims but we have certain rights that other parties must respect.

“And respect only comes if we are strong and in power.”

Dr Mahathir also hit out at Malays who were willing to sell out their race to non-Muslims for political gain.

“Nowadays, we are willing to sell ourselves to anyone so long as we get some personal benefit,” he said.

Without naming PAS, he chastised the Islamist group for refusing to engage in Malay unity talks with Umno and choosing instead to team up with DAP.

“They’d rather make foes of other Muslims than those who see Islam as the enemy and have stated clearly that they reject any effort to make Malaysia an Islamic state,” he said.

“Those who used to say Muslims who cooperate with non-Muslims are kafir... are now doing the same thing.”

5 Signs the United States Is Collapsing

Hantu Laut

Our leaders and bureaucrats may want to read the book by Jared Diamond as mentioned in this review by Steve Walt.

Obviously, no one is infallible but continual mistakes and denial by leaders that they are making mistakes in their policy decisions could destroy the well being of a nation.

The United States has not failed or collapsed as yet but there is no guarantee it would not in the future.

We have seen states that used to prosper, declined to abysmal level. Argentina, Philippines and Zimbabwe just to mentioned a few.We have seen states rising from the ashes to become great economic powers, Japan,Germany and now China are nations that have seen massive destruction through wars.

Almost, the whole of the African continent is on the decline.Somalia, is a failed state in absolute sense of the word, it has no effective central authority, a state in total chaos, lawlessness and banditry.Sudan is a state run on genocide and atrocities.

The worst to come.Pakistan, another failed state in the making, a conflagration that could pose the biggest security threat to the civilised world.

We have seen the rise and fall of empires.We have seen the total disappearance of ancient civilisations.

These processes of decline and collapse of nations would continue as long as we have leaders who put self interests above that of the nation.

The way our politics are going Malaysia will not be an exception.

STEVE WALT

Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you'll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.

The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia's environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.

I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to "cut their losses" and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond's work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?

So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.

First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.

By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn't know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam's regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.

Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of "distant managers," and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I've noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn't get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington may be the last to know.

Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as "evidence" that greenhouse gases are of no concern.

Similarly, it's easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the world's largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists continue to win. But just as the British empire reached its greatest territorial expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the wane) these positive features may be largely a product of past investments (and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding foundations of American power.

A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. The "tragedy of the commons" is a classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group's preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries, or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.

Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in today's market-oriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a well-functioning "marketplace of ideas," and that the clash of different views will weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and addressed in a timely fashion. Sometimes that's probably true, but when well-funded special interests can readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and self-serving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.

Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either "groupthink" or various forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these problems.

Moreover, if a group's identity is based on certain cherished values or beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake. Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have disappeared because the Norse were unwilling abandon certain traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably unnecessary) war in 1999.

To sum up (in Diamond's words):

Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it."

That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that they're in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it isn't true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those where cutting one's losses makes a lot more sense. Foreign Policy.

Sabah Dilemma - Picking The Wrong Apple

Hantu Laut

It tells a lot how the bureaucrats work in this country.Political leaders and civil servants with the shortest memory span.Ad hoc decisions that can make or break you.

Read this distressing situation the Indonesian Consulate was put into by the sudden change of heart constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs to send back Indonesian worker's dependants from Sabah.It's again the same usual style of this particular minister not seeking the advices of state leaders and those who knows the real situation.

From the very beginning I was against the idea of allowing foreign workers to bring their families here.Not only Indonesians but any other nationality as well.Bringing the families along would only make them want to stay here permanently rather than go back to joblessness in the home country.

Malaysia may be a hell hole for some Malaysians particularly those who supported the oppositions but is a haven for foreign workers.

Having lived in Singapore for over 10 years back in the eighties, the island nation was wise from the very beginning for not allowing those in the lower income group to bring their spouses or families.For maids, once pregnant, while still under employment would be sent back immediately.Malaysia, on the other hand has myopic policies that work like the erratic tropical weather.You don't know whether you are going or coming.

The bigger problem here are not the registered Indonesians but the illegal Filipinos. Most Indonesians eventually return to their homeland but the ruddy Filipinos not only stayed here permanently but multiplied like nobody's business.

The street children you see in the state are the products of the delinquent of the Federal government.If the problem had been arrested long before we would not have such problem.

If the Minister think he is going to make Sabahans happy with this decision than he is wrong, he picked the wrong apple.

We may be desperate to get rid of the immigrants but we are also able to discern between good and bad apple.

We can see through our squints clearly that the Federal government is trying to pull wools over our eyes just to show they are doing something, worried that they may lose the fixed deposit, intimidated by people like Bernard Dompok and Yong Teck Lee on the illegal immigrants issue.

When Dompok and Yong were chief ministers they did absolutely nothing on the illegal immigrants issue.They waltzed and tangoed with the Federal government and forgot that we have a problem.Suddenly, they become champions and care so much for the people of Sabah.

Sabah politicians have the habits of waking up from their lethargic state every time they did not get what they wanted.Like the dormant volcano they become active again and start spewing noxious lava at the leadership.

Dompok is drumming up supports for himself and his party and may leave the BN just before the next GE because he thinks the BN will lose the next general elections.He is keeping his option open.On the same wagon is LDP, walking the political tightrope.

They may be in for a surprise that although the situation looks fluid for a change it may not be so.As I have mentioned before Pakatan may break up before the next GE.This unholy alliance is built on mere vehicle of convenience. Poor leadership and completely different ideology will be the killer.DAP, says no hudud law when they come to power, PAS insisted there will be hudud. The only party that will come out strongest and relevant among the three would be DAP.

The Minister of Home Affairs Hishammudin Onn should, if he does not already know, which I doubted, that we Sabahans want him to remove the illegal Filipinos and Indonesians first. They are the bigger problems not the dependents of legal Indonesian workers.

This unpopular move would also have a dire consequence on the plantation sector which are already facing labour shortage as more and more Indonesians return home to work in their homegrown plantations.

This problem may cost the BN to lose some of the Kadazan and Chinese seats in both state and parliament in the next GE.

This decision has also caused embarrassment to the Malaysian government and will add to the already rocky relationship with Indonesia.

Maybe, it is not too late to review that decision and start doing the right thing.