TI-M: Sarawak 'video expose' warrants probe

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) urged the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to kick off an investigation based on the ‘video exposé’ on Sarawak by international NGO Global Witness (GW). TI-M chairman Datuk Paul Low said that there is already “sufficient concern to launch an investigation” and asked to uphold the rule of law and go through the due process to investigate the truth of the matter. “The case has to be one that they have to start to see, the video is to be a prima facie evidence of a case that warrants further investigation. How clear can you be? There is already a videotaping,” said Low. “If Global Witness has videotaped the interviews I'm sure they can also be one of the witnesses, and call those who said what was said,” Low told Astro Awani. Asked on the possible crimes that were being committed, Low said it is up to the authorities to check, but said that based on the case itself, “it looks like it is closely linked to abuse, corruption, or money laundering.” On whether the London-based NGO was a credible source, Low said: “This NGO is quite famous. It is not one of those that simply make an accusation, they are an NGO run very professionally. They are not some half-baked NGO.” Several attempts by Astro Awani to illicit a response by MACC were unsuccessful at this time. Calls made to MACC deputy chief commissioner (operations) Mohd Shukri Abdull and investigations director Datuk Mustafar Ali went unanswered. Yesterday, GW released an incriminating video after going undercover to investigate the level of corruption in Sarawak, especially implicating Sarawak chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and family in ‘shady land deals’. The 16-minute video-- featured secretly recorded snippets of conversations with Taib’s cousins, associates and lawyers. Investigators from GW had posed as investors seeking to buy land for oil palm plantations in Sarawak, and the resulted video unravelled details of alleged outflow of funds and corruption in the state. For the purpose of ‘buying’ land, GW had approached the Regional Corridor Development Authority (RECODA), a government body in charge of foreign investment. “This film proves for the first time what has long been suspected — that the small elite around Chief Minister Taib are systematically abusing the region’s people and natural resources to line their own pockets,” Global Witness forest team leader Tom Picken said in a statement. The key findings of the investigation suggested that: - Taib would allegedly receive multimillion ringgit kickbacks for a plantation license - members of Taib’s family were allocated land at lower prices through directives from the state Ministry of Resource Planning and Environment, headed by Taib - and that a Taib-family owned company was offered for sale through an illegal transaction in Singapore designed to evade Malaysian tax. Meanwhile, the Advocates Association of Sarawak (AAS) reportedly said that it will investigate and act against the lawyer featured in the covert video, in which a suggestion on how to evade real property gains tax. Yesterday, Taib had denied that his cousins were his brokers for logging contracts, as suggested by the video. Instead, he said that the cousins, whom he was ‘fighting’ at one time, may be promoting themselves as his agents to solicit favours. “OK I saw the so-called proof. Could it not be someone who tried to promote themselves to be an agent to get favours from me? “It has nothing to do with me. I think it is a bit naughty of them. They are using their big powers to blacken my name,” the Sarawak chief minister said when approached by reporters in Kuching. He was responding to Global Witness' conversation with Norlia Abdul Rahman and Fatimah Abdul Rahman over a land deal that was caught on video. The sisters are daughters of Abdul Rahman Ya'akub, the former chief minister who preceded Taib and is also Taib's uncle. Meanwhile, the video was one of the most widely shared topics on social media yesterday, the topic "Sarawak" and "Taib" is still trending in Malaysia today: