Dear friends,Ladies and Gentlemen,
We would like to briefly update you on the latest developments on the Bruno Manser Fund’s international Stop Timber Corrupting campaign:
- Australia’s Foreign Minister and former Primer Minister, Kevin Rudd, has replied to a joint letter by the Bruno Manser Fund, Sarawak Report and PKR Sarawak Leader Baru Bian on suspected unlawful activities of the Taib family in Australia. Please find scans of the letter attached.
- Research by the Bruno Manser Fund has identified 25 Australian companies with links to the family of Malaysian potentate Abdul Taib Mahmud. Please find the exclusive list attached.
- Canadian Finance Minister James H. Flaherty has personally replied to a letter by the Bruno Manser Fund on suspected money-laundering by Sakto corporation, an Ottawa-based property developer which is being directed by Taib’s daughter, Jamilah Taib, and her Canadian husband, Sean Patrick Murray.
BMF has not yet received an answer from American authorities contacted on these matters, including FBI director Robert Mueller. The FBI is renting its Seattle field office, located in the Abraham Lincoln Building in downtown Seattle, from Taib family-owned Wallysons Inc., a Washington state corporation.
With best wishes,
Your BMF campaignteam
Below is the article reported at the web site sarawak report
Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, addressing the UN earlier this week
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former Premier and current Foreign Minister has issued a prompt and positive response to our request for an investigation into the Taib family’s foreign assets in that country.
In a letter received yesterday, just one day after Sarawak Report publicised the request, Australia’s Foreign Minister confirmed that the matter of Taib’s wealth has been referred to the Australian Attorney General’s Department for consideration.
This follows similar commitments to investigate by the Swiss and German governments. Malaysia’s own Anti-Corruption Commission has also confirmed that it has launched an official investigation into the Chief Minister’s conduct.
Taib has exerted a total control over Malaysia’s richest state in terms of natural resources for the past 30 years, occupying all main offices of state and treating all permits and licences as his own personal gift. The Swiss-based NGO, the Bruno Manser Foundation, has requested world governments to now examine his extensive foreign assets as part of their StopTimber Corruption Campaign.
The letter in full
Kevin Rudd’s letter thanks the Bruno Manser Foundation’s Director for bringing the matter to the attention of the Australian Government and, crucially, reassures him that:
“Australia takes it responsibility under the UN Convention Against Corruption and the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime seriously and will continue to implement these obligations as a priority“
Dr Straumann responded today that he is heartened by the response and looks forward to hearing further from the Australian authorities about the extensive assets held by various members of the Taib family across the country.
- The letter from Kevin Rudd’s office in full
Political row
However, the issue has sparked a row in Hobart over the past days, where one of the Taib family’s major assets are located. Two major timber processing mills are owned by Ta Ann Tasmania, a subsidiary of Ta Ann Sdn Bhd. The Executive Chairman and major shareholder of Ta Ann is Hamed Sepawi, Taib’s cousin and highly favoured business associate.
Supporters of Ta Ann from the Australian timber lobby have complained that the company has been unfairly accused of causing evironmental degradation in Sarawak and claim that Ta Ann has had no role in exploiting native lands or destroying rain forest. They also say that the company, which is one of Sarawak’s top five timber and plantation companies, has had no role in logging the remaining natural forests of Tasmania.
Bryan Green – not in Sarawak but in Shin Yang!Yesterday, Bryan Green MP, Tasmania’s Deputy Premier, ignited the issue in the local Parliament by claiming that notices advertising talks by the Editor of Sarawak Report in Hobart and Launceton, implied untruthfully that Ta Ann has been logging in native areas of Sarawak.
However, the Deputy Premier demonstrated a certain lack of local knowledge and understanding of the issues in Sarawak when he proclaimed that the picture showing a Penan tribesman and a timber truck had nothing to do with Sarawak, but rather some place he called Shin Yang! The picture he complained:
“said effectively that this was in Sarawak, when we know full well that the photo was taken in Shin Yang and had absolutely nothing to do with Ta Ann. It is vitally important that if people are going to turn up to this public forum that they understand it has been based on a false premise in the first place”.
- The picture Green objected to, which was used to promote a talk on Sarawak. the MP said this was taken in a place called Shin Yang!
Sarawak Report can confirm that this picture was taken in Sarawak and that Shin Yang is a logging company and not a place. Both Ta Ann and Shin Yang are two of the major logging and plantation companies that have stripped billions of ringgit of timber out of Sarawak’s state lands and native lands.
Recently Hamid Sepawi, the boss of Ta Ann, announced there was very little forest area left in Sarawak that has not been logged at least once. A reason that possibly explains his own company’s interest in exploiting the remaining jungle of Tasmania.
Ta Ann itself escalated the row by issuing a press release today demanding “Truth in Advertising” and attacking the poster saying:
“It appears to be a case of the wrong words, wrong photos, wrong place, wrong time, and wrong company” [Dr Sii, spokesman Ta ann Tasmania]
In response Senator Bob Brown, the leader of Australia’s Green Party and also a representative of Tasmania, told reporters that the picture was of Sarawak and was a generic representation of the problems of logging.
The information about extensive corruption in Sarawak and Hamid Sepawi’s close relationship to Taib Mahmud was a matter of considerable concern to Australians, he added. He stated this morning that he wanted to ”put the company on notice” that its activities in Australia are now ”under surveillance”.
BILLIONS ABROAD ! – QUESTIONS OVER TAIB’S CONTACTS WITH FOREIGN PROPERTY TYCOONS
Sarawak Report
The man pictured in the party-buggy sitting next to the Deputy Chief Minister, Alfred Jabu, is a Greek called Achilleas Kallakis. This was in April 2008 and Kallakis was already a man with a criminal record. Back in 1995 he and a colleague, Alexander Williams, had been convicted in the UK of selling false Hong Kong passports for RM 100 thousand each and also for selling fake Lordship titles to Americans for nearly twice that amount!
However, the pair had escaped jail and by this occasion Kallakis had wormed his way back into a position of apparent super-respectability. He was visiting the Taib family’s 5 Star Royal Mulu resort as one of a party of honoured guests accompanying Prince Albert on a highly publicised visit to Sarawak. By now he had been appointed Consul to Brunei for the Italian principality of San Marino, was on the Board of the National Portrait Gallery in London and had become a member of the Prince Albert of Monaco Foundation, which is dedicated to the environment!
It would appear that the basis for Kallakis’s new-found social status was his sudden reputation as a very wealthy man. Just that month he had rocketed into Britain’s Sunday Times Rich List as one of the top 400 wealthiest people in the UK. The newspaper estimated his worth at at least £250 million (RM 1.2 billion) – a staggering achievement for a man who had been caught out as a cheap fraudster just a decade ago!
Where did he suddenly get the money?
Interestingly, the Sunday Times also stated foundation of his wealth as being his position as Chairman of a “Monaco and Switzerland-based private family trust” and his Directorship of the Pacific Group, which had accumulated an eye-watering portfolio of key landmark buildings across London. According to the newspaper the then 40 year old was planning to build the most expensive flat in London, at St James’s Square.
By 2008 Mr Kallakis had also started to develop a public profile, earning a reputation for himself as a fast-living and gambling high-roller. He travelled by chauffeur-driven Bentley and private jet, owned a yaght and smart residences in London and Monaco. Acquaintances said he was always travelling somewhere in the world, however the background to his success remained a little unclear to those with whom he shared champagne in some of the world’s top hotels.
My backers are ”so wealthy they don’t even appear in Forbes Magazine!”
While the claims of family links to a Greek shipping dynasty are believed to be false, Kallakis had once boasted to reporters from the magazine Property Week that his backers were a Monaco and Swiss-based family trust – investors who were ”so wealthy they don’t even appear in Forbes”. Given his intimate ties with Prince Albert and the Taib family, Sarawak Report questions who these backers might be and why so many of Kallakis’s links tie back to Sarawak, Malaysia, Brunei and Hong Kong?
We can also reveal that Kallakis’s new moment in the sun was spectacularly short-lived. Shortly after this Mulu visit his affairs began to unravel and he once again faces charges of fraud. This time the charges are far more serious. In March 2009 his London offices were raided and he and the same business partner Alexander Williams were found to have raised £61 million in mortgages, which were backed by false guarantees and forged documents. They are now awaiting trial on multiple charges of property fraud in a case which is still being investigated by Britain’s Serious Fraud Squad.
Interestingly however, while he has now been dropped from the Prince of Monaco’s Foundation, Kallakis remains up till the date of our publication prominently displayed on the Royal Mulu website as one of the main recommenders of the resort.
“Absolutely perfect, wonderful hotel, wonderful staff, wonderful company”
The Royal Mulu website has continued more than a year after his arrest to feature Kallakis as one of the party of honoured guests accompanying Prince Albert of Monaco on his visit to Sarawak. He is one of four individuals who provide recommendations for the hotel. The others are Prince Albert himself, Mrs Evelyne Genta (the Director of his Foundation and Monaco’s Consul to London) and Mr Francesco Bongiovanni, President of the Monaco-Asia Association.
The Monaco connection
This visit to Mulu was only one of a number of close connections between the current leaders of Sarawak and Monaco that have caught the attention on on-lookers in recent months. In fact, one can only wonder at the sudden apparent friendship that has developed between Prince Albert, as a self-professed environmental campaigner, and the Taib family, who are notorious for their destruction and plunder of the Borneo Rainforest. There have been numerous visits by the Taibs to Monaco recorded in magazines like Asian Tatler (below) and party photos and the Taibs are believed to have acquired property in the sea-side tax haven and gamblers paradise.
However, given that the slightest investigation on the Prince’s part would have exposed Taib Mahmud as being both environmentally toxic and notoriously corrupt, Albert’s own visit to Mulu can only be described as an astonishing misjudgement. His staff, led by Evelyne Genta, Director of The Prince Albert Foundation, cannot have failed to spot the well-documented fact that Taib first confiscated the land from the Berawan Tribe and then proceeded to hand it to his own family company in order to build and manage the resort. Not only are his own sister Raziah and her 3rd husband Robert Geneid in charge of the company Borsamulu Resort, but we have recently revealed Taib himself owns a substantial shareholding aswell!
Albert’s staff should also have been aware that the conflict of interest on Taib’s part does not end here. In a characteristic fashion he has also involved the Government of Sarawak in a joint venture with the resort, meaning that public funds are being used to support the Mahmud family in running their own investment! Worse, the extensive logging sponsored by Taib in the lands surrounding Mulu has also destroyed most of the wildlife in the area and driven the forest peoples, including the Penan tribe from their
traditional hunting grounds. These iconic peoples now exist in starving conditions in shabby compounds with little hope or occupation.
As Prince Albert must also be aware, UNESCO is currently reviewing its granting of World Heritage status to the area for these very reasons and also because the Chief Minster is now planning to inundate much of the region as part of his vast dam projects.
One of my country’s top investors
Nevertheless, Albert did make the visit, which as Sarawakians will remember, was treated as a major event by the Sarawak Government. He was welcomed and entertained at Mulu by the Chief Minister’s right hand man Alfred Jabu and also Taib’s brother in law Robert Geneid. According to photographs the Prince clearly threw himself into the lavish entertainment, which was decorated by traditional shows from the very Berawan people who have been deprived of their lands. Albert also visited Kuching for a State Banquet, which was hosted by Taib Mahmud himself.
Yet puzzlingly, when journalists asked him the question why he had chosen to come he is reported to have answered “Why should I not visit one of my country’s biggest investors?”. Sarawak Report therefore wishes to know what is the evidence that Sarawak holds such large investments in the well-known gambling and tax-haven that makes up his tiny sea-side principality in the South of France? Also, how will these investments in what is known as a top place for individuals to hide money benefit the citizens of Sarawak?
Taib’s Islamic Fashion Show
None of the recent events linking the Taibs with the ruling family of Monaco have been more eye-catching than the Taib-sponsored Islamic Fashion Show held last August to raise money for the Prince’s ‘environment’ fund. Once again there are numerous pictures and videos available. They show both Prime Minister Najib and his wife Rosmah in attendance, along with the Prince himself and once more Evelyne Genta, who gave a speech in her capacity as Director of the Prince Albert Foundation, which is ‘dedicated to the environment and sustainable development’.
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO OF “just call me and I will come running – you got a friend”, starring Prince Albert and Taib Mahmud.
Any money raised from Sarawak for this fund will of course have been raised from the unsustainable destruction of one of the world’s last remaining tropical jungles over the past 30 years, thanks to Abdul Taib Mahmud, who was a guest of honour at the event and stood centre stage at the finale. It is believed that all the money to foot the bill for this lavish occasion was raised through Taib’s business contacts. This reportedly also included the RM 100,000 cheque presented to the Prince by the Malaysian Prime Minister’s wife!
Achilleas Kallakis was the only member of the Mulu original party guests who was not reunited here on the stage in Monaco. He remains unfortunately on police bail in the UK awaiting trial for very serious property fraud. However, the properties belonging to his companies have continued to catch the eye of the media. The sheer size of his massive portfolio, which included UK government offices, shopping centres, housing and several landmark buildings have raised many queries about who the real owner could be. Even more interesting has been the hasty re-assembling of this property portfolio under by another company after the Kallakis Group disbanded.
Sarawak Report suggests that the connections between Taib Mahmud, Achilleas Kallakis, Evelyne Genta and Prince Albert of Monaco do not appear to be coincidental. The Prince was seeking financial support and the Chief Minister was likewise seeking something that the Monaco tax haven with its lax financial regulations has to offer, which is discreet banking. This all the more so since the previous country of choice for shy billionaires, Switzerland, has started to tighten scrutiny of its bank accounts.
Taib, who used to frequently visit his dentist in Switzerland is now seen so much more often in Monaco with his family that one wonders if maybe it is due to his dentist moving south?
Comment by Mata Kuching — October 1, 2011 @ 6:20 AM |
This Aussie asshole has never set foot in Sarawak or he has money stuffed in his mouth and to him there is a Penan habitat called Shin Yang! And conincientally, Shin Yang is another conglomerate closely linked to Taib’s sister Raziah Mahmud.
Comment by Mata Kuching — October 1, 2011 @ 6:01 AM |
When politicians like this jerk opens his gob without first doing his homework, then he will of course be on the slippery road to infamy. he will never be forgotten for getting his information wrong just as Kevin Rudd will not be forgotten for making a gaff on a radio show this week.
Anyway, i wish Aussie polticians didnt behave like the Taibs and Bn government as it shows them in a bad light. Do not treat people like stupid idiots cos you will need to meet thhese “idiots” on your way down.
Comment by Beauty is in the eye of the beholder — September 30, 2011 @ 3:43 PM |
The Government of Germany, England and now Australia have closed in on Taib’s corrupt dealingsand money laundering. The United states can no longer ignore such issue as it comes under United Nation Convention.
Comment by Mata Kuching — September 30, 2011 @ 1:43 PM |
Ta Ann has nothing to do with logging in native lands in Sarawak. Just like Taib Mahmud has nothing to do with Ta Ann’s big contracts. How stupid can the Tasmanian deputy premier be?
Comment by Analist — September 30, 2011 @ 1:08 PM |