Ottawa's 'Local Company' And The Taib Family Back In The Spotlight In Canada
Readers can rest assured that the enormous pearls
clustered by the dozen around Jamilah’s neck are entirely genuine.
The Taib family women are notorious for their obsession
with gaudy baubles, as are other females linked to the Malaysian grand
kleptocracy, including the wife of the present prime minister.
This weekend the
Ottawa
Citizen newspaper took up the investigation into the Taib family’s massive
real estate development company in Canada, publishing a major analysis of
the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF)
report
on Sakto and its affiliates around the globe.
Sakto, which is headed by Jamilah’s husband Hisham (Sean)
Murray, rounded back on its findings, stating to the Ottawa Citizen:
“The assertions made by this foreign activist group are
false, malicious and sensationalized. This organization’s rehashed and
repackaged allegations have been found to be lacking in merit and never
substantiated by any government or authoritative body.”
In which case one has to ask why Mr Murray has always
balked at taking legal action, despite having threatened it against both
Sarawak Report and BMF a number of times?
Jamilah and auntie Raziah Geneid – draped in gems as always
Sakto has invested Sarawak’s money in sweeping glass
towers and appartments in Ottawa – leaving people living like this back home
All BMF’s allegations are based on public records, so
what, one wonders, can be called “false”? BMF points to the likelihood
that if the majority of Sakto’s records were not secret, thanks to Canada’s
notorious lack of transparency for an advanced nation, then there would be even
more evidence of Taib funding of his young daughter’s business.
So. if Mr Murray dislikes the suggestion and says it is
untrue, why does he not simply open up his company’s records to the level that
you would expect for example in the UK or Australia and reveal who the
shareholders are of Sakto and publish the company’s annual reports?
Murray and his family have sought to present the company
as being owned by them, however the evidence points to the presumption that it
is 100% owned by the Taibs, so why not just publish the facts?
Instead, he is content to call people who have no
financial or any other interest in making false accusations about Sakto
“malicious liars”.
Sakto has invested Sarawak’s money in sweeping glass towers and appartments in Ottawa – leaving people living like this back home
Sean has donated heavily to political parties in
Canada with his Sarawak money (note the fur and diamonds)
He also claims that the allegations are “re-packaged” and
have already “been found to be lacking in merit”. Really? Where and by whom
were the allegations found to be lacking in merit? Certainly not in a court of
law, where it seems Sean is too chicken to test the matter.
In their recent statements Sakto have claimed that they
are a “local company” and denied their funding came from Taib’s corrupt
kickbacks from Sarawak, contrary to mounds of information provided by BMF (and
indeed Sarawak Report).
However, the Ottawa Citizen points out that these
statements by Sakto contradict their own earlier boasts way back when they
started out in the 80’s and 90’s when they told the Ottawa Citizen that Sakto
was a “firm that specializes in offshore investment in Canada.”
Sean has donated heavily to political parties in Canada with his Sarawak money (note the fur and diamonds)
Sakto towerblock in Ottawa
Jamilah also
boasted
publicly at that time that Sakto had a number of big investors from the
Pacific Rim region,.
However, later Sakto acknowledged that there were only
three shareholders besides herself, all of them Taib family members, including
her uncle Onn, who was one of the original registered directors.
Who are the others and where did all Sakto’s ‘shareholder
loans’ come from?
So, if Jamilah is so willing to flaunt her wealth and to
claim everything is above board, why not flaunt those accounts and stop being
so coy?
See the full article from the Ottawa Citizen below:
Anything familiar? In their statements the
Taib/Murrays boast about their famed “local philanthropy”. It makes them
part of a long line of Malaysian kleptocrats who have hidden behind
philanthropy in rich countries, whilst ignoring the poor back home from whence
they stole their money. Maybe the Taibs should stop trying to buy favours
and plaudits in Canada with money taken from the lands of the poor natives of
Sarawak and maybe Canadians should stop accepting it?
Sakto towerblock in Ottawa
Ottawa real estate company’s ties to Malaysia questioned
MATTHEW PEARSON, OTTAWA CITIZEN
More from Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: April 9, 2017 | Last Updated: April 9, 2017 7:15 PM EDT
A Swiss NGO says financing for an Ottawa company’s
high-profile real-estate projects comes, at least in part, from corruption in
the Borneo rainforest — an allegation the company fiercely denies.
In an 86-page report released at a press conference on Parliament
Hill last week, the Bruno Manser Fund says Sakto Corp., owner of Little Italy’s
Preston Square development, grew quickly after it was founded in 1983 by
Jamilah Taib Murray, despite continuous operational losses and a resulting
capital deficiency that had grown to nearly $10 million by 1993.
The secret to the company’s success, the report alleges, “was a
continuous capital influx” from its shareholders, the Taib family, which
included Taib Murray and her uncle, Onn Mahmud.
Taib Murray, who came to Ottawa as a teenager to attend school, is
the daughter of Abdul Taib Mahmud, a long-serving and powerful politician in
Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest state.
Taib Mahmud, now 80, has long been dogged by controversy because,
rainforest advocates say, Sarawak under his watch lost more than 90 per cent of
its primeval tropical rainforest, one of the most biodiverse habitats in the
world, to logging and palm oil plantations.
Meanwhile, in Canada, his daughter started her real estate
business with an undisclosed amount of money she received from her father
— money he says he received as a gratuity when he resigned from Malaysia’s
federal government in 1981, according to the report.
“With the help of family and friends, we founded Sakto Corporation
when I was in my early 20s. Teamwork, smart business choices and savvy
negotiation skills enabled us to grow Sakto Corportation into the successful
company it is today,” Taib Murray writes on
her personal website.
Sakto Corp.’s current assets are estimated at $200 million, not
counting its subsidiaries and related businesses in the U.K., the United
States, Australia and Malaysia. It recently won Ottawa city council’s
endorsement to add a 25-storey building to Preston Square.
The company responded to a list of questions the Citizen sent by
email with a statement.
“Sakto Corporation is a reputable, local Canadian company whose
officers, directors and shareholders are Canadian,” the statement said. “The
company is led by a local family known for being community supporters and
philanthropists.”
“The assertions made by this foreign activist group are false,
malicious and sensationalized. This organization’s rehashed and repackaged
allegations have been found to be lacking in merit and never substantiated by
any government or authoritative body.”
Attempts to reach Abdul Taib Mahmud, who currently serves in the
ceremonial role of governor of Sarawak, and Onn Mahmud, through his
Singapore-based lawyer, were unsuccessful.
A January 1989 Citizen story characterized Sakto as a “firm that
specializes in offshore investment in Canada.”
Up to that point, Sakto had only invested in residential properties,
building up a portfolio of 450 apartments, condominiums and garden homes since
the company was founded in 1983.
But the 1989 Citizen article said Sakto’s most ambitious project to
date was the $45-million Commerce Plaza (known today at Preston Square), which
took four years to put together.
“Taib Murray calls the three-tower retail-office complex a test of her
abilities in the eyes of absentee shareholders,” the Citizen article said.
The Taibs have bought and built private residences in Ontario with a current
tax worth that’s in excess of $15.2 million, including a mansion in Rockcliffe
Park, says the report, citing Municipal Property Assessment Corp. valuations
from 2012.
By 1993, the report says members of the Taib family had invested at
least $29.8 million in the Sakto Corp. ($28.8 million in loans, $1.01 million
in share capital). The report contends the source of these funds is unknown.
Three years later, the report alleges, the Taib family secured two
mortgages of $20 million each on Sakto properties in Ottawa. One of the
mortgages was registered for “Jamilah Taib” and the other for “Jamilah Taib, in
trust.” It’s unclear why this was done, the report says.
There’s a further twist to the 1996 mortgage registered for
“Jamilah Taib, in trust”: One of the lenders was an offshore company in Hong
Kong controlled by Onn Mahmud, Taib Murray’s uncle. Its only known business
activity, the report says, was to provide loans to the Sakto Corp. And it
shared its offices, management and a shareholder with a twin company called
Regent Star Ltd.
Regent Star’s only known business activity was to collect payments
from Japanese companies that imported tropical hardwood from Sarawak when Taib
Mahmud, says the report, “exerted unfettered control over the Sarawak timber
business” as chief minister, minister of resource planning, and chairman of the
Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corp.
In 2008, Japan’s national tax tribunal found that nine Japanese
shipping companies had paid at least $1.1 billion yen (about $13 million Cdn)
to Regent Star based on a 1983 brokerage agreement for the shipping of Sarawak
timber, the report says.
The NGO’s allegation is that the payments were received “by the
Taib family from the Japanese timber importers.”
“It appears likely that part of the $20-million loan provided to
the Sakto Group in 1996 by Jamilah Taib in trust was money paid by Japanese
timber importers to the Taib family through Regent Star,” the report says.
The NGO’s analysis of Sakto’s finances is divided into two
periods in the report: 1983 to 1993 and 1994 to the present.
For the first decade, much was gleaned from audited financial
statements for Sakto Development Corp. held on microfiche by a library in
London, Ont. Much less is known about the company’s finances after 1994 because
financial statements of non-public companies are usually private. The authors
of the report say they also relied on land registry records and a number of
public statements by company officials or associated businesses.
The Bruno Manser Fund is a charitable association in Basil,
Switzerland, that works to protect the threatened tropical rainforests and
rights of indigenous forest peoples in Sarawak. It was founded by Swiss
rainforest advocate Bruno Manser, who disappeared in Malaysia in 2000.
Executive director Lukas Straumann, one of the report’s three
authors, travelled to Ottawa for its launch. He was joined by representatives
from Mining Watch Canada, Canadians for Tax Fairness and the Canadian Network
on Corporate Accountability.
The report’s release was used by the groups to demand the
federal government strengthen its anti-money laundering legislation and fulfill
a campaign promise to create a new, independent ombudsperson to
investigate complaints related to natural resource extraction.
In a written statement, International Trade Minister
François-Philippe Champagne said the federal government “expects all Canadian
firms to operate lawfully and according to Canadian values.
“We recognize there are always improvements to be made. We have met
with the Corporate Social Responsibility Counselor to evaluate how to
strengthen his role. We continue to meet with Canadian mining companies to
discuss how to improve our practices and strengthen the Canadian brand abroad,”
the statement said.
Straumann said his Safe Haven Canada report was carefully
drafted based on public records he and fellow researchers were able to get
their hands on. “We knew we had to do our homework,” he said.
Sakto, he said, has offered no explanation for where its money has
come from and has successfully shielded its Canadian assets from scrutiny for
more than 30 years because federal privacy laws protect the shareholders and
beneficial owners of private corporations.
Straumann called the logging activities in the Borneo rainforest a
“man-made tragedy” and added the indigenous people of Sarawak, despite being
promised wealth and development, remain among the state’s marginalized
poor. “They are not seeing the benefits,” he said.
The Bruno Manser Fund says it first alerted the Financial
Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) of its concerns
about the Taib family in 2010.
The NGO says the Taibs meet the definition of politically exposed
foreign persons (PEFPs) due to Abdul Taib Mahmud’s role as head of government
of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The definition also applies to children,
spouses and siblings.
Financial transactions with PEFPs are, by definition, high risk
with regard to potential money laundering and require enhanced due diligence
from financial institutions, the NGO says.
The NGO says neither the federal government nor the RCMP
has ever officially investigated Sakto or taken any steps to freeze the
company’s assets. In fact, the Attorney General of Ontario is among the
provincial government agencies that rent office space from the company at
Preston Square.
In a written statement to the Citizen, FINTRAC says it is
prohibited under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist
Financing Act from “commenting on any information that it may have received or
that it may have disclosed to its police, law enforcement or national security
partners.”
The statement further adds FINTRAC is not an investigative
agency and has no authority to pursue criminal charges. FINTRAC shares its
financial intelligence “when it has reasonable grounds to suspect that the
information would be relevant to investigating or prosecuting a money
laundering offence or a terrorist activity financing offence.”
A spokesperson for the RCMP would not comment on whether it has ever
investigated Sakto. “I can say that generally, only in the event that an
investigation results in the laying of criminal charges would the RCMP confirm
its investigation, the nature of any charges laid and the identity of the
individual(s) involved,” said Sgt. Harold Pfleiderer.
Taib Mahmud has been accused of corruption and abuse of public
office. Between 1998 and 2007, the NGO’s report says, Taib family companies
were granted land leases for nearly 200,000 hectares of state land worth
several hundred million dollars by the Sarawak state government when Taib
Mahmud was the minister in charge.
Although Malaysia’s anti-corruption commission opened an
investigation into Taib Mahmud in 2011, a Bloomberg report from May 2014 cites
a written reply the government agency sent in March 2014 to Malaysian
members of parliament saying Taib, Sarawak’s former chief minister,
wasn’t involved in decisions to award any project or land to his family
members, according to the commission’s findings to that point.
