Taib’s advisors would do well to rein in their boss’s sudden enthusiasm for media interviews. He is not doing well at all! At the start of the week, he contradicted his son-in-law, Hisham (Sean) Murray’s denials that he was involved in the family’s international property empire, by admitting he had started it with his own money. Now he has implied that his cousin Hamid Sepawi has been misleading […]
Sarawak Report has made the decision to release the full database of the Land and Survey Department’s recent transactions on rural lands. For some weeks we have been researching the confidential data, only to discover that of the more than one thousand plots of rural land that have been acquired by the state, the vast bulk have
Taib Mahmud promised development, but has delivered disaster in his own constituency of Balingian. Scores of communities are at this moment reeling from the shock of the present wave of ‘development devastation’ in areas that were in many cases Reserve Forest lands.
Now, shockingly, our research into the companies behind the destruction shows that in every case the profits can be traced directly back to Taib […]
The wave of protests and disgust against the destructive regime of Taib Mahmud in Sarawak is continuing and it has gained further attention in the international media. There have been demonstrations outside properties owned by the Taibs in the UK, Canada and the US and now it has been announced that further protests are planned
It must have seemed a good idea at the time for young Abu Bekir to have married a lady with an MBA in Finance. They even placed her on the Board of the family firm CMS. However, it means Datin Sri Shahnaz Majid, who is now suing him for divorce, is particularly qualified to give an estimate of the worth of Taib’s son – and she is after him for RM400 million! [….]
With breath-taking arrogance Taib has handed a huge area of land to a company controlled by his sister in his own constituency! Saradu Plantations was given 8,000 hectares in Balingian over the period 2004 – 2009. Most of the land was grabbed from a precious remaining forest reserve, Setuan Besar Forest Reserve, in the area near Bintulu. The rest of the
While Taib Mahmud used his BN party convention (staged at the new Borneo Convention Centre, which he corruptly hired his own family to build and manage) to lash out at the “liars and cowards”, who dare criticise his policies of ‘progress and development’, Sarawak Report took receipt of a tape, some interviews and photographs. The material shows the scavengers who scrounge their
London kicked off the planned week of international protests against Taib’s 30th year in office this morning. They staged a show of disgust outside the Central London headquarters of the wealthy propety company that is linked to him, Ridgeford Properties. A good crowd of mixed Malaysians, Sarawakians and British sympathisers gathered to make their message plain. “30 years
The company Miracle Harvest Sdn Bhd, belonging to Raziah Mahmud, the sister of the Chief Minister, and her husband Robert Geneid, has certainly yielded some miraculous profits. They are particularly miraculous because the company has not yet started officially operating, according to Malaysia’s Register of Companies! Like so many of Razia’s land companies, Miracle Harvest, incorporated 15th June 2005, uses the business address
At the end of last year, during a ground breaking ceremony for the new Taman Tunku – Taman Jelita road in Miri, Taib Mahmud launched into his new big theme of condemning ‘envy’. As one onlooker recalls, the Chief Minister said “Sarawakians must reject politicians who perpetrate “anti-rich people” sentiments as this will only deter the state’s quest for greater progress” […]
The shocking pictures of Minggat Anak Nyakin and his son Juan Anak Minggat speak volumes about the problems in Sarawak. The two men were viciously attacked on the night of February 14th by illegal loggers, who have been plundering their lands for years unhindered. Minggat was left for dead on the steps of the company manager’s office [….]
They were ignored by the government-controlled press, of course, and moved on by the police, but a remarkable group of protesters made their way from the distant Baram River to central K L last week. They were speaking up against Taib’s plans for the Baram Dam, which will destroy yet another huge swathe of Sarawak and displace tens of thousands more
[slideshow] When Sarawak’s Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud and his logging cronies strong-arm the longhouse communities out of their Native Customary Lands they always promise the same thing. They promise the people ‘progress and development’. Most of the local people have received nothing for their valuable wood and lands. Those who did get some compensation received just
As PM Najib Razak conducts his evaluation of BN’s record in Sarawak over this weekend, we recommend that he considers the shocking information revealed by our latest investigation into Taib’s Land Grabs. Over the past 3 years alone the Chief Minister has handed his own son, the fashion-dandy Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, Native Customary Rights Lands totalling the area of
The profitability of the business of being a Bomoh has clearly been vastly under-estimated. Sarawak Report has now established that Taib’s spell-monger is in fact one of the wealthiest men in Sarawak! We can demonstrate that he personally owns hundreds of millions of ringgit of shares in one of the world’s biggest timber companies, Samling Global. Samling, which
We can confirm that more of the land that rightfully belongs to the natives of Sarawak has been grabbed by Taib’s cronies, this time as payment to one of his Bomoh’s, Ahmad bin Suut! Clearly the Chief Minister prefers to exploit the poor, rather than pay in his own hard cash for such black magic activities! The area concerned is in the Bidayuh
[By Our Guest Writer from Asian Tatler Magazine]
We all love to admire this well-connected socialite and businesswoman, Elia Abas/ Geneid! She may look like a barely-dressed party girl, but Elia was scarcely into her 20s by the time she had established herself as a major figure in the oil palm plantation business, with a series of multi-million ringgit concessions all to herself!
Sarawak’s vast natural resources have been sucked dry, but still we learn that there is not enough money to hire a doctor for the new clinic in Belaga opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia himself last week! The ten thousand displaced Bakun Dam refugees in Belaga must wonder why, since a tropical jungle the size of Singapore was cut down
Siphoning off Sarawak’s oil reserves Having stripped Sarawak’s forests bare it seems Taib‘s timber tycoons are moving in on its oil reserves. Insiders were alerted by a low-key Singapore stock market announcement on January 6th, saying that Rimbunan Hijau are expected to ‘inject’ more oil field assets into their subsidiary Rimbunan Hijau Petrogas. The suspicion is that these oil fields have been granted in
Taib Mahmud evidently considers it his personal duty to look after his entire family of brothers, sisters, cousins, in-laws, nieces, nephews and all the rest. By this he equally clearly thinks he should ensure that each and every one of them should become multi-millionaires, even if it is at the expense of the poverty-stricken Sarawakian people, whom he
We can reveal that Taib’s tycoon sister, Raziah Mahmud, has once again been seizing land from Sarawak’s people. And our investigations have exposed a clumsy cover-up that has lifted the lid on a massive land-grab that implicates the Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud himself. Raziah’s attempts to conceal her involvement in plans to replace Reserved Forest Lands at Ensengei with yet another vast
News is circulating in the Betong area that Deputy Chief Minster’s family has just cashed in on Native Lands handed to them by the State of Sarawak (thanks to his political ally the Chief Minister, who is also the Planning and Resources Minister and Chairman of the Land Custody and Development Authority). They are believed to have
Sarawak Report has uncovered an explosive situation in Sri Aman, where we can reveal that the Chief Minister is in the very process of trying to sell off land which he gave free to his son, for a multi-million ringgit profit. The 22,000 acres in question (8,800 hectares) is in Bijat Land District, Sungai Tisak. It is
Sarawak Report can now present the proof behind widespread complaints that so-called ‘gangsters’ and ‘thugs’ are habitually used by logging companies to enforce the controversial licences handed to them in native lands by Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud. We have been passed concrete video evidence from an incident last week that shows a logging company worker threatening village blockaders with
The Sarawak Chief Minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, who is also the Chairman of the Land Custody and Development Authority (LCDA), which manages state land under the title of Pelita, has been using his control over the government agency to steer prime bits of land the way of himself and his family! Sarawak Report has found
