Letter reveals Taib’s billionaire status
A letter that a former employee of Taib Mahmud’s family business empire wrote to the Sarawak chief minister in 2006 reveals the former’s billionaire status, claims the website Sarawak Report.
The letter which was written by the late Ross Boyert also reveals a meeting between the chief minister’s Canadian son-in-law Sean Murray with “multi-billionaire banker” David Rockefeller to effect a transfer in excess of US$100 million that Boyert claimed was “seemingly effortless”.
The website has published the key points of the 388-page letter that Boyert had written to Taib to complain about his sacking as chief operating officer (COO) of Sakti International, the Taib family’s United States-based property company.
The Sarawak Report article follows news of the 60-year-old’s untimely death last Sunday.
Boyert (left), in the letter, explains how Murray in 1994 had “bragged about the chief minister’s extreme wealth”, and disclosed his meeting with Rockefeller.
Murray, husband to Taib’s daughter Jamilah, had at that time approached Boyert to help run Sakti International.
“The position I accepted in 1994 required the formation of an operating company to administer and renovate the Group’s assets… The renovations were to be fully funded by equity capital which I was assured was in ample supply,” wrote Boyert in the letter.
“In his discussion of the family wealth now nearing US$1 billion, Sean told the story of the meeting with David Rockefeller and how his request for funds to be placed in his bank was met with the seemingly effortless transfer of what I was told exceeded US$100,000,000.
“He explained how the family controlled its wealth through a series of interlocking offshore trusts giving the example of Sakti International Corporation, held by Sakti Holdings which is held in turn by Sogo Holdings Limited etc.”
Knew too much?
Sarawak Report speculates that Boyert, in confiding all that he knew about the family business and bitter family rivalries, may have angered the chief minister and put the final nail in the former COO’s coffin.
“It is likely however, that by confiding in this way to Abdul Taib Mahmud (right), a man he had met but a few times, and by revealing that he was fully aware of the chief minister’s great wealth and commanding role in the company (which was meant to be a closely-guarded secret), Boyert had naively sealed his own fate,” says the website.
“Instead of gaining sympathy, it is likely he would have incurred the old man’s ire and convinced him that with all this knowledge, he was a dangerous liability to his company and reputation,” it added.
It claims that Boyert’s letter backfired and did not convince Taib to intercede, but that the chief minister instead “left Murray to pursue a devastating counter-suit against Boyert’s complaint of unfair dismissal, accusing him on numerous counts of embezzlement and dishonesty.”
It says that the confrontation between Boyert and Murray reveals details of both the Murray family’s involvement in Taib’s business empire as well as the Sarawak family’s true position.
“There is no reason to believe he (Murray) or his family members have controlling shares in the other property companies, despite an increasingly active and important managerial role.”
“Sarawak Report therefore concludes that it may suit the Taibs and flatter the Murrays to conceal the real ownership of this property empire by describing it as a ‘Murray family business’, but that employees like Ross Boyert knew exactly who is in charge,” it said.
