‘Hide Park’ ! – The Taibs’ London Bolthole
Sarawak Report
Hampshire House, 12 Hyde Park Place – The Taibs occupy the spacious ground floor flat
It is undoubtedly one of the smartest addresses in London. Hampshire House is an enormous and gracious period building overlooking the world-famous Hyde Park, just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch and Oxford Street. It contains some of the largest apartments in the capital, including the regular ‘pied a terre’ of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud.
The ground floor apartment used by the Taibs is worth around £8.5 million (RM 43 million) and measures over 4,000 square feet. A sense of its grandeur can be gained by looking at the pictures of a neighbouring flat that was recently put on the market at this price. All the Taib family are known to regularly use the building and it is likely that they own or have access to more thanjust one of the flats, since so many are able to reside there at one time.
Detour on the way to Haj!
Gracious interiors – worth RM45 million (£8.5 million)
Indeed we can report something that was not mentioned by Sarawak’s tame media on Tuesday, when Taib’s departure from Kuching to perform Haj was extensively covered. Instead of going straight to Mecca, the Chief Minister in fact came directly to his luxurious Hampshire House in London, which is an over-shoot his nominal target of several thousands of miles. the decision to go to the UK first will have shortened his advertised pilgrimage by a number of days.
Sarawak Report has learnt that one reason for the detour was that the Taibs had planned a major family reunion before going on to do their pilgrimage. The day before the Chief Minister himself arrived staff at Hampshire House were in full preparations and our information suggests that the family have decided to stage a coming together to try and repair some of their public feuds and rivalries. It is believed that this is an attempt by the Chief Minister to present a united family front as he gets ready to appeal to increasingly fed up voters in the coming election.
Spacious interiors
Even Onn Mahmud, the brother who had once acted as Taib’s closest business fixer, but then fell out with him has been included in the gathering. Onn, who was directly implicated in taking millions of dollars in timber kickbacks by the Japanese authorities, has barely spoken to many members of the family for years and has been excluded from Taib’s inner circle. The plan for this event was that family members should ask for each other’s forgiveness and make amends with each other, before travelling to Mecca to ask forgiveness of Allah. They are clearly hoping that this idea of forgiveness will also catch on with the voters of Sarawak.
Sulaiman Rahman Taib, photographed arriving at the gated entrance of Hampshire House on Tuesday 9th November the day before his father’s arrival.
Spotted at ‘Hide’ Park: Taib Sulaiman
However, there is likely to have been another compelling reason behind the Chief Minister’s decision to visit his Hyde Park mansion on the way to Mecca, as he may have been meeting his son. The day before his arrival a Sarawak Report photographer spotted the Chief Minister’s absent son, Sulaiman Rahman Taib, arriving in a black chauffeur-driven Mercedes and slipping into Hampshire House, where he is apparently staying.
Sulaiman Taib has failed to appear in public in Malaysia for the entire past year, despite his role as a member of the Federal Parliamen, which has been the subject of considerable speculation and concern. However, the Taib family has refused to make any statement as to his whereabouts. He has not appeared in his constituency or set foot in Parliament, which is a blatant neglect of the public duties for which he is handsomely paid. Indeed his extraordinary disappearance has sparked several rumours that he might be dead or under-going treatment for a disease which the family is unwilling to discuss.
So Sarawak Report is pleased to be able to perform a public service in confirming that the Chief Minister’s son is alive, appears well and presumably drawing his salary in London. In fact ‘Rahman’ has been spotted a number of times in and around London over past months and it is certainly open to speculation that he is indeed benefiting from Britain’s advanced medical skills in the treatment of a number of diseases that might not receive the necessary expertise in Sarawak or Malaysia.
