Billions Abroad ! – Questions over Taib’s Contacts with Foreign Property Tycoons
By 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!
Is the close association with Sarawak’s Taib Mahmud appropriate for such an organisation?
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!
The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List
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.
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