CMS’s Ghost Shares !
By Sarawak Report
The largest single shareholder of Sarawak’s largest single company remains Laila Taib, according to the latest Annual Report recently produced by the publicly listed company!
Laila Taib, the late wife of Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, passed away over two years ago and the Chief Minister has subsequently re-married. Yet, her estate evidently still possesses a multi-million ringgit stake of 13 million shares, which represents 11.32% of the company.
Some latitude can be given for a period of mourning and re-alignment, but the point of an Annual Report for a public company is to make such key facts as key shareholders public. Two years on it is not appropriate to list a ghost.
How did she get them?
Indeed, Sarawakians are further entitled to know how Laila Taib managed to acquire such a vast shareholding in the first place. Not least because CMS is largely made up of ’privatised’ former state assets. Furthermore, the taxpayer maintains a very large investment in the company, with an 8.19% shareholding. All owing to decisions by the Minister of Finance, none other than Laila’s former husband, Abdul Taib Mahmud, in one of his many key political guises.
Family business. Laila still has the lion’s shares of the shares!
So it is time to cough up the information. Who IS currently the owner of the largest number of CMS shares? In particular, is the Chief Minister himself the beneficiary of his wife’s will? Or, is he the executor of her estate? Given his key political positions these matters should be made open.
Blatant conflict of interest
