Funny Business in Hong Kong
By Sarawak Report
MACC Investigators have a headache in store for them when they turn to Hong Kong, such is the tangled web of Taib family shareholdings.
However, delving into these business concerns will throw up some intriguing coincidences, as Sarawak Report’s own researches can already demonstrate.
We can also demonstrate how a number of Taib-linked companies are now owned or being managed out of the BVI by one of the Philippine’s top bankers Franciso C Sebastian, who started his career as a Financial Advisor in Hong Kong. We suggest that investigations in Hong Kong hold the key to tracing the early development of Taib’s international web of global investments as the profits from felling Sarawak’s rainforests escaped abroad.
The Shea Kin Kwok connection
The first job that needs doing is to interview Mr Shea Kin Kwok. Shea was long regarded as a mysterious businessman with several links to Taib family companies. However, Sarawak Report has now confirmed that he was in fact the paid secretary to Taib’s brother Onn Mahmud. His job was to manage Achi Jaya company affairs out of Hong Kong, in particular to control the Achi Jaya linked companies into which payments were being made.
The Hong Kong Company Register shows a number of companies, including Regent Star listed under the ownership of Shea Kin Kwok and a fellow employee Kho Eng Beng
This activity became public in April 2007, when the shipping kickbacks scandal broke after the Japanese tax authorities prosecuted timber exporters for not declaring millions of dollars paid to Regent Star Company Ltd, which was one of the companies directed by Shea Kin Kwok out of his office in Connaught Road. The Japanese timber exporters explained they had been forced to pay the kickbacks to Regent Star in order to get their shipping licences.
