Sean Murray’s Kuching Construction Connection – Expose
SARAWAK REPORT
Sean Murray and Jamilah Taib (Taib Mahmud’s eldest daughter)
We can reveal that the husband of Taib’s eldest daughter, the Canadian, Hisham (Sean) Murray, has grabbed control of one of Kuching’s most lucrative property developments on the so-called Kuching Isthmus, a venture sponsored by the State Government.
The RM380 million luxury hotel and office complex was announced at the end of last year as a key initiative on the site, which has been designated by the State Government as a ’Special Development Area’ and is being touted as the new Central Business District for the capital.
CMS Land Sdn Bhd, a joint subsidiary of the largely Taib family-owned company CMS and the State Government, acquired ownership of the entire 240 acres of development land on the Isthmus, after it was alienated from local title-holders through a series of controversial forced purchases, in the late 1990s.
‘Ripe for development’ – the whole area just outside Kuching has been turned over to the Taib family firm CMS in a ‘joint venture’ with the state
If that was not favouritism enough, the company has now been granted numerous incentives to build through the injection of huge sums of public money into the area.
CMS Land has officially estimated that the project has a “gross development value of RM2.8 billion“!
However, we can demonstrate that this latest major construction project on the site is actually being driven forward by a mysterious off-shore company, run by an inner-circle of Taib’s immediate family.
The controlling share in the Joint Venture, which is situated on 10 acres provided by CMS Land, belongs to a company called Premier Cottage Sdn Bhd. The Director of that company is Sean Murray, along with Taib’s other daughter Hanifah and his favoured sister-in-law, Gertie Chong. However, the sole shareholder of Premier Cottage is an off-shore company, Pioneer City Enterprises Limited, which supplies no profile or country address, despite having been awarded a significant public project.
The planned Kuching Tower – projected to be the tallest building in Sarawak
This is not the first time that the Murrays have claimed a stake in the Isthmus. Their company City Gate Corporation (part of the Sakto Group based in Ottawa) also snaffled a $110 million dollar contract to design the much talked about Kuching Tower, together with another company called ZW Group.
ZW Group, interestingly, shares the same address as the Ottawa-based Aberdeen Project Facilitators Inc, who were formally awarded the management of the Kuching Tower project back in 2006.
The Director of Aberdeen Project Facilitators and the Project Manager of ZW both happen to be one Thady Murray.
Thady Murray also acts as the President of City Gate Corporation and is one of the many members of Sean Murray’s family, who work out of the Sakto/City Gate Headquarters in their Preston Tower building, Ottawa!
