Keeping It In The Family! – How Taib ‘The Godfather’ Corruptly Controls CMS
SARAWAK REPORT
New research by Sarawak Report has produced further proof that Taib’s claim that he “does no business in Sarawak“ is shockingly untrue.
To the contrary, we can name him as the ‘Godfather’ who blatantly controls most of the shares in Sarawak’s largest public company, CMS.
We can also show that he has further manipulated that power to produce maximum wealth for himself and his family, by ensuring that CMS does as much of its business as possible with other family firms.
This practice is against stock exchange rules, because it is at the expense of other shareholders and the wider public.
Mafia-style business boss
This matter is all the more disgraceful, because CMS is a conglomerate that Taib himself created by privatising key assets that used to belong to the State of Sarawak. As Finance Minister and Chief Minister he caused valuable state interests like PPES, Steel Industries Sarawak and PCMS to be sold for knock down prices to CMS and then engineered extraordinary ‘share-swaps’ with cheap companies belonging to his own family members. This enabled the Taibs to take control of the majority of CMS shares by 1996!
CMS continues to make its huge income from state monopolies and the massive public contracts handed to it (without proper open tendering) by Taib himself. By these means he has blatantly exploited his political power to enormously enrich himself.
““If I do business inside the country people will say I use my influence to enrich myself. So, we did it outside” [Taib Mahmud March 2011]
Thus, although the Chief Minister has admitted it would be corrupt for him and his family to be involved in Sarawak business, our revelations show that this is exactly what he does on a massive scale through CMS, exploiting his political role to act as the mafia business boss of the State.
Passing around the shares – and the top jobs!
Our most recent revelations are based on the publicly recorded movement of shares within CMS. These show how huge chunks of the company have been passed round Taib’s close family members, providing only one feasible explanation, which is that it is Taib himself who is controlling their ownership. To all intents and purposes, therefore, he created the company and he IS the owner!
To cement this control over the company, Taib has also made sure that his family members occupy all the key management roles. However, again he has shifted round these positions between close family members, once more revealing the pattern of ultimate control by him.
Onn Mahmud
- No longer in favour! – brother Onn Mahmud is still worth billions
Public documents show how in the early years, while his children were still students, the largest shareholder and main Director of CMS was Taib’s brother Onn Mahmud.
Onn was Taib’s original key business proxy in Sarawak and abroad, until the brothers fell out in 2003. His name can also be found on all the documents relating to property companies linked to Taib’s children in Canada and the US and also to Taib related companies in Hong Kong.
According to research available at the London School of Economics, Onn acquired the family’s first 27% stake in the publicly-owned CMS in 1989 for an undisclosed sum. This followed a shadowy deal with the Sabah Economic Development Corporation, which was reported as a ‘share swop’ between Sabah and Sarawak, but turned out to be a private acquisition by Onn (the Sarawak’s Chief Minister’s brother).
According to CMS records, by April 2002 Onn, as Director and Group Chairman, owned over 30% of CMS shares. At that time Taib’s two sons Sulaiman and Abu Bekir (Deputy Group Chairman and Group Executive Director) also owned a further 12% each.
