Taib’s Timber Connections – More Business Links To Top Tycoons
SARAWAK REPORT
It is time the forces of law and order came to the assistance of the Penan people, who are bravely continuing to resist the illegal destruction of Sarawak’s rainforest by Taib Mahmud’s logging cronies.
Instead they are helping the loggers tear down Penan blockades to protect their native lands.
“The whole world should know that we have given the logging companies four warnings already”, Penan leaders (above) announced last week, after their blockade had been ripped down by the logging companies, backed by the police for the 4th time in a week.
“From now on, we Penan will take all necessary measures to protect our forests and we will make the logging companies aggression on our livelihoods responsible for whatever might happen.”
Mental illness of greed
Why are these gentle people being forced into such a perilous stand by this assault on their very existence and the remaining few trees left standing in Sarawak’s Borneo Jungle? The reason lies with the terrible sickness of mind that now afflicts the Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud.
As we have demonstrated time and again on this site, Taib has run all the logging, plantations and exports from the state purely for his own enrichment. The land has been destroyed and the people are far worse off than before. Extremely valuable trees and resources have been plundered with the excuse of a ‘development’ that has never happened.
Now Taib promises that his latest mega-project, SCORE, will provide the promised wealth to his people that logging and oil palm have failed to do. It will not. In fact, it can already be demonstrated that this entire project is also purely designed to push more public money (or worse, borrowed money) through companies run by his own family mafia.
WTK – criminal conflicts of interest
- stripping the jungle
Sarawak Report has already demonstrated the extensive links between Samling and Taib family concerns. All the crony timber tycoons have had to bribe heavily for their favoured status and permits from Taib to continue their psychopathic destruction of the jungle.
We can now reveal how WTK’s own shareholder lists expose the extensive and corrupted Taib family interests in that company. As major shareholders this means the Taibs benefit every time WTK cuts down a tree thanks to a permit from Taib. This is why it is a criminal conflict of interest for Taib to issue such permits (without tender) to companies where his close family are major shareholders.
Marjaharta again
To begin with the company Marjaharta, the main shareholder in CMS, which we demonstrated is controlled and to all purposes owned by Taib himself, has also been a major shareholder in WTK.
Marjaharta started out ‘belonging’ to Taib’s brother Onn Mahmud, but was then handed to Taib’s sons in 2003 when Taib and Onn quarrelled. It has now been handed on again and put in the hands of Taib’s daughters Jamilah and Hannifah! Jamilah has stated that she is just “a passive investor in Sarawak”, yet Majaharta is investing in WTK which is actively destroying the rainforest.
Another of the main shareholders in WTK has been Taib’s other brother Tufail. Tufail remains the Director of one of WTK’s subsidiaries Song Logging Company.
We have already exposed how Tufail Mahmud was given shares in another major logging company Sanyan, which he attempted to conceal under proxies at the time that huge timber concessions were being granted by Taib to the company.
