MARA chairman says will probe alleged involvement of officials in Melbourne property fraud

(Malay Mail Online) – Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) will investigate a news report by Australian daily The Age incriminating top officials of its subsidiary MARA Incorporated Sdn Bhd (MARA Inc) to the questionable purchase of a Melbourne property said to be inflated by A$4.75 million (RM13.7 million), chairman Tan Sri Annuar Musa said today.

But Annuar explained that he will refer the matter to the management of MARA Inc in order to avoid things “getting out of hand”, and will only issue an official statement on the matter tomorrow.

“Of course, of course we will investigate the claims (made in the news report).

“But I will refer the matter first to MARA Inc, I do not want people confused between MARA and its subsidiary,” he told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

“I do not want things to get out of hand, I will issue an official statement tomorrow,” Annuar added.

In a damning news report published earlier today, The Age incriminated top MARA Inc officials and two “elite” Malay businessmen to the questionable purchase of a Melbourne property said to be inflated by A$4.75 million (RM13.7 million).

The Age said an eight-month-long investigation by Fairfax Media ― its parent publishing house ― uncovered a massive trail of documents across three continents to find out the real deal behind the A$22.5 million price tag (RM65.03 million) “for a building designed like an IKEA cupboard [that] seemed well above the odds”.

“Fairfax Media can reveal that a group of super-rich Malaysian officials, spending their own government’s investment funds, have bid up the price of a Melbourne apartment block from US$17.8 million to US$22.5 million. The extra US$4.75 million was then laundered out of Australia and allegedly paid as bribes in Malaysia,” the newspaper said.

In several articles, the newspaper named two Malaysian businessmen described as “elite” and holding “Datuk” titles” Yusof Gani and Ahmad Azizi who engineered a deal with their Australian joint-venture partners to develop a student housing project near Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria in 2013 for which they would later buy an associated building named Dudley House worth A$17.8 million but which was pricetagged A$22.5 million, pocketing a cool A$4.75 million, camouflaged through a number of false invoices.

According to the newspaper, the ring of Malaysians also included Ahmad’s two sons, named as Erwin and “Porsche-loving” Erwan who facilitated this deal via a network of contacts connected to MARA through a subsidiary that had been taken over by several Malaysian officials, including former politician turned MARA Investment chairman, Datuk Mohammad Lan Allani, and a MARA chief executive, Datuk Halim Rahman.

The newspaper said it managed to contact Mohammad Lan, whom it noted had visited Melbourne in May last year, citing information from the Malaysian consulate website.

Mohammad Lan reportedly said he was unable to remember the Dudley House purchase, adding that he was involved in setting up offshore companies as a “convenient” way to sell property bought by the Malaysian government.

The newspaper said the MARA investment chairman hung up the phone when it asked him if he knew of any alleged kickback.

The suspicious sale of Dudley House might have gone unnoticed if not for the project’s Australian contracted windowmaker, John Bond, who raised the alarm, fearing he and others may not be paid after the developer appointed an administrator to liquidate their assets.

Among the documents that caught the attention of the appointed liquidating firm was an email dated March 8, 2013 and sent by a man purportedly working for Malaysian government officials which stated that a sum of  “AUS$4,785,000 in the form of introduction and consultancy fees” would have to be wired to a mysterious shelf company in Singapore, in return for MARA’s purchase of the Melbourne property.

The newspaper said it followed the paper trail for the shell company, which led to a Singapore cake maker whose brother had introduced her to three men linked to a Malaysian government agency that wanted an offshore business and had asked her to be its front, in return for A$1,000.