The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) today said that it would "act accordingly" based on "new evidence" that has emerged from a ‘video exposé’ on Sarawak by an international NGO.
MACC director of investigation Datuk Mustafar Ali said that investigations on the Sarawak chief minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud have been ongoing.
"The investigation has been ongoing. With the new evidence that has emerged the MACC will act accordingly," said Mustafar in a SMS message to Astro Awani.
Earlier today, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) urged the MACC to kick off an investigation based on the ‘video exposé’
TI-M chairman Datuk Paul Low said that based on the video, there is already “sufficient concern to launch an investigation”.
“The case has to be one they have started to see, the video is to be a prima facie evidence of a case that warrants further investigation. How clearer can you be? There is already a videotaping,” said Low.
Yesterday, GW released an incriminating video after going undercover to investigate the level of corruption in Sarawak, especially implicating Sarawak chief minister Abdul Taib and family in ‘shady land deals’.
The 16-minute video-- featured secretly recorded snippets of conversations with Taib’s cousins, associates and lawyers.
Investigators from GW had posed as investors seeking to buy land for oil palm plantations in Sarawak, and the resulted video unravelled details of alleged outflow of funds and corruption in the state.
For the purpose of ‘buying’ land, GW had approached the Regional Corridor Development Authority (RECODA), a government body in charge of foreign investment.
“This film proves for the first time what has long been suspected — that the small elite around Chief Minister Taib are systematically abusing the region’s people and natural resources to line their own pockets,” Global Witness forest team leader Tom Picken said in a statement.
The key findings of the investigation suggested that:
- Taib would allegedly receive multimillion ringgit kickbacks for a plantation license
- members of Taib’s family were allocated land at lower prices through directives from the state Ministry of Resource Planning and Environment, headed by Taib
- and that a Taib-family owned company was offered for sale through an illegal transaction in Singapore designed to evade Malaysian tax.
Meanwhile, the Advocates Association of Sarawak (AAS) reportedly said that it will investigate and act against the lawyer featured in the covert video, in which a suggestion on how to evade real property gains tax.
Meanwhile, Taib had denied that his cousins were his brokers for logging contracts, as suggested by the video.
Instead, he said that the cousins, whom he was ‘fighting’ at one time, may be promoting themselves as his agents to solicit favours.
“OK I saw the so-called proof. Could it not be someone who tried to promote themselves to be an agent to get favours from me?
“It has nothing to do with me. I think it is a bit naughty of them. They are using their big powers to blacken my name,” the Sarawak chief minister said when approached by reporters in Kuching.
Teoh El Sen
Wed Mar 20 2013
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