Sarawak: ELIA GENEID SHOWS HOW TO BE GO-GETTER LAND GRABBERS!

ELIA GENEID SHOWS SARAWAK’S YOUTH HOW TO BE GO-GETTER LAND GRABBERS!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 28TH, 2011 GMT

This post is also available in: Iban, Malay

[By Our Guest Writer from Asian Tatler Magazine]

Mixing business with partying – an example for Sarawak’s womanhood?

We all love to admire this well-connected socialite and businesswoman, Elia Abas/ Geneid! She may look like a barely-dressed party girl, but Elia was scarcely into her 20s by the time she had established herself as a major figure in the oil palm plantation business, with a series of multi-million ringgit concessions all to herself!

But, of course the gorgeous young trend-setter is also Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s neice and therefore has several brilliant (if hidden) attributes. Indeed, the Taib family has provided endless shining examples for the rest of Sarawak’s youth, showing how to seize the many ‘Equal Opportunities’ that are handed to them through government projects!

As Taib exhorts the rest of the nation’s young people to show more energy and initiative and to work their way out of poverty, he can be proud of how all his nieces and nephews have been so successful in demonstrating the path to riches

The party-scene will miss you Elia!

Even more amazingly, Elia has been able to turn herself into a multi-millionairess, while at the same time managing to spend so much time publicly partying and carrying on with goodness-knows how many chaps! Two marriages and three engagements in two years is pretty good going for such a young thing!

Demure look for wedding No 1 (the marriage lasted 2 months)

Isn’t it lucky she has made so much money that she can pay for the millions of ringgit that has been spent in celebrating it all? “Work hard and play hard” is clearly the motto that has been drummed into the mini-Taibs from an early age by their stern Uncle (the Chief Minister himself!!!). [See our earlier reports with pictures on these lavish events] and [More here!]

So, what do we know about Elia’s business career and how she has maximised the opportunities which are on offer to her and also of course to others? Well, in 2008 Elia managed to secure an amazingly good deal with the Land Custody and Development Agency (LCDA) that happens to be controlled by her Uncle Taib. She spotted the opportunity, whereas others were so slow and lazy that they never even knew that the land was available!

In fact the eagle-eyed Elia had worked out that nearly 10,000 hectares of land had been removed from Native Customary Land owners in Tatau, Bintulu without them even having realised the situation! She moved double-quick and (presumably because nobody else had yet expressed an interest in the land) she was able to pick it up for a mere snitch at just RM5.5 million. This was a fraction of its real value of course and she arranged for it to be paid in installments later! What a hard business brain!!

‘Stupid’ Iban natives miss out!

Sarawak Report has made enquiries and discovered that the Iban communities of Tatau had their land alienated by Taib in 1996. The stupid things are so poor they claim they could not afford a lawyer to fight their case, so how do they ever expect to take advantage of the opportunities Taib so kindly makes available to them? Quite rightly, Taib has once again this week denounced as ‘crabs’ (?) those people who criticise the wealth of go-getters like Elia and the rest of his family members. In fact he has made so many speeches denouncing the critics of his wealth we really think this must be the key platform on which he wishes to fight the coming election. We have such a clever Chief Minister – three cheers for all your wealth and let us remind everyone about it and how cleverly you accumulated it!

Too distracted to read his people's thoughts? Given the rumours surrounding the new first lady's obvious weightiness, will we have to start paying for her new family soon?

Once the Ibans had lost their lands, Taib sold the timber concession to Borneo Pulp and Paper, who chopped down the 150 million year old jungle (the oldest in the world by the way) and turned it into …. well pulp and paper. Then in 2008 it was Elia’s chance to show her quick-witted gumption. She rounded up RM5.5 million (from her piggy bank?) and made the purchase before anyone else could get to hear about it. Well, no one else was going to hear about it actually, because in his ‘land of equal opportunity’ Taib likes to hand these concessions out privately… to his family.

Minda from Sugai Anap (son of the former Pengulu Jipun) is a spokesmen for the Iban longhouse communities who have lost their livelihoods because of this development. He expressed astonishment on learning that the young Elia now has the concession for his lands. He told us

“We received a letter from the British in the past to say this was our area, but the Government has now told us this is not relevant anymore. To begin with the company came and paid the 4 headmen to keep quiet, but when they came with their bulldozers we made a police report. This matter is in discussion now”.

Ikrar Bumi Sdn Bhd

Mixing business with glamour - an example to Sarawak's youth?

Elia managed to secure a series of so-called ‘Provisional Licences’ to turn the whole area into an oil palm plantation between 2008 and 2009 – the deal was finalised in March last year. The licences are provisional, because in theory the local people who have Native Customary Rights in the area need to be brought into agreement about it. But nobody really takes any notice of these useless types – no commercial instinct, basically lazy.

The company under which Elia has secured this huge land-bank is called Ikrar Bumi Sdn Bhd. Coincidentally, it is registered at the headquarters address of Parabena, a company run by her mother Raziah Mahmud who is Taib’s sister. Taib himself has shares in Parabena and this company has received a large number of valuable Government contracts and concessions. We have calculated that the sister companies registered at Parabena address have received lands totalling an area of about half the size of Brunei! What a truely amazing family?!

Just under 10,000 hectares of Native Customary Rights land for RM5.5 million – Good work Elia!

Of course Elia is a very young lady, so the person who has actually been doing the boring work of dealing with the land registry on her behalf is shown in the official records to be one Joanna Kho, who happens to be her Mum’s secretary. Kho gives her telephone number as the main number for Parabena Sd Bhd.

But there is no doubt as to whom the beneficiary of all this is. Elia is her mother’s second child, born during the first of her three marriages. Therefore her actual name is Elia Abas, the name of Raziah’s first husband. Elia Abas is a Director of Ikrar Bumi, as is her mother. She also owns 998 of 1,000 shares of the company! Gosh!

Elia Abas owns 998 out of the 1,000 shares! Wow!

Elia’s business acumen is further demonstrated by the fact that although Ikrar Bumi had only RM1,000 in shareholder capital, she has been able to convince her Uncle Taib that it is acceptable to purchase a RM5.5 million state asset with only a promise of future payment. Why cannot the rest of Sarawak’s youth just buck up and take notice and follow this shining example? We should all feel ashamed to be poor when Elia manages to be so fabulously rich!

Where she will make her money?

However, Elia is still to close the deal by transferring her new lands for a multi-million profit to another gneuine plantation company which can actually get down to the business of sorting out any complaints from the natives and digging up their lands to plant oil palm. After all you can’t really expect a pretty, rich girl of such quality like her to dirty her hands with an actual job!

Joys of wealth, Elia and lucky husband No 2 - But don't be 'envious' demands Taib, follow Elia in taking the equal opportunities he has given you!

Normally, any protests about the ‘provisional licence’ sold on by the likes of Elia have been easily dealt with by such second parties. They just lie. The natives are told they have no rights and that the licence is not provisional, but a full licence to log and then plant the land. The stupid fellows are led to believe that they are not elegible for more than a few ringgit compensation! If they do kick up a fuss, well then the gangsters move in and the police turn a blind eye until the issue is sorted out.

Well that is business for you and it is how the Taibs take advantage of their opportunities. You really do have to admire how clever they are, really don’t you? Amazing! But, in fact, we are getting just a little bit worried on behalf of the stylish Elia. By this time, as the practice goes, she should have long-since washed her hands of the matter and sold on the licence to one of these enforcers for a fat profit.

But is the gravy train coming to an end for the Taibs?

Victors against Raziah’s Quality Concrete – the Ibans of Kampong Ensika have won a restraining order against this Taib Land Grab

Confidentially, Sarawak Report’s Tatler Correspondent is left wondering why Raziah and Robert have allowed such a long time to pass before encouraging their daughter to cash in on her profits and quickly distance herself?

Certainly, in previous years such a sale would have been conducted in a matter of days or weeks! So has Elia been too diverted by the preparations for her three lavish wedding parties over the past couple of years? Or could the family be encountering deeper problems?

Perhaps they are suddenly finding it rather hard to find a buyer willing to take on their hot potato? Don’t forget these days there could be a very messy and public court case now the angry locals have discovered what has happened.

Things are changing very fast on that front. More and more of these situations are ending up in court, thanks to Land Rights Lawyers such as the new PKR leader Baru Bian. He has 200 such cases going through the courts and has started winning against the Government of Taib Mahmud with frightening regularity!

So many pretty gems for Elia and her sisters! Rubies no less! - But might they have to tighten their purse strings if they cant steal more land?

And, of course there is another problem, which is that all these big oil palm companies want to look ‘sustainable’ these days. It is the new fashion and Tatler says it is hot, hot, hot! Meano Deforestation is out, Greenwash is in!

So, buying dodgy provsional licences off the internationally notorious Mahmud Family doesn’t look at all good on the Annual Report and would involve a lot of explaining to shareholders and NGOs! Best avoided. Look at the example just this week, when Mummy Raziah’s own latest land grab in Simunjan, Sebangan was halted by the courts. This is an expensive blow to Quality Concrete Sdn Bhd, which had taken on the area at enormous cost after a huge payout to Raziah. They had even given her a position on their Board and shares in the company to sweeten the deal!

So, could it be that pretty, clever, go-getting Elia is having a difficult time finding her buyer after all? What was easy a couple of years back may not be so easy now!

Do not criticise the ‘wealth creators’ like Elia!

All this must be causing worrying moments for the the Chief Minister, who has been trying time and again in speech after speech to get it through to us that we must ENCOURAGE the wealth-creating activities of young ladies like Elia for the good of us all.

Where would we be without all her expenditure? What about the jobs serving at her parties and cleaning after her (and writing about her)? We NEED her wealth!

Elia and her wealthy family live it up in Monaco last summer at the Islamic Fashion Show!

There is also the personal concern of the Chief Minister that his family may not yet be quite rich enough and of course he may have a whole lot more little ones to worry about very soon indeed with his lovely young wife, so many decades his junior.

For these reasons Taib is known to have started threatening the judges who have been finding against him in these cases and seeking to undermine their careers. However, they are answering to the judgements of a higher court and have little option but to carry out the law.

Elia and her nice big house..... don't be 'envious' because you should have earned it (like Elia didn't)!

This all may mean that Elia will have to restrict herself to just two husbands. Unlike her mother she may not be able to afford a third!

Sarawak: Raziah Raids Reserve Forest lands and Taib Profits

Raziah Raids Reserve Forest lands and Taib Profits – Major Exclusive!

Friday, January 14th, 2011 GMT

Bejewelled - Raziah's huge wealth owes to handouts of land titles and contracts from her brother the Chief Minister

We can reveal that Taib’s tycoon sister, Raziah Mahmud, has once again been seizing land from Sarawak’s people. And our investigations have exposed a clumsy cover-up that has lifted the lid on a massive land-grab that implicates the Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud himself.

Raziah’s attempts to conceal her involvement in plans to replace Reserved Forest Lands at Ensengei with yet another vast oil palm plantation have exposed a far wider scandal. We can now show the method by which she and Taib have extracted around a hundred thousand of hectares of state land – an area amounting to roughly half the size of Brunei - over the past decade alone!

Alienation of traditional Native Lands

Ensengei, is one of the few remaining areas of Forest Reserve Land left in lowland Sarawak. The traditional Native Customary Land Rights of the indigenous tribes of the area were recognised by the British in 1947, but in 1984 Taib ruled that it should be acquired by the State as a Forest Reserve. However, in a series of deals between 2005 and 2008 he then handed on roughly twenty thousand hectares of this supposedly protected land to his own sister!

As so often happens in Sarawak, the first the Bidayuh communities of the area knew about these secretive transactions was when a series of logging companies turned up in their foraging areas and fruit tree plantations waiving licences to cut them down. This is the way Taib and BN have chosen to run Sarawak.

Disputed areas

However, thankfully, by 2008 human rights lawyers, like the PKR leader Baru Bian, had developed successful strategies for opposing Taib’s seizures of Native Lands in the courts. His team has launched a number of cases against these companies and also against the Government of Sarawak, who sold the land and issued the licences. Until these matters are resolved the loggers have been ordered to pause their activities in the contested areas.

Raziah’s clumsy cover-up

Hamid Sepawi - Taib's favoured cousin and major shareholder of Usiha Jasamaju

Meanwhile our investigations now demonstrate what few of the local people and their lawyers have been aware of till now, which is that the person behind the actions they are fighting is Taib’s own sister, Raziah Mahmud. Not only has she got close connections with the two largest palm oil companies to be awarded licences to destroy Ensengei, Lambang Sinar Mas and Usaha Jasamaju, but we have also established from the official records that she clearly secured and probably still controls their land titles.

We can confirm that Lambang Sinar Mas is currently owned by the Yu brothers of the construction company Hock Seng Lee Bhd (HSL), well-known business cronies of the Taibs, while Usaha Jasamaju is owned by a number of companies of whom a major shareholder is Hamid Sepawi. Sepawai is the fabulously wealthy cousin of the Chief Minister, who has received numerous lands and favours from the State of Sarawak, to become one of Malaysia’s richest men.

Lambang Sinar Mas, owned by the Yu brothers

Usaha jasamaju, owned largely by Hamid Sepawi

However damming evidence in the Land Registry records reveals that the company which negotiated the issuing of the Ensengei land titles was in fact neither of the above, but Kumpulan Parabena, which is owned and managed by Raziah herself. You can tell this fact because the address and contact details given in the land registry ( as shown above) is the same for both sets of land titles and it is the address for Kumpulan Parabena - 154/56 Jalan Sungai, Padungan, Kuching - and not the companies mentioned (see entry for Kumpulan Parabena in the Register of Companies below).

The address and telephone in the Land Registry matches that of Kumpulan Parabena

Sarawak Report can futher confirm that the two managers named as the contacts in the Land Registry concerning these two sets of transactions with Lambang Sinar Mas and with Usaha Jayamaju (whose concessions are next door to each other) work directly for Raziah Mahmud. Chia Hon Thin and Paul Yu Chee may appear to be representing the two other companies but they give the same Kumpulan Parabena address! Likewise Chia’sgiven telephone number Kuching 082 41 3877 matches Kumpulan Parabena’s number in the telephone directory.

Its all in the yellow pages!

Of even greater worry is that our exclusive research has shown that Chia has used these contact details in numerous other transactions that have been registered in the Land Registry. We will be detailing this further explosive material in later reports, but it means that land titles which have been handed out to dozens of apparently different companies worth hundreds of millions of ringgit were clearly in fact secretly owned and controlled by Raziah Mahmud!

Sarawak Report believes that the extent of these lands could amount to roughly half the size of Brunei, all acquired from the State of Sarawak at nominal prices by the sister of the Chief Minister!

Taib himself has profited!

Even more shocking than this fraud is the fact that we have recently proved that another major shareholder of Kumpulan Parabena is actually Taib Mahmud himself ! We have established that he personally owns shares in Mesti Bersatu, which in turn owns shares in Miri Properties,which in turn holds shares in Kumpulan Parabena! This directly implicates him in the profit that has been made in this fraudulent activity and raises even further questions about why he has chosen to hand out so much land to his own sister.

Raziah's daughter Elia Abas - rather young to be a Director of a major Oil Palm Plantation enterprise! Nevetheless she was one of two Directors of Lambang Sinar Mas when it was handed 16,000 hectares of Forest Reserve Land. Her Dad was the other and her Mum was the Secretary!

The remaining shareholders of Kumpulan Parabena are also members of the Mahmud family and Sarawak Report also intends to detail shortly the enormous number of profitable Sarawak State contracts and indeed Federal projects that have been handed to this company. This means that Taib has also been handing vast amounts of state money directly to a company that he owns himself ! Is this what his Political Secretary Karim Hamza meant when he recently suggested there is nothing wrong with a politician taking advantage of ’business opportunities’ that come their way ?

More proof

This is not the only proof of Raziah’s involvement in the Ensengei Land Titles. We can show that in a further attempt to conceal the details of this shabby land-grab, she carried out the common family practise of obtaining land titles through a little-known company and then quickly selling that company on to a trusted third party for a fat profit. This way she clearly hoped to disguise her original acquisition of the title! ( We have exposed this practise in earlier reports).

A historical research of Malaysia’s official Register of Companies proves that while Lambang Sinar Mas is now listed as belonging to the Yu brothers, at the time the land titles were granted by Taib’s office the company belonged to his sister and her third husband Robert Geneid! The official records (see below) show first that the company, which was incorporated on 25th Dec 2003, was taken over by Razia on 28th Jan 2004, at which time its address moved to to that of Kumpulan Parabena.

The Geneids (Mrs Geneid is Razia Mahmud) took over Lambang Sinar Mas 28.01.04 and located it at Parabena's Offices

A Directors’ Report filed in 2005 also shows clearly that the company was taken over by the Geneids in January 2004, with her husband and young daughter Eliah Abas in the position of Directors, before being later passed on to the Yu brothers in January 2005 (below).

Raziah's husband and daughter were Directors of Lambang Sinar Mas during the key period 28.01.04 - 25.01.05 when the land titles were issued

We can then see from the Land Registry that a raft of Land Titles covering around 16,000 hectares of land were issued to Lambang Sinar Mas on 21st May 2004 for a very reasonable price of RM11.5 million.

Lambang Sinar Mas receives its land titles in Ensengei a few months later in May 2004

At this time, as the copies below prove, the shareholders of Lambang Sinar Mas were Raziah Mahmud, holding 70% of the shares directly and a company called Mahligai Naluri Sdn Bhd, with 28% of the shares. Mahligai Naluri is jointly owned by Raziah and her 3rd husband Robert Geneid, who is also the director of Lambang Sinar Mas!

Lambang Sinar Mas's shareholders at the time the land titles were given were 70% Raziah and 28% a company owned by Raziah and her husband. Mystery surrounds the remaining 2% of the shares and whether these held a controlling vote!

Once Lambang Sinar Mas had acquired the Land Titles we can see that Raziah quickly passed on ownership to the Yu family on 25th January 2005. The rapid sale was clearly designed to disguise the fact that Taib had handed the land to his sister, who has doubtless made a very handsome profit out of the transaction. Between the acquisition and the sale the company issued a financial report showing that the company’s assets as of 31st December 2004 (days before the sale) had gone from zero to RM13.8 million worth of land titles. New Year’s Eve was apparently regarded as a sensible quiet time to register this sudden acquisition of assets from the state!

Moving the ownership in January 2005 meant changing directors!

Even so, despite the sale, Raziah has continued to be the contact registered in the official records of the land registry! This represents a clear signal that despite the public transfer of ownership she has continued to exercise a controlling interest over the concessions and is effectively the real manager of the venture to log the Native Customary Lands of Ensengei.

Decked in jewels - Raziah Mahmud

With these details now made public can Mrs Geneid (Raziah Mahmud’s name through her third marriage) dare to claim that she has not profited from this venture, which represents a clear conflict of interest for her brother the Chief Minister of Sarawak?

Does not the series of attempted cover-ups prove that she knew full well that it was unacceptable for her brother to alienate Native Customary Lands, so that they could then be handed to his sister to cut down and turn into palm plantations – all without a shred of compensation to the poor owners of the land and only a nominal payment to the State of Sarawak?

Is this why Abdul Taib Mahmud has become so widely known as the ‘Thief Minister’ and not the ‘Chief Minister’?

How much has Raziah made?

Parabena's offices at 154/156 Jalan Sungei Padungan have in fact been kept closed for the past half year. The company moved out of these premises at around the time Sarawak Report began mentioning it in its investigations!

According to the Land Registry the state government handed just under 20,000 hectares of Ensengei Forest to the two Kumpulan Parabena companies for the bargain price of RM13 million. Other sales of plantation land would suggest that the true value would have been nearer RM100 million. So it is inconceivable that this secretive series of transactions between Taib and his sister did not make them a very large sum of money at the expense of the State and the traditional native owners of the land.

We request that the Yu brothers and the shareholders of Usaha Jasamaju disclose how much they actually paid for the hand-over of the valuable titles and whether Mrs Geneid does indeed continue to exercise a level of control over their dealings with the Land Registry as indicated by the fact that as late as 2010 Kumpulan Parabena remained the key contact for the concession-holders?

Peter Runin, one of the representatives of the 14 Iban longhouse villages who have taken the State Government and the licence holders to court over the land-grab, says that the people of the area are very angry and will not be bought off by paltry compensation packages. He explained:

“They want to cut down our trees and plant oil palm, but we want to keep our lands”

What seems likely is that Sarawak Report’s latest revelations will add a new dimension to their meeting this weekend to discuss their case against the government and it is likely to strengthen their legal case as well.

A case of fraud?

Ruling on the case in January last year the Judicial Commissioner, Y.A Puan Rhodzariah Bt. Bujang, observed that

”Mr. Baru Bian is right .. Native customary rights land should not be alienated, period”

However, he judged that the natives of Ensengei should only make their case against the State Government and not the title-holders who had received the concessions, UNLESS they could prove fraud. On this he said:

“the claimant of these native customary rights land has a legitimate complaint against the issuer of the land title and should take issue with them; not the title holder unless they can prove fraud as stipulated in section 132(1) of the Land Code”.

Fancy new office location - Raziah now runs her multi-million ringgit Empire of properties and contracts handed to her by the state from her grandiose new offices in Kuching. But all she does is pass on the cheap land titles and state contracts to others for a massive profit!

Given that we have now shown that the title-holder was in fact the sister of the issuer of the land titles and that clearly all parties were well aware of the issues regarding the native land rights, it will be interesting to know whether the courts indeed do in the end decide that a fraud has taken place. If so, this fraud will be a fraud carried out by the Chief Minister of Sarawak against his people with the collusion of his sister and crony companies.