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1M Dimana Berada

Citizen Nades - More disclosures, more shocks
Posted on 12 April 2016 - 08:29pm
R. Nadeswaran

FOR a company which has been and still making headlines for the wrong reasons, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) continues to be defiant in the aftermath of the report by Public Accounts Committee (PAC) which was tabled in Parliament last Thursday.

The name-calling has not ceased and the salvos fired at opposition lawmaker Tony Pua (who is also a PAC member) have not stopped. When Pua remarked that he was only "80 per cent" satisfied with the PAC report, the retort was "you can't be 80 per cent pregnant."

On Monday, Reuters reported from London that Abu Dhabi's state-owned International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) said neither itself nor its unit Aabar Investments PJS has any links to a British Virgin Islands-incorporated firm named in the PAC report.

"Both IPIC and Aabar confirm that Aabar BVI was not an entity within either corporate group," the news agency quoted IPIC saying in a statement on the London Stock Exchange, referring to Aabar Investments PJS Limited (Aabar BVI).

1MDB's retort and response was baffling indeed. It came out with its guns blazing (yet again). The company, it said, paid substantial sums to Aabar BVI and these payments have been recorded in the publicly available and audited financial statements.

"Accordingly, 1MDB finds it curious that IPIC and Aabar have waited until April 2016 to issue such a statement," it said.

1MDB also said that company records show documentary evidence of the ownership of Aabar BVI and of each payment made, pursuant to various legal agreements that were negotiated with Khadem Al Qubaisi in his capacity as managing director of IPIC and chairman of Aabar and or with Mohamed Badawy Al Husseiny, in his capacity as CEO of Aabar.

But what is public knowledge is that both these men left their posts suddenly and without explanation last year and 1MDB cannot claim to have no knowledge that the money did not reach IPIC or Aabar.

As early as September last year, the Financial Times reported that IPIC was trying to get to the bottom of an apparent US$1.4 billion mismatch in its dealings with 1MDB.

Citing people familiar with the case, the newspaper said IPIC was seeking clarification about the fate of the money, which 1MDB said it paid out but was never recorded as received in IPIC's own financial statements.

"IPIC's probe is part of a wider Abu Dhabi audit of the institution's long entanglement with 1MDB, which has come under growing scrutiny since corruption allegations engulfed both the Malaysian fund and Najib Razak, the country's embattled prime minister," the London-based pink-sheet reported.

So, what exactly is going on? Did 1MDB remit billions to a company which had no links with its joint-venture partner? Were the PAC members and Malaysians taken for a long expensive ride? Until the Reuters report emerged, Malaysians were convinced that they were given correct answers.

Not any more. The 1MDB saga has taken several twists and turns. Another significant weave has taken place which has put the company in yet another coil. It is no longer "stale" or "recycled information" – words which the company often uses when it chooses not to address issues.

First, is it not incumbent upon any company to check the audited accounts – the balance sheet and the P & L statements – of any company it has dealings with.

Second, 1MDB failed to take all precautions including a due diligence exercise on the recipient of its funds.

Third, 1MDB does not want to acknowledge that it had been remitting monies to the wrong Aabar – unintentionally or otherwise. Shouldn't the board and the senior management be held accountable for such a major glitch for which taxpayers have to foot the bill?

Fourth, if IPIC and Aabar had not received the monies, where is it now? Who has "stolen" billions of ringgit from 1MDB?

Fifth and more importantly, what is 1MDB going to do? Is it going to write off these amounts (read billions) as bad debts and "move on" as some leaders have suggested?

(Many years ago, there was a company called Asia Motors – an authorised distributor of several brands of cars. Word had it then that an ingenious person set up a company called "Asian Motors" and opened a bank account in this name. He then diverted cheques payable to Asia Motors by adding the letter "n" to the word Asia.)

In the light of the revelations to the UK bourse, even the most ardent of 1MDB supporters will find it difficult to continue to swallow what 1MDB says in its media statements.

Now, it appears that Pua's claims have to be re-visited and taken seriously. Among others, he charged that RM7 billion in cash and assets overseas have not been verified. He also said that the auditor-general (AG) could not verify a sum of US$1.56 million of investments by 1MDB's wholly-owned foreign subsidiary – 1MDB Global Investment Ltd.

Putting it behind us and moving on is no longer an option. The theme of "destabilising the government and overthrowing the PM" is no longer applicable in the light of the latest revelations.

This is deceit, dishonesty and fraud perpetrated on the citizens of this country. Surely, our voices have to be heard by the powers that be. Blocking websites and accusing foreign media organisations with all kinds of conspiracy theories is not going to provide the answers to so many lingering questions.

For a start, why not de-classify the AG's report immediately instead of giving us the shocks and distressing news in instalments?

- See more at: http://m.thesundaily.my/node/360758#sthash.Wv2e1iaU.dpuf

Update

Filing in from mobile.
Lost my laptop last year.. with all my working life's treasures...
Dedicated almost 3 years of my life on a construction project.... now winding to its completion... wondering whether all of it worth the dedication...

3 Dekad Berlalu

PUISI ANAK TEKNIKA '83

Sehening February 1983
titis titis keramat embun dinihari, mula dijamah kilauan suria pagi
Tatkala pinggir-pinggir kotaraya,
Tenteram menyambut kita tiba,

Anak-anak bangsa
wajah-wajah segar penuh azam nan membara
bakal wirawan dan wirawati negara
bakal meredah ruang maya, ilmu dan cipta
tekad merebut cebis-cebis riwayat masa
mengisi fakta pada ruang-ruang di jemala
diiring berkat doa keluarga tercinta

TIKL menghampar diri,
terbuka dengan rela dan redha menatang dada
menongkat tatih-tatih berani kita
anak-anak jati,
pada erti ilmu kepalang ajar
pada erti setia hidup dan cinta
Seiringan dihidang gelak tawa
menjamah zaman remaja
menghirup nafas-nafas budaya
gagah gemalai membuka mata

Guru-guru, pengetua, warden asrama
bengis manja meminta setia kita
pada runut-runut ilmu yang dijaja
menjengah ruang cebisan riwayat kini berirama
sedia mengharung alam dewasa

namun,
kalungan doa rakan-rakan yang gugur
ibarat bunga-bunga yang belum kembang
kembali pada Illahi menyerah fana

kini
lihat anak-anak Teknika itu,
di sini, waktu dan ketika ini
kamu semua
bergenang mengimbau kenangan sepintas drama
keinsafan pada masa-masa berlalu
pegun sejenak

bangun anak-anak Teknika dewasa
lihatlah dunia

MH370

Repvblik - Sandiwara Cinta ( New Version )

Aku tahu ini semua tak adil
Aku tahu ini sudah terjadi
Mau bilang apa aku pun tak sanggup
Air mata pun tak lagi mau menetes

Alasannya seringkali ku dengar
Alasannya seringkali kau ucap
Kau dengannya seakan ku tak tahu
Sandiwara apa yang telah kau lakukan kepadaku

Jujurlah sayang aku tak mengapa
Biar semua jelas telah berbeda
Jika nanti aku yang harus pergi
Ku terima walau sakit hati

Mungkin ini jalan yang engkau mau
Mungkin ini jalan yang kau inginkan
Kau dengannya seakan ku tak tahu
Sandiwara apa, ceritanya apa, aku tahu

Jujurlah sayang aku tak mengapa
Biar semua jelas telah berbeda
Jika nanti aku yang harus pergi
Ku terima walau sakit hati

Jujurlah sayang aku tak mengapa
Biar semua jelas telah berbeda
Jika nanti aku yang harus pergi
Ku terima walau sakit hati
Ku terima walau sakit hati

Teresa Kok "Onederful" Malaysia CNY 2014 Video Clip

Face reality – tell the truth | theSundaily

R.Nadeswaran
MORE than seven years ago – in October 2006, to be precise, – I sent this stinker of a message to then domestic trade and consumer affairs minister, Datuk Mohd Shafie Apdal, in one of my columns:

"If you are invited for tea at the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry or by its officials, you'd be better off declining it. That's because the ministry and its officials are trying to tell us to use one tea bag for every 10 cups of tea! Not exactly though, but by words to that effect.

"The minister, in his festive season message via a full-page advertorial, suggests that consumers should 'minimise the use of ingredients such as sugar and flour by making cookies with less of such ingredients'.

How the heck do you make cookies without the right amount of ingredients? The advertorial is not the only media the ministry is spending on. Why are our civil servants making the minister look stupid with such unkind statements?

It is no intention of this writer to recycle old stories, but in view of the price increase and the hardship faced by the people, similar statements reflecting on ignorance, lack of knowledge and unawareness transcend into shades of stupidity and folly.

The message is simple – stop giving the people false hopes by "threatening" traders or retailers who raise prices because there are no laws which prevent them from raising prices.

Please do not give false hopes to consumers by making all kinds of statements and promises. If you don't deliver or are unable to keep them, you make the rakyat even angrier. Talk about sending hundreds of enforcement officers out to the field to "check on increases" is nothing but pure bunkum!

If your officers have not already briefed you, allow me to enlighten you. Let is be categorically stated that our system is one of free enterprise – willing buyer-willing seller at a price agreed upon. If the buyer cannot agree on the price, he chooses another source.

The government will not and does not fix prices of raw or cooked food, or that matter any commodity. The fixing of petrol and diesel prices is merely an administrative arrangement between the government and the oil companies.

The price of a cup of tea varies from location to location. It may cost RM1.20 in a stall; perhaps RM2 in a restaurant; RM12 in an up market shopping mall and even RM20 in a five-star hotel.

So, if the stall operator increases his price to RM1.50, does it amount to profiteering? No, but he has committed an offence if he does not have a board listing the prices of the food that is on sale at his stall. Well, that's another law altogether – not related to profiteering. This law gives the consumer a choice to look and compare prices before making a purchase or placing an order.

There is no law against profiteering. Period.

If there is any, then the ministry should first ask the hoteliers to justify why some of them charge RM40 for mamak mee – 10 times more than the average restaurant. Of course, patrons are paying for the ambience, décor and the service.

So, stop giving consumers false hopes. We have to accept that the price increases are going to hurt all of us who earn an honest living without backhanders, coffee money and other forms of inducement above and below the table.

People must face reality but in our case, not very long ago in the many speeches, announcements, assurances, proclamations and chest-thumping promises, the various parties gave undertakings of a different kind. They guaranteed that they would bring down prices if they were voted into power.

Having achieved that, it is their onerous duty and ultimate responsibility to honour their words and deeds. They cannot run away from the fact that they can do nothing to arrest the series of price increases triggered by the withdrawal of subsidies.

They now cannot fall back and make more empty promises such as "we will go after profiteers" which they will never be able to do. This is the price we are paying for the monopolistic trades and systems of business that have been created in the past for the benefit of a few.

At every turn, important commodities and staple food are in the hands of a few. It is not too late to open the markets for healthy competition.

The government and its officials must stop making statements which underestimate the intelligence of the people. Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) chairman Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar's quick "cure" for the demand by school bus operators to raise prices is allowing parent-teacher associations (PTAs) to operate school buses.

Is he in Malaysia or another planet? You don't go and buy buses off the rack. You order the chassis and engine and subsequently the coach is built according to specifications.

But that aside, how could he have imagined that PTAs have that kind of money to invest in a bus or several buses? It is agreed that time-tabling and collection of monthly fees can be done, but what about maintenance of buses, keeping spares, etc? A bus is not a car which you send to the neighbourhood garage for oil and filter change and carry on driving.

We need a concerted effort to keep in check the effects of spiralling prices. We can do without pledges that cannot be kept. These are not election promises, some of which can be written on running water and no one cares.

The issue of price increases hits everyone where it hurts and a permanent solution must be found instead of political rhetoric.

Figures don’t add up | theSundaily

Posted on 7 January 2014 - 07:49pm

R. Nadeswaran

Print

OVER the Chinese New Year holiday period, a group of friends are arriving from the United Kingdom for a short holiday, en route to Shanghai. In June, a family of five from London will visit our shores for a two-week break.

They will be staying in a serviced apartment and that's a small contribution to the Visit Malaysia Year programme launched last Saturday.

Every Malaysian is expected to do his or her part and a good part of December was spent trying to persuade friends in the UK to come over, in the hope that their hospitality can be reciprocated.

I don't know whether these fewer than a dozen people will make any significant change to the projected 28 million visitors spending a whopping RM76 billion during their stay here.

What is the basis of considering someone a "tourist"? The World Tourism Organisation defines tourists as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".

Let it be stated that the figures propagated by Tourism Malaysia are neither being disputed nor challenged, but there has to be an explanation as to how they are worked out, especially with the dispensation of the disembarkation cards at arrival terminals.

Previously, visitors would have to fill details of their purpose of visit, the duration of stay, etc which will enable proper statistics to be worked out. With our Immigration Department going biometric with a view to going paperless, it is certainly a reasonable question that ought to be asked.

Again for various unexplained expediencies, figures are spewed out which makes one wonder if someone is pulling something out of a hat. For example, the director of Tourism Malaysia in Beijing, Noran Ujang, said that Malaysia is expected to attract two million Chinese tourist arrivals in conjunction with the Visit Malaysia Year.

But statistics being figures, they can sometimes be mind-boggling. How were such numbers arrived at? The arithmetic does not seem to work out – logically. Two million divided by 365 days (in a year) averages 5,479 Chinese tourists coming in daily to Malaysia.

This means on the average again, this works out to 10 Airbus 380s landing daily in our airports carrying people from China. Is this possible or are they taking a slow boat across the South China Sea?

More questions as more figures are churned out in the name of tourism. Does the 28 million include the 12 million-odd Singaporeans who cross over every year? Do they include the "walk-in" crowd at our border checkpoints in Padang Besar and Sungai Golok?

Do they comprise the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers who enter the country?

These questions have to be emphasised because in 2007, the Selangor Government in its imprudent attempt to declare itself as "fully-developed state", counted itself as receiving several million tourists. The reasoning was that the KL International Airport and Port Klang, the sea gateway to the country, were in Selangor.

The former tourism minister, Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen, at the launch of a watch exhibition in September 2011 said: "Since 2008, we have been welcoming more than two million tourists every December. Last year alone, 'A Journey through Time' brought in over 1 million visitors from more than 30 countries ..."

Going by her claims, I had reason to comment: "If one million people visited an exhibition held over 10 days, it would mean that on the average, there were 100,000 visitors each day. If these visitors were foreigners, and on the average, if a plane carried 300 passengers each, it would have needed 334 planes to land every day at the KLIA.

Given that airports operate an average of 18 hours each day, it would have meant that about 19 planes would have touched down each hour or one every three minutes."

I am walking down memory lane not to ridicule anyone but to reiterate the fact that such incredulous figures make a mockery of our tourism promotional activities.

Like all Malaysians, this writer wants more tourists on our shores to justify the vast amounts invested in promoting Malaysia. However, the expenditure must commensurate with the results. By providing unauthenticated figures, we are merely feeding misinformation.

By the way, how was the figure RM76 billion arrived at? Going by the figures, each of the 28 million men, women and child visiting Malaysia would have to spend RM2,700 each. Is this plausible?

R. Nadeswaran has been involved and been a keen observer of the tourism trade since Visit Malaysia Year 1984. Comments: citizen-nades@thesundaily.com

Citizen Nades | theSundaily

Right to know, wrong to hide

Posted on 1 December 2013 - 07:38pm

R. Nadeswaran

Print

"Councils spend public money. The money comes from national and local taxes – as well as charges to users of services. Councils have a special responsibility to tell local residents and taxpayers how they spend your money. They do that by publishing yearly accounts and details of their spending.

"Council accounts are the financial statements that most organisations have to produce at the end of the year – a balance sheet and summary of income and expenditure. But the term also covers all related documents used to make up the council's accounts and any report by the external auditor about how the council organises itself to conduct its business.

"As a local resident, or interested party, you have legal rights which let you inspect your council's accounts and related documents, ask questions about the accounts, and object to them."

Preamble in Council accounts: A guide to your rights published by the UK Audit Commission.

LET us accept the fact that all of us have to pay rates or assessment or cukai pintu as it is commonly called. They go to the local council to pay for the services it provides – maintenance of waterways, roads, playgrounds and the like.

This is a fair proposition because you have to pay for services.

Let us also accept the fact that rates are NOT the only source of income to the council. It also gets revenue from parking, licence fees and revenue from its property which are often leased to third parties.

In an ideal situation, the council will try to increase non-rate revenue by proper use of resources on such matters and not burden the ratepayer. Rate increase should be used as a last resort.

By implementing prudent financial management systems, the council will be able to cut waste – for example, by eliminating lop-sided privatisation agreements, and having open procurement policies, to eliminate middlemen and tendering agents.

This is applicable not just to Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) which is involved in a brouhaha with residents over an impending increase in rates. It applies to every local council and no one will have reason to complain if the increase is commensurate with an increase in efficiency and service.

Because councils including DBKL are so secretive of their spending and procurement processes, the ratepayers have a right to feel aggrieved. If councils open their books and explain the expenditure, the people who dig deep into their pockets will understand the need for more money.

Instead, DBKL insisted that members of Parliament who wanted to discuss the rate increase sign a confidentiality clause under the Official Secrets Act. This further aggravated the situation as there is a need for people's money to be accounted for.

This brings us to the rights of ratepayers (as outlined above). While in university in Chelmsford in 1996 in UK, we were exempted from council tax because all occupants of the rented house were students.

However when staying and working as theSun's UK correspondent in London three years ago, the London Borough of Redbridge council put me on "Band E" which necessitated a princely sum of £1,582 in annual rates, made through 12 monthly instalments. While rental value is one factor, they also took into account that three adults were occupying the house.

On registering as a resident, I was given a booklet outlining among other issues, how the rate is collected and where the money goes. Much later, when the council put an advertisement in the local newspaper that its accounts are open for inspection and scrutiny, yours truly could not resist testing the system.

In front of me were the set of accounts and supporting documents. They included, among others, an inventory of assets and cash flow statements, salaries of the executives, its interests in private companies and its investment in unit trusts.

What caught my eye was a high expenditure which was classified as "translation services" to which I got a valid explanation.

"We provide advice and services in more than 20 languages for which we pay translators and interpreters," said the officer who then produced a leaflet which listed down the various languages – from Arabic to Urdu.

On the local front, there is so much secrecy about expenditure and we need to know why the need for such a policy? It gives the impression that there is some form of concealment or a plot to use ratepayers' money for clandestine operations.

Naturally, when there is no rationalisation and validation for expenditure, Joe Public has a right to demand for substantiation. This has not been forthcoming, save terse statements which contribute little to appease aggrieved parties who rightfully claim that they are being victimised.

Before our local councillors call their travel agent to book a first-class flight to London on a lawatan sambil belajar, they should go to this link: http://www.redbridge.gov.uk

If all the details listed on this site are provided by our local councils, there will be less hassle and every right-thinking Malaysian will pay without protest. Opening up and being accountable is the only option for not only local councils but every government department and agency funded by taxpayers' money.

R. Nadeswaran believes every resident must be given an opportunity to question the income and expenditure statements of local councils. Comments: citizen-nades@thesundaily.com