Abdul Taib Mahmud

Assets held by Swiss banks on behalf of the Malaysian Taib family could be frozen after 20 Swiss MPs filed a motion in the country’s parliament. Geneva MP and lawyer Carlo Sommaruga, who is spearheading the move, has also lodged a criminal complaint, asking the Attorney General of Switzerland, Michael Lauber, to declare the Malaysian Taib family a criminal organization.

Sarawak's Taib family has come under attack again for being almost single-handedly responsible for the environmental and social destruction befalling the biodiversity-rich Sarawak. A new Bruno Manser Fund study reports that plans to dam virtually all the rivers in the Malaysian state's interior for hydropower will result in “cultural genocide” and the devastation of hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest. It also names a number of international companies including Sinohydro and The China Three Gorges Corporation as being complicit

UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, is facing money-laundering allegations following the disclosure of a series of documents linking Malaysian top politicians to secret UBS bank accounts in Hong Kong and Zurich. According to Malaysian media reports, the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) and Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) have been tracing the flow of over USD90 million through UBS bank accounts in Hong Kong, which are alleged to be kickbacks for the illegal logging of tropical hardwoods in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo, one of the world’s most biodiverse habitats.

Only days after Western NGOs launched a campaign to pressure the US government’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to cut ties with the Malaysian Taib family, whistle-blower website Wikileaks has confirmed the US government has been aware of Taib corruption for years.

The revelation by Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's (MACC) chief commissioner Abu Kassim Mohamed that Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud ("Taib") is being investigated over allegations of timber corruption has been warmly welcomed by campaigners.