Sarawak

Sarawak Cable, a company linked to Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib ("Bekir"), the son of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, is expected to receive state contracts worth over 1 billion Malaysian Ringgit (USD 320 million) by the end of this year.

Global anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, is calling for the immediate resignation of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud. “Those who are being investigated should resign first so that investigations can be carried out without any influence or interference by those in power. We hope that Prime Minister Najib Razak will call upon the Chief Minister of Sarawak to resign as Chief Minister until investigations by MACC will be completed,“ said Transparency International Malaysia Secretary-General Josie M Fernandenz in a television interview.

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.

Environmental activists gathered in front of the UN seat at Geneva’s Place des Nations yesterday to protest against plans to construct 12 hydroelectric dams in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo Island.