First Ananda, now Mirzan Mahathir named in Indian probe

As India goes full steam into an anti-corruption blitz, another Malaysian tycoon with connections to the highest places has been named.

Mirzan Mahathir, the son of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, is the second prominent tycoon from the Southeast Asian country to be implicated in an Indian deal gone awry - this time with the Kakinada Port development.

He follows hot on the heels of Maxis chief Ananda Krishnan, who was accused of having corruptly secured a stake in India's telecoms operator, Aircel.

The Ananda case had sparked talk that Malaysia's ruling BN regime was now sowing the fruits of its overly gung-ho business forays, depending on 'who they know' rather than 'what they knew' to secure huge foreign contracts.

Along with several other Malaysian tycoons including Vincent Tan, Francis Yeoh and Syed Mokhtar Albukhari, Ananda is regarded as being one of Mahathir's inner coterie of cronies.

Huge losses

Mirzan, 51, was named in an Indian court affidavit related to investigations in the Kakinada Port development in Andhra Pradesh. He had secured the project during the tenure of the state's former chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu.

The 2,424-paged document revealed that a Mirzan-led international shipping consortium won the deep water seaport expansion venture in 1999.

The affidavit revealed that the project was awarded on a Develop-Operate-Transfer basis and the consortium was given 18 months to build two more berths in Kakinada Port, the second largest port in Andhra Pradesh.

“But the consortium failed to fulfill its commitment and the construction work on another berth only started five years later in 2004,” Bernama reported the affidavit as stating.

Due to the delay, the state exchequer was alleged to have lost about RM33mil between 1999 and 2007.

Adding colour and gossip to the scandal is that the affidavit had been filed by the late Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy's wife, YS Vijayalakshmi, in the state's High Court last month.

Rajasekhar was killed in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009.

Malaysia Chronicle