Ex-minister's son implicated in RM128mil gov't contract

The 25-year-old son of a former minister has been found to be involved in supplying an allegedly defective 26.05 million euro (RM128.4 million) air traffic control system to the government through a closed tender.
 
In addition, his Italian partner in the project is already plagued with a series of corruption scandals.
 
PKR leaders had claimed that the system supplied to the National Air Traffic Control Centre (NATCC) on Dec 13 last year was defective on arrival, but Transport Minister Kong Cho Ha had denied this in a written reply to the Dewan Rakyat.
 
Unsatisfied with the response, Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar had questioned whether it is the norm to award important projects to ministers’ family members.
 
A closed tender is where only selected parties are invited to bid for the contract.
 
The system was installed by Advanced Air Traffic Systems (AAT) Sdn Bhd where Ikhwan Hafiz Jamaludin is a significant stakeholder and alternate director.
 
He is the son of Rompin MP and former science, technology and innovation minister Jamaludin Jarjis (right), who is seen as a close ally to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
 
After his tenure, Jamaludin served as an ambassador to the US, and is now a special envoy to the US with ministerial powers.
 
Also on AAT’s board is chairperson Zolkipli Abdul, who is a former Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general until 1997.
 
He and Ikhwan Hafiz were both appointed into the board on Aug 1, 2011, according to company profiles obtained from the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM).
 
AAT is a joint venture between Italian radar systems provider Selex Sistemi Integriti SpA and two relatively obscure local companies, Tirai Variasi Sdn Bhd and Tahap Harmoni Sdn Bhd.
 
Google searches on the latter two companies yielded very little information.
 
Ikhwan Hafiz and Zolkipli are also owners of Tirai Variasi, which holds a 50 percent stake in AAT. 
 
Ikhwan Hafiz owns a whopping 90 percent of Tirai Variasi, while 70-year old Zolkipli has the remaining 10 percent.
 
Tirai Variasi was incorporated in 2003, and Ikhwan Hafiz has served on its board since August 2008 when he was still 21 years old.
 
Little is known about Tahap Harmoni and its owners Muhamad Munip and Puteh Muhamed.
 
According to Selex’s parent company Finmeccanica’s press release dated in September 2009, Selex had been in Malaysia since the 1990s to supply civilian radar systems.
 
In 1994, the AAT joint venture was formed “with the aim of know-how and technology transfer to Malaysia, especially in the air traffic control systems field”.

No stranger to controversy
 
However, Selex, which owns 30 percent of the venture, is no stranger to controversy.
 
According to an AFP report, it has been investigated since 2010 over allegations that it had been given no-bid contracts by the Italian civil aviation agency Enav.
 
Most recently, the probe led authorities to search the home of the Vatican’s former de facto bank chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi on June 6 for documents pertaining to the case.
 
Selex is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Finmeccanica SpA, a defence company that is facing its own set of corruption allegations.
 
These range from claims that its former chairperson had created false invoices and slush funds to pay off politicians, to allegations that its current chairperson had greased helicopter deals with India when he was the head of its subsidiary AgustaWestland.
 
Finmeccanica and Selex had consistently denied any wrongdoing.
 
Malaysiakini’s repeated attempts since June 8 to contact AAT, Selex, Finmeccanica, and Zolkipli for comment has not yielded any response.
 
However, Malaysiakini had visited Ikhwan Hafiz’s address yesterday, where his aide Siti Zubaidah confirmed that he is the minister’s son.
 
She also offered to get Ikhwan Hafiz to contact Malaysiakini.

When Malaysiakinivisited AAT's office at Shah Alam at around 12.30pm today, a spokesperson who declined to be named said the company is aware of the allegations but had issued a directive not to comment. 

Two weeks ago, PKR vice-presidents Nurul Izzah, N Surendran and Tian Chua had disclosed purported documents leaked from the DCA and NATCC.
 
They claimed that the system suffered some 68 defects that had led to an increase in workload and stress amongst air traffic controllers,
 
As a consequence, deputy directors of the controllers had allegedly told controllers to be “extra careful” and had lobbied the director of the NATCC for an immediate remedy, or that the older system should be restored.
 
One of the documents, purportedly a letter of undertaking from Selex, promised to make the repairs in March this year.
 
When Nurul Izzah raised the issue in parliament, the transport minister wrote back saying that the system is “performing well” and that “there has not been any incident until now”.