Tony, have you joined the Samy Vellu club? RIPPING OFF THE LITTLE INDIAN GUY

Tony Fernandez listed another company on the stock exchange last February, in the form of Tune Insurance Holdings Berhad. This company was a 16 man operation a year before it was listed. Now its market capitalization is RM1.8 Billion. If that seems impossible, it indeed is.

The real value of Tune came from Oriental Capital Assurance, a company owned until May 2012 by Maika, which was essentially a co-operative owned by 66,000 poor ethnic Indians. In the early ‘80s they had been convinced by the MIC, headed by Samy Vellu, to part with their family jewellery and their life-savings and invest it in Maika. In total, RM106 Million was collected.

Personal kitty

From the beginning Maika became nothing more than a convenient till into which Samy Vellu would dip his grubby hands as he liked. The BN government did indeed try to help Maika by handing it contracts, licenses, approvals and shares. If there had been a responsible management in Maika, it would have become a highly successful corporation.

The kind of fraud and outright stealing that was going on in Maika failed to attract any form of investigation from the authorities. This was, after all, the rule of Mahathir Mohamed, a man whose name is synonymous with the corruption of Malaysia. The MIC was a member of the ruling BN and it was beyond the rule of law.

At one point, Samy would simply help himself, through proxy shell companies, to shares meant for the Indian community. This was the Telekom shares scandal. So blatant was the thievery that even the BN administration was compelled to conduct a little pretend investigation and then, with a wink and a nudge, pronounce that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. It was impossible to raise anything at the AGMs, because MIC-hired thugs would violently attack all critics.

Father to son

In 1999, Maika was handed over to Vell Paari, Samy Vellu’s son, whose lack of qualification for the post of CEO would be only matched by his gross incompetence at the job. Vell Paari would oversee the complete ruin of this once promising company that was Maika.

In 2010, a supposed white knight, Gnanalingam, appeared and offered to buy over Maika for, essentially, a pittance. Maika shareholders were so browbeaten into hopelessness that even Gnanalingam’s miserable offer of returning them half their capital, adjusting for inflation, may have appeared acceptable for some. Those who opposed the plan were ignored. Having grabbed control of Maika with the help of Nazir Razak and CIMB, Gnanalingam proceeded to sell it to Tony Fernandes’s Tune Holdings.

It is inconceivable that a supposedly capable businessmen like Gnanalingam would have given OCA away for the paltry sum of RM153 Million, knowing the value it would bring to Tune. So what really happened behind the scenes? Who made a deal with whom? What were the payoffs? This is what a responsible investigating agency should be looking at right now. Instead the MACC does nothing. They are, apparently, waiting for a report! Because they don’t read the newspapers perhaps, and therefore are clueless about all the corruption going on in the country.

The new fat cat?

Tony Fernandez, all 200 or so pounds of him, a substantial part of it being belly, has grown substantially richer.

It is a pity that it is money that belongs to the poorest of Indians that is jingling in his pockets. Fernandez appears entirely unconcerned, his moral compass long sacrificed to Mammon, if at all it ever existed. He appears, like Samy Vellu and Gnanalingam, to be beyond shame.

At least half of the listed Tune Insurance Berhad belongs to the 66,000 Maika shareholders. That is close to a billion ringgit, enough for them to educate their children, or escape from the vicious cycle of poverty that too many Indians are trapped in.

Yet again we see Malaysians, poor and helpless, manipulated by politicians, and exploited by rich tycoons. The institutions of the state that are meant to protect citizens are silent, slaves to the ruling elite and the businessmen who fund them.

MAILBAG