Taib’s family firm under probe for failure to file accounts, says Aussie daily

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) is investigating a company belonging to Sarawak Governor Tun Taib Mahmud’s family. – financemagnates.com pic, November 3, 2015. 

An Australian holding company belonging to Sarawak Governor Tun Taib Mahmud’s family is under investigation for failure to file corporate accounts, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) has reportedly launched an investigation into the Taib family company’s failure to lodge accounts in accordance with the Corporations Act.

Bruno Manser Fund, a Swiss-based rainforest advocacy group, has accused the former chief minister and his family of corruption and money laundering in relation to logging of rainforests in Sarawak and purchase of Australian real estate.

Taib, described by his lawyers as an “ultra high net worth individual”, and his family reportedly have interests in more than 400 companies in 25 countries.

Bruno Manser Fund has also exposed Taib’s daughter’s, Jamilah, link to the A$30 million purchase of the Adelaide Hilton in the early 1990s.

Jamilah is reputedly one of the richest women in Canada. She and her husband are shareholders of an Australian company, Sitehost, after the family bought shares worth A$9.5 million in 1993.

In 1994, Sitehost bought the Adelaide Hilton Hotel but the company has not filed any financial statements for eight years, said SMH.

Its most recent filings were in 2011.

ASIC said it had appointed a “specialist team” to investigate the failure of the Taib family to lodge accounts in accordance with the Corporations Act and would consider whether Sitehost’s conduct warranted “enforcement action”, responding to a query from Bruno Manser Fund.

- TMI