Aminul Islam Abdul Nor has been photographed with ministers and royalty, and his name has graced corporate pages in reports involving multinational deals worth hundreds of millions of ringgit.
But to the larger Malaysian public, how the Bestinet founder became a lynchpin in the lucrative migrant worker business is somewhat mysterious.
Bestinet is the company behind the Foreign Worker Central Management System (FWCMS), a system used by the government to process the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers arriving in Malaysia yearly.
Even before FWCMS issues hit headlines, or the recent money laundering allegations which he denied, the name “Dato Sri Amin” or the more xenophobic “Amin Bangla” has floated about in the Malaysian cybersphere over the years.
In the lead-up to the watershed 2018 general election, one video clip of the Bangladesh-born Malaysian went viral on social media.
In the video, Aminul, dressed immaculately in a suit and tie, is seen in a heated argument, next to a white BMW which is about to get towed.
The person who captured the video is heard claiming that Aminul had bragged that he “brought in thousands of people into Malaysia” and that he “controlled Hulu Kelang” where the BMW, driven by Aminul’s child, collided with another vehicle.
“I don’t care who you are,” the man said in the video, with a caption alleging that Aminul was a proxy of powerful politicians who were benefiting from the migrant worker industry.
In a separate incident in 2017, Aminul pleaded not guilty to the charge of assaulting Muhammad Nuraiman Danish Erwazri, 17, at the lift area of the Sunway Putra Hotel, at 3.30am on June 17, and he was released on bail.
According to court records, the case was heard by the Magistrate’s Court five times between Aug 14 and Dec 15, 2017, before two magistrates. However, it did not progress further.
Court records did not show the case’s outcome and Malaysiakini has contacted the court registrar for further details.
Malaysiakini’s checks found the incident also involved Aminul’s child, while the alleged victim is the son of businessperson Marina Hashim, who was later involved in a controversial Felda land deal in 2018.
When asked about these two incidents, Aminul declined to comment. He also declined to be interviewed for this article.
Humble beginnings
Minor tussles aside, who is Aminul?
According to five industry insiders in Malaysia and Bangladesh who spoke to Bangladeshi media Prothom Alo, Aminul first came to Malaysia as a migrant worker in the early 1990s.
One of seven brothers, he grew up in humble circumstances in Brahmanbaria district in Chittagong, Bangladesh - some 100km from Dhaka - where he owns a house.
During a visit there in June, locals pointed Prothom Alo to a building in his name - the nondescript four-storey Aminul Islam Plaza at Kalibari intersection of Brahmanbaria district city.
He also owns another similar commercial building on the north side of the Pairtala bus stand, named after his father and managed by his brother.
There was also a large mosque under construction, surrounded by seven houses meant for seven brothers. Locals said Aminul funded the project.
Prothom Alo learnt that some BDT 140,000 million (RM5.21 million) has already been spent on the construction, with the project managed by Aminul’s younger brother, who runs a local newspaper.
Holding a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management from the University of Chittagong, industry insiders told Prothom Alo that Aminul’s entry into the migrant labour industry started when he parlayed his skills to secure the position as a broker for a businessperson who owned a labour agency.
His pathway to Malaysian citizenship began when he married a Malaysian - Rusilawati Mohamed Yusoff - known to industry players as Rosie - and the couple started their own business in migrant worker management.
It was around this time that he started having business associations with Ruhul Amin, who is also from Brahmanbaria.
Ruhul, a former secretary-general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies, is also accused of money laundering.
The Bangladesh authorities have sought Malaysia’s cooperation to arrest and extradite Amin and Ruhul over these charges, but both have denied the claims.
A document showing Ruhul’s company was once known as Bestinet Bangladesh.
Building an empire
Three decades after arriving in Malaysia, no one can say that Aminul’s rise from humble beginnings is less than remarkable.
He now has a significant corporate footprint, with shareholdings in dozens of firms in Malaysia, in a variety of industries including IT, shipping, security, labour recruitment, healthcare, travel, cattle breeding and food.
Although foremost known for being Bestinet's founder, he has taken steps to pare down his holdings of the company, now owning less than one percent of Bestinet Sdn Bhd.
Still, his name remains connected to an extensive web of companies - at least six of which carry the “Bestinet” name.
They are Bestinet Technology Sdn Bhd, Bestinet FWQS Sdn Bhd (rebranded as Broadfield Natural Resources Sdn Bhd last month), Bestinet IT Solutions Sdn Bhd, Bestinet INTL Solutions Sdn Bhd, Bestinet Healthcare Sdn Bhd (rebranded as G3 Healthcare Sdn Bhd in April) and Bestinet Payment Services Sdn Bhd.
Some of these firms are subsidiaries of JR Joint Resources, a conglomerate established in 1998.
However, Aminul holds shares in only some of the “Bestinet-named” subsidiary companies, and his stake in the parent company, JR Joint Resources, is minimal - less than one percent.
Owners of parent companies and subsidiaries seem to overlap at different intervals, and the companies do business with each other.
For example, in 2021, G3 Global, a public-listed firm where Aminul is a director, acquired a 51 percent stake in Bestinet Healthcare - a distributor of hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals and hospital consumables - from Bestinet Technology.
The next year, Bestinet Healthcare made at least RM32 million supplying two million Covid-19 test kits to a government agency.
Since then, Bestinet Technology has paid G3 Global over RM70 million annually for a suite of services, including comprehensive Covid-19 testing services - ranging from test kit supply and on-site medical personnel to lab coordination and the development and management of end-to-end distribution and tracking systems.
In April this year, Bestinet Healthcare changed its name to G3 Healthcare Sdn Bhd.
Intergenerational wealth
His son, Muhammad Qhailiz Norman Aminul Islam who attended an international school in Kuala Lumpur and a university in London, will likely inherit his father’s empire.
In his twenties, Qhailiz is a substantial shareholder of G3 Global, which in 2022 won an RM118 million contract to provide a security system for both Kuala Lumpur International Airport terminals.
In June this year, G3 Global’s subsidiary won a 30-year concession to provide migrant worker dormitories in Maldives.
Under the Maldivian government concession, G3 Global will charge employers US$100 (RM445) per worker per month for the first year, after which it will be increased to US$120 per month, out of which US$5 will go to the Maldivian government.
This is similar to the FWCMS deal, where Bestinet collects a fee from each migrant worker, and the government is not charged.
Saravanan: Aminul an honest guy
Like Bestinet, which at different intervals had former home minister Azmi Khalid and Pahang prince Tengku Abdul Rahman Sultan Ahmad Shah as its chairperson, G3 Global also has connected figures on its board.
In G3 Global, Alias Ahmad, former immigration director-general, who retired from the civil service as education secretary-general, is the executive chairperson.
Similarly, like many businesspersons with government deals, Aminul has been seen hobnobbing with government officials and ministers.
Photographs published on then-human resources minister M Saravanan’s social media showed him greeting Aminul and taking a warm photo with Aminul, controversial HRD Corp CEO Shahul Hameed Shaikh Dawood and some family members when he visited the minister at his home for Deepavali in 2023.
A photograph showing them and Shahul - also a Bangladeshi-born naturalised Malaysian - allegedly holidaying together at the famous Dubai Miracle Garden also went viral on social media.
MIC senator and Social Security Organisation (Socso) chairperson Haniffa Abdullah was also with them.
When contacted, Saravanan explained that he did not go on holiday with the trio, but that they bumped into each other in Dubai, where Saravanan was on a separate family holiday.
“Since we knew each other, we took a picture. That’s it,” he told Malaysiakini.
The former minister said as a “very friendly and approachable”, and successful businessperson, “everybody was easily attracted to (Aminul)”.
“I am one of them. Till today, we are good friends,” Saravanan said, characterising Aminul as “one of the most honest guys” he has ever met.
“I don’t know why he is always victimised now and then. A lot of people born elsewhere eventually become Malaysian after migrating here, but just because he is successful, everybody targets him,” the MIC leader said.
Malaysiakini has contacted Shahul and Haniffa for comment.
Zahid, Najib cited in lawsuit
Aminul’s lobbying efforts to get the FWCMS deal was confirmed in a messy legal dispute over company shareholdings involving Aminul-owned JR Joint Resources, two of its shareholders Mohd Zaki Jaafar and SH Yahya Sh Mohamed, as well as Mohamed Nizam Jakel Mohamed Jakel, the scion of the Jakel Group textile empire.
If anything, the legal dispute revealed how tenacious Aminul is in reaching his goals, even if it takes many years to come to fruition.
Although he was not directly a party to the suit, he was a central figure in the case and the court heard that he is “the prime mover of the various platforms and is the controlling mind behind these entities.”
Before the lawsuit hit headlines, JR Joint Resources had already caught flak for allegedly mismanaging a government contract to handle the repatriation of foreign workers in an amnesty programme.
In the lawsuit against Nizam, the High Court heard that Aminul had first introduced the idea to then prime minister Najib Abdul Razak at the Putra World Trade Centre in 2011 and Najib agreed that Aminul should approach the Home Ministry with the idea.
In 2012, the Home Ministry’s secretary-general issued a letter informing Bestinet of the ministry’s approval for the proof of concept.
However, Nizam testified that in late 2014, then-deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s son-in-law, the late Syed Alman Syed Alwi, had asked him to work together with Aminul on the project because “Bestinet was having difficulty implementing and strategising the project for the government”.
Some months later in mid-2015, Nizam offered Aminul his services as a “consultant” with ties with “powerful persons” and senior officials, for RM200 million.
However, Aminul testified that ultimately, he felt Nizam did not do enough to warrant the payment and that the 30-plus meetings he claimed he had with officials to facilitate the FWCMS project were meetings on Jakel deals instead.
Coercion over Bestinet shares
In 2017, Nizam tried to co-opt the project altogether by registering his own company named FWCMS Sdn Bhd.
He showed Aminul a letter bearing this company’s letterhead with a notation from Zahid, who was the then-home minister, directing the FWCMS deal be awarded to the company, the court heard.
Nizam then proposed the RM200 million consultancy services agreement be scrapped in exchange for control of Bestinet.
Eventually, he agreed to accept 49 percent of Bestinet shares, 70 percent of two other related companies - Tass Tech Sdn Bhd and Synerflux Sdn Bhd - and a profit-sharing agreement.
Tass Tech, an IT firm, and Synerflux, a labour agency, were owned by the plaintiffs and were in 2017 reportedly on the cusp of winning government contracts.
The agreement was drawn up to transfer the shares to Nizam’s wife, Norhana Sharkhan, after which FWCMS Sdn Bhd was wound up.
However, JR Joint Resources, the company which owns Bestinet, challenged the agreement after the fall of the BN government in 2018.
The court found this agreement void because it was drawn up under duress and coercion.
The legal tussle to control Bestinet, even before the FWCMS deal was signed, underlines how lucrative the project promised to be.
So far, it has lived up to its multimillion ringgit promise.
According to its latest filing with the Companies Commission, Bestinet retained earnings of RM128 million and made RM85 million in profits out of RM138.92 million in revenue in the financial year ending Dec 31, 2022.
In fact, recent developments revealed that Bestinet’s revenue should run into billions.
Recently, Bestinet slapped the government with a letter of demand for RM1.63 billion, which it said it was not allowed to collect from migrant workers over three years.
To avoid a financially damaging lawsuit, the government decided to extend the FWCMS deal.
Having secured a renewal of service for the FWCMS for another six years - and with a fee hike from RM100 to RM215 per worker - there is more of that to come. - Mkini
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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