Now Closer to Home: Happenings in Sarawak 1 Votes

Happenings in Sarawak: Kleptocracy at Work

A whistleblower website, which has alleged a litany of corruption involving Sarawak CM Taib Mahmud and his family, has hit another state leader in its latest expose.

According to Sarawak Report, Deputy Chief Minister George Chan has given his Christina Foo, described as his “mistress”, a multi-million ringgit contract to purchase medical equipment for a new hospital in Kota Samarahan, a town about 20km southeast of Kuching.

It said that Trend-Nics, a company linked to Foo, could have made “as much as RM40 million from the contract”. The Kota Samarahan Heart Hospital, after years of delay, was officially opened last week by Prime Minister Najib Razak, who also made a stop in Kuching to attend Taib’s wedding bash.

The hospital was first conceived by Chan, the state minister in charge of health, eight years ago as a private cancer facility to cater to “health tourisism”. Its RM473 million construction cost was funded by the state-owned Sarawak International Medical Centre. However, problems soon emerged, with the project’s private partner pulling out of the deal.

The ailing hospital was eventually taken over by the fFderal Government last year, at a cost of over RM400 million.

Work to build the hospital started in 2003 and it was scheduled for completion in 2006. However, the hospital was only completed last year.

Bailed out by Putrajaya

Sarawak Report said the project, now reconverted to a heart hospital, is destined to be another white elephant as it was not built to be a public hospital.

“The hospital was designed for wealthy, fee-paying patients, with single and double rooms, and it is simply wrong that the Federal Government has paid so much money for a hospital that is inappropriate for government patients and was never designed for the large numbers of patients that government hospitals must accept,” the website said, quoting a Health Ministry source.

Due to the six-year delay, the hospital equipment bought almost a decade ago are now obsolete to be used for heart surgery, Sarawak Report lamented.

More shockingly, the website said, the doctors had been unable to perform any surgery because the low-cost system that was installed is unable to supply adequate oxygen for the patients in the brand-new hospital, dubbed by the website as the “most expensive hospital ever built in Malaysia”.

“Insiders on the project have told Sarawak Report that they quarreled with Foo over proposals to purchase cheap beds and label them as expensive cardiac beds – the price difference between the two brands was RM2,400 instead of RM48,000.”

Apparent poor attempt to disguise ownership

Sarawak Report also said Foo, 52, had made an apparently poor attempt to disguise her ownership of Trend-Nics, the company said to have been given the RM130 million contract by Chan to supply equipment to the hospital.

“Our investigation of Trend-Nics official documents show that the directors of the company are in fact registered as two other Ms Foos – Florence and ‘Celine’,” said the website, which also put up documents from the Companies Commission.

However, it found that Trend-Nics is 100 percent owned by another company, Chastain Sdn Bhd. “Chastain is 80 percent owned by Christina Foo herself, who is also registered as a director at her swanky Kasuma Resort residence. The other director, Florence Foo, owns 10 percent and the remaining 10 percent is owned by ‘Celine’ – who turns out to be an alias for Christina Foo herself.”

According the Companies Commission documents, both Celine and Christina share the same alias – Christina Constance Foo. Sarawak Report said it was “an open secret” that Foo has been Chan’s mistress for many years, even when the deputy chief minister was still married to his first wife.

“Experts and insiders are adamant that not only was there no need for this middleman contract (involving Trend-Nics), but that Foo was not qualified to be involved in such matters,” it added.

Blood ties between Chan and Taib

Chan has a lot in common with Sarawak strongman Taib, who will celebrate his 30th anniversary as chief minister in March.

They are in-laws by virtue of Chan’s daughter Anisa being married to former deputy tourism minister Sulaiman, who is Taib’s second son. Both men, who are in their mid-seventies, have just remarried women who are many years younger than them. Taib, 74, whose Australian wife of Polish descent died in 2009, tied the knot last month with Syrian-born Ragad Waleed Alkurdi, 28.

Chan, also 74, who is divorced from his American wife of Irish descent, married Lorna Enan Muloon about a year ago. Lorna is the adopted daughter of Chan’s friend – former Sarawak local government minister Joseph Balan Seling, who died last year at the age of 74. The couple has been recently reported to be expecting a baby.

Sarawak Report has over the past few months revealed details on a slew of land and properties owned by the Taib family, both in Sarawak and abroad. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) has so far kept deafening silence on the series of exposes on Taib’s wealth.