Alorie Lepa Lepa Resort – just another mega tourism and investment scam?

 

This certainly does not augur well for the Visit Malaysia Year 2014. How does the State government expect us tour operators to promote the Mabul Island which is now as good as ruined, ironically by a dubious project of its namesake? 

Without Prejudice 

Note: The following expose was emailed to us today with a brief that the scam might be perpetrated by high-powered people.

“Your garden will be made of corals and when you wake up in the morning, you’ll have the pristine sea of Mabul Island and Celebes Sea in front of you!”.

These were the exact words of Jean Marc Lafosse, Founder and CEO of Alorie Hospitality during an interview with Astro Awani’s “In Reality” program on 11 April 2012, to promote the Alorie Lepa Lepa Resort which is located on  the world-famous Mabul Island and some 20 kilometres away from Malaysia’s ‘crown jewel’ diving resort – Sipadan Island.

During the said interview, Laffose also disclosed that the RM200 million five-star resort on Mabul Island that is being developed by Sabah-based Jewel of Mabul Development Sdn Bhd (Jewel of Mabul) was supposed to be completed in January 2014.

A project listed under the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s much-publicised Economic Transformation Program (ETP), it is among the other initiatives identified to serve as catalysts to establish Semporna as Borneo’s Marine Paradise. The other initiaties are the Sipadan Mangrove Resort, and Mount Conner Tourism Hub.

Unfortunately, when a group of us (Sabah-based tour operators) visited the project site recently to check out the progress of the project whether it would be ready to carter for our guests during next year’s Visit Malaysia Year, we were shocked by what we found there. The place was riddle with thousand of huge concrete piling columns protruding from the seabed out to the water surface, spanning about 1 kilometer long, from one end to another.

The nearest resort to the piling columns, about 190 to 230 m depending on which of the 2 patches you are floating on, is SMART or Sipadan Mabul Resort.

According to the local folks whom we spoke to subsequently, the project has been abandoned for more than 6 months now. The contractors too have left Semporna, we were told. No one seems to know what actually happened to the project. They also told us that they were only aware of the project when the piling works started.

Some of our counterparts here meanwhile told us that at one time, the project owner even arrogantly boasted that once completed and operational, this resort “will kill off all the 24 tour operators in Mabul”.

And now, all that were left behind are thousands of huge concrete pilling columns are not only a terrible eyesore and a ‘monument of shame’ but, worse still, a potential environmental disaster!

As tour operators, we are truly appalled by the finding as, instead of attracting investments and tourists to Sabah, this project has brought shame and disaster to the state and the entire industry. The international communities are surely going to laugh at us again. What a shame!

This certainly does not augur well for the Visit Malaysia Year 2014. How does the State government expect us tour operators to promote the Mabul Island which is now as good as ruined, ironically by a dubious project of its namesake?

Alorie Lepa Lepa Resort Fiasco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-qfaDtrYYI&feature=youtu.be

We hereby urge the State government to look at this matter seriously and quickly intervene to rectify it, before further damage is done to our fledgling tourism industry, as well as the surrounding environment. If one look at the video footages, the presence of the existing tour operators' chalet in Mabul Island is already a complete environmental disaster if one can imagine the volume of sewage produced daily! The abandoned piling further aggravated the situation.

It is also worth noting that this project is also located near Tun Sakaran Marine Park in the waters of Semporna, and the Coral Triangle, which has the world’s highest marine biodiversity.

Ironically, in its company description found on its website, Jewel of Mabul states that the company aims to set a benchmark in Malaysia for a sustainable tourism development that fulfills the highest standards of implementation, administration and monitoring, and will have minimal impact on the physical, ecological and socio-economic aspects of Pulau Mabul.

A preliminary investigation carried out by us found out that the among the Board of Directors for Jewel of Mabul Development Sdn Bhd is a prominent and well-connected Sabah lawyer, and the chief executive officer of the resort Ir. Orson Loh Ming Kiong also sits in the Sabah Tourism Board (STB). Attempts for us to contact Ir Orson to find out what happened were to no avail. We were later reliably told that the office has been closed for quite a while.

It was reported previously that construction of the resort began in the last quarter of 2011 and was expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2014.

The Resort, sprawled over 32.37 hectares, will boast of 88 pool villas, with a minimum price tag of RM3.1 million. Managed by Alorie Hospitality Sdn Bhd, it would include an underwater restaurant, a spa, scuba diving centre and a marine conservation centre.

The project was implemented with a time-sharing concept with option to purchase units as service lots managed by Alorie Hospitality, a Caucasian chain.

A buyer would receive seven per cent return on investment per annum for the first five years and from the sixth year onwards, the returns were expected to be higher.

Already some 40 out of the 87 villas have been sold on a leaseback basis. The built-ups are between 2,200 and 5,500 sq ft with prices from RM2.8 million to RM5.5 million each unit. There is an additional unit called the honeymoon suite which will not be sold.

The manner the project was abandoned inevitably reminds one of another controversial tourism-related project, the Kudat Riviera Resort Villas project which was launched back in 2006 but was abandoned after the United Kingdom-hailed project owner absconded, after having sold most of the units there.

As for this Jewel of Mabul fiasco, it is not known how many investors were affected. A search conducted on the internet also found that Alorie Hospitality has a sketchy company profile and no other successful projects elsewhere, contrary to what it had claimed in most the previous news reports.

We hoped our blowing of the whistle would also lead to a more thorough investigation by the Government of Malaysia, the State government in particular, and to bring the culprits behind such a scam to justice, without fear or favour, regardless of who they are and how ‘well-connected’ they are.

Concerned Tour Operators
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.