WHEN Lembaga Tabung Haji (TH) announced in July 2026 that it had reclaimed two assets from Urusharta Jamaah Sdn Bhd (UJSB), a parcel of land at the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) and the oil palm plantation now known as UJ Estates (Holdings), the reaction split along predictable lines.
For some, it was proof that the 2018 rescue plan was finally working, eight years on.
For others, the fact that only two assets out of the entire pool transferred to UJSB have come home is proof of the opposite: that TH failed to protect the assets it handed over, and that whatever remains inside UJSB is effectively lost.
Both readings miss what the numbers are actually saying.
The facts of the return are not in dispute. TH bought back the TRX land at RM270 mil, against the RM400 mil value at which it was transferred to UJSB in 2018.
TH originally acquired the land from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in 2015 for RM188.5 mil. TH also bought back UJ Estates at RM695 mil, against its 2018 transfer value of RM800 mil.
In both cases, the repurchase price was lower than the original transfer price, even though TRX has since become one of Kuala Lumpur’s most actively developed districts and the plantation has recovered its income and stabilised its cash flow.
That combination, rising asset values around it and a still-lower buyback price after eight years, is worth sitting with because it tells a story that is easy to miss in the celebration of a “successful reacquisition”.
What the 2018 transfer actually did
The restructuring exercise itself is well documented. Facing a widening gap between assets and liabilities that first surfaced in 2017, one that risked breaching the Tabung Haji Act 1995 and jeopardising continued dividend payouts, the government established UJSB as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Minister of Finance (Incorporated).
UJSB took over TH’s underperforming and non-core assets, paying approximately RM19.9 bil, largely through sukuk financing, for assets subsequently valued at closer to RM9.7 bil to RM10 bil.
The gap between what UJSB paid and what the assets were later found to be worth was, in effect, the price of restoring TH’s balance sheet at the point the accounting problem surfaced.
That distinction matters. UJSB was never simply a warehouse holding TH’s property in trust. It was established to rehabilitate assets that had already become problematic, with a mandate to improve their value over time and ultimately redeem the sukuk issued to finance the exercise.
Eight years into that mandate, UJSB’s own balance sheet tells a sobering story. At the end of 2024, it reported total assets of about RM11.44 bil against liabilities of RM23.86 bil, alongside accumulated losses exceeding RM12 bil despite recording a profit that year.
Liabilities that remain more than double the value of the assets meant to support them do not suggest a rehabilitation nearing completion. They suggest an entity still working through the consequences of what it inherited.
Reading the buyback correctly
The claim that TH “failed to safeguard” the assets transferred to UJSB assumes those assets were fundamentally sound when they left TH’s books and that something went wrong during UJSB’s stewardship.
The buyback figures suggest otherwise.
The two assets that returned to TH appear to be among the stronger performers within the UJSB portfolio. Yet both were reacquired below their 2018 transfer values.
If the strongest assets in the portfolio still changed hands below those valuations after eight years of rehabilitation, questions naturally arise about the remaining assets that have yet to return.
Rather than suggesting UJSB failed to manage healthy assets, the figures point to a different conclusion: many of the assets were already overvalued or fundamentally weak before they were transferred.
In that sense, the buyback shifts attention from the restructuring itself to the investment decisions that made the restructuring necessary.
What the RCI adds to the picture
The publication of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) report provides an additional lens through which the buyback can be understood.
While the Commission was established to examine the circumstances surrounding TH’s financial position and recommend measures to strengthen the institution, its findings also provide important context on the governance, investment decisions and institutional weaknesses that preceded the 2018 restructuring.
Read alongside the buyback figures, the report shifts attention beyond the mechanics of the rescue itself and towards the conditions that made such a rescue necessary.
The buyback figures suggest that the narrative of institutional failure needs redirecting.
Rather than pointing to shortcomings in the 2018 restructuring or UJSB’s stewardship, they point further upstream, to the investment decisions that filled TH’s balance sheet with assets requiring a RM19.9 bil rescue programme in the first place.
Viewed in that context, TH’s latest buyback is more than a story of two assets returning home. It is a reminder that the success or otherwise of the 2018 restructuring cannot be judged in isolation from the decisions that made it necessary.
The buyback may have reignited public debate, but the RCI provides a fuller picture of where that debate should begin.
Dr Mohamed Hadi Abd Hamid is a certified Shariah advisor and Islamic financial planner, while Dr Mohd Zaidi Md Zabri is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Islamic Economics, Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
- Focus Malaysia.
