With the dust yet to settle on the Amangate affair, the whistleblower website Sarawak Report has released more "secret documents" it says are from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
These documents, the London-based site says it obtained from the two graft fighting agencies, reveal that Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman's sons, Mohammed Hayssam Musa and Hazem Mubarak Musa, obtained kickbacks from timber harvesting in the state to finance their education in Australia.
The documents, claims the report, provide "devastating evidence" against Musa's involvement in the timber kickback scandal.Musa (right) has denied the allegations linking him with Sabah timber trader Michael Chia, who was detained and charged with money laundering by trying to smuggle S$16 million into Malaysia.
Sarawak Report says the documents include bank statements of payments to Musa's sons from Chia's business activities.
The whistleblower website adds that Yayasan Sabah (Sabah Foundation) forest manager Mohd Daud Tampokong was instructed by Musa, who is the foundation's chairperson, to approve Chia's bids for logging licences.
The foundation controls some one million hectares of forest land entrusted to it to protect and preserve.
Following Chia's arrest in Hong Kong, investigators got ICAC to freeze his bank accounts for up to three years.
This got MACC to conduct its own investigations and seize nine lorry loads of materials and documents from Chia's premises and from his associates, Andrew Lim and Admond Looh.
Money withdrawn to finance education
Sarawak Report says it discovered Chia's trail of bank accounts through HSBC Singapore and the Hong Kong-based branch of the Swiss bank UBS.
"We
have copies of statements from this bank accounts showing that Musa's
sons were taking money out of one of them on a regular basis, based on a
standing instruction."This account was set up as an Australian dollar account in Singapore, apparently because Musa's boys were then studying in Perth, Australia.
"Money was also removed from the account by Imbarine Bujang, the man asked by Musa to look after the boy's needs at the university in Perth," Sarawak Report says.
It says it also has copies of bank statements showing regular payments for the expenses of Mohammed Hayssam and Hazem Mubarak between 2006 and 2007.
Payments were also made to Australian property company Riverstar Investment Pty Ltd for rental of the apartment the boys lived in.
"Payment for the rental for Musa's sons in Perth, Australia, also came out of the same account controlled by Chia," it says.
The Sarawak Report further claims to be in possession of statements connecting US dollar accounts from the UBS bank in Hong Kong, managed through its Singapore branch, showing how much money was transferred.
It has also obtained further evidence on Chia paying directly to Musa through Chia's personal HSBC account.Sarawak Report says Mohd Daud was paid S$85,000 and that this evidence corroborates allegations that Chia received kickbacks from timber companies that obtained their logging licences from Yayasan Sabah.
'Gani covering up'
It also says Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail, who also hails from Sabah, has been protecting Musa's family and had blocked his office from pressing of charges against the state chief minister, and that Gani has close family connections with Musa's family.
While the Hong Kong authorities had sought Malaysia's help, Sarawak Report says, Gani (right)
had refused to sign the necessary mutual legal assistance documents to
enable inter-country cooperation on the matter and that Gani had asked
his Hong Kong counterpart to drop the case.The MACC investigations that uncovered much information on the Sabah timber kickbacks, it says, were also blocked.
"The MACC is believed to have recommended that no less than 40 charges be brought against Musa, and yet once again the attorney-general refused to recommend prosecution of the case.
"The report with all the evidence is still sitting on his desk," Sarawak Report quotes an unnamed source as saying.
This, many believe, lends credence to MACC deputy chief commissioner Mohd Shukri Abdull's statement last month that the anti-graft body had brought many valid cases to the Attorney-General's Chambers and that it refused to charge those allegedly involved.
Sabah DAP calls for investigation
Meanwhile, Sabah DAP has lodged police reports in Kota Kinabalu, Tawau, Sandakan and Penampang, calling on the police to investigate the authenticity of the Sarawak Report allegations against Musa.
The allegations by the whistleblower website are very serious, the party said.
According to the Sarawak Report, the MACC investigation into the S$16 million cash smuggling case in Hong Kong concluded that Musa had corruptly issued timber licences worth about RM400 million to his brother, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman.
If the allegations were true, Sabah DAP chief Jimmy Wong said, it would be one of the largest and most extensive investigations ever undertaken by the MACC, involving billions of ringgit siphoned out of Sabah through corruption at the highest level.
Wong, who is assemblyperson for Sri Tanjung, urged the police to step in to investigate the authenticity of the claims by Sarawak Report.
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