Pagi ini saya dengar di Berita Radio, Najib Razak kata MARA adalah idea bapanya, Saya nak kata tak betul tu.
MARA ini asalnya dari RIDA atau Rural & Industrial Development Authority. RIDA di bentuk oleh British sebagai strategi keselamatan bila Malaya dalam keadaan dharurat melawan pengganas Komunis. Hampir sama tarikh di lahirkan LKTP@Lembaga Kemajuan Tanah Melayu. Kedua agensi juga atas desakan Majlis Perundangan Persekutuan yang bertindak saperti Parlimenhari ini.
Kedua agensi itu diwujudkan bukan kerana kepentingan orang Melayu sangat di zaman British, hanya untuk menjaga hati orang Melayu salepas insiden penentangan orang Melayu terhadap gagasan Malayan Union. Ketidak puasan hati orang Melayu kepada British dan layanan berlebihan kepada kaum mendatang, British bimbang orang Melayu akan berpihak kepada. Komunis.
Itu sebab British menamakan Dato Onn Jaafar sebagai Pengerusi pertamanya. Antara asas RIDA ialah memberikan pendidikan dan kemahiran kepada orang Melayu. Itu sebab berdirinya sekolah dan maktab RIDA.
Tun Razak Hussein tidak pernah menjadi Pengerusi MARA, beliau sekadar Menteri. Nama MARA@Majlis Amanah Rakyat bumiputra ditukarkan dari RIDA atas keputusan Kongress Ekonomi Bumiputra 1965 dan Pengerusi pertamanya Encik Abd Ghafar Baba, bekas Ketua Menteri Melaka.
Encik Ghafar Baba ada orang yang bertanggungjawab meletakan hala tuju MARA, dizamannya MARA bergiat dalam ekonomi untuk membantu Bumiputra disamping tujuan terasnya pendidikan sahingga terlahirnya Institut Teknologi Mara yang sekarang di kenali sebagai UiTM.
Dari itu jika dikatakan Tun Razak Hussein memainkan peranan dalam pembanguan dan menubuhkan MARA, saya rasa kurang tepat. Peranan Tun Razak Hussein hanya sebagai Menteri yang menjaga MARA. Tidak saperti peranannya di Felda.
Australian real estate giant Raine and Horne's offshore arm has been embroiled in a global corruption scandal involving the sale of prime Melbourne property, corrupt Malaysian officials and the Panama Papers leak.
The scandal centres around the vastly inflated valuation of a 280-room city apartment building, UniLodge, which mostly houses overseas students on Swanston Street, near Melbourne University.
746 Swanston St. Melbourne, which was bought, then sold at a vastly inflated price. Photo: Simon Schluter
It follows earlier revelations of dirty money from Malaysia being laundered through Australian property purchases with few consequences for those facilitating the corruption.
It's a problem which the Australian government insists it is confronting, but despite two years of investigations by the Australian Federal Police and a promise to expose the scam from Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, nobody is facing prosecution in either country.
In June 2012, a Malaysian government fund created to help the country's rural poor asked Raine and Horne International to issue a valuation for the Melbourne building.But this was no ordinary request.
Raine and Horne International's Kuala Lumpur office valued the property at $43 million, despite the fact that the building's seller, Australian businessman Lionel Harber, had simultaneously valued it at $23.5 million.
Mr Farber considered that his sale price equated to fair market value, a view endorsed by an independent valuation.
"That's a joke," a surprised Mr Harber told Fairfax Media this week when informed that within weeks of selling his Swanston Street building for $23.5 million to an agent connected to an offshore company, it had been resold to the Malaysian government's anti-poverty fund, Mara, for $41.8 million.
Senior Malaysian political figure Mohammad Lan Allani. Photo: Supplied
Raine and Horne's advice was used to justify this resale.
The leak
The leak in 2016 of the “Panama Papers” - millions of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca - is still being trawled through by journalists and police across the world to tie corrupt officials to secret offshore accounts.
The leak helps to tell part of this story. Prior to the Swanston Street property purchase, Mossack Fonseca created two secretive front companies in the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man. These firms were used, in turn, to set up a Melbourne company.
Next, these three companies were used to facilitate the "flipping" of the Swanston Street property for $41.8 million, despite its true market value. The transaction freed up $18.3 million which rightly belonged to Malaysian taxpayers and which was meant to be used to help the country's development. Instead it was distributed among the conspirators.
The Panama Papers and other leaked files reveal that corrupt Malaysian officials tied to the ruling Umno party of Prime Minister Najib Razak, including senior political figure Mohammad Lan Allani, are behind both the property scam and offshore companies.
When the $41.8 million was paid to an offshore firm by the Malaysian government fund to secure ownership of the Melbourne building, Mr Allani was the fund's chairman. It was Mr Allani's staff who requested Raine and Horne's inflated valuation.
And, according to bank transfers recently analysed by anti-corruption investigators, Mr Allani's personal bank account was paid $3.2 million in kickbacks shortly after the $41.8 million left Malaysian government coffers.
When asked in 2015 about another corrupt deal, Mr Allani said he couldn't recall them, and was only involved in setting up offshore companies in tax havens as a "convenient" way of selling property bought by the Malaysian government. When questioned about his knowledge of any alleged kickbacks, the former politician hung up the phone.
Money in, money out
Along with Mossack Fonseca's lawyers, a small army of Australian middle men facilitated the corruption, which involves not only the Swanston Street property, but at least three other Australian buildings which the Malaysian government bought for around $75 million.
In 2015, Fairfax Media published an investigation into the $22 million purchase by Malaysia of another apartment building, Dudley House, in Melbourne’s leafy south. The price of this building was inflated by $4.75 million in a corrupt deal supported by Melbourne developers Chris Dimitriou and Peter Mills, a CBD accounting firm and a former Westpac banker.
The same accounting firm, along with two Melbourne law firms, appear to have facilitated aspects of the Swanston Street purchase, assisting in the creation of offshore companies, providing legal advice or moving large amounts of money.
Raine and Horne's Australian headquarters said this week that its offshore arm pays a fee to use the firm's name, but is run by Malaysian managers. Raine and Horne said these managers have insisted the $43 million valuation was appropriate.
"Local investigations ... concluded no impropriety was found under the terms of that investigation," Raine and Horne Australia said in a statement.
Fairfax Media has now traced at least $8 million in bribes and kickbacks funded by Melbourne property transactions to bank accounts controlled by corrupt Malaysian officials or their relatives or friends, but the figure is likely to be much higher.
Getting away with it
The corruption provides an example of the mostly unchecked exploitation of Australia’s property market, which the OECD recently partly attributed to the federal government's failure to adequately crack down on money laundering and bribery facilitated by real estate agents and other facilitators of property sales.
The revelations also raise further questions about Australia’s failure to hold to account companies which bribe foreign politicians and officials or engage in other misconduct.
Since 2009, Fairfax Media has exposed the alleged bribery or questionable payments involving Australian companies and top officials in Malaysia, Nauru and China, along with the presidents of the Republic of Congo and Sri Lanka, and, two former Iraq oil ministers. The AFP has significant intelligence implicating Malaysian Prime Minister Razak in corruption connected to an unrelated corruption probe that is subject to a Victorian court suppression order.
The Panama Papers leaks have also exposed high wealth Australians in questionable dealings.But while these stories have sparked a flurry of police and regulatory action, very few individuals have been charged in Australia.
Responding to concerns that white collar corruption and fraud is flourishing, the federal government in December introduced new laws aimed at making it easier for police to charge companies who bribe officials. It is also considering reforms to deal with the OECD's concerns.
And when the decision was made by MARA Board members, their Minister was not aware that they were deciding on ousting Annuar Musa as their Chairman.
And now their minister,Ismail Sabri, tells us that Najib too was not aware that this was going to happen.
Is Ismail Sabri telling us that MARA board members decided to dismiss their chairman, Annuar Musa, WITHOUT consulting the Minister? Without consulting the prime minister?
Either the Board Members of MARA are a courageous lot who have woken up to the fact that their Chairman is corrupt or they are stupid enough to think that they can get away with dismissing a Chairman who had been appointed by the prime minister.
And then there is also the question of how many board members were complicit in making possible a corrupt Chairman to act corruptly in MARA for the term of his office.
And what about Annuar Musa? He seems to be the least troubled by the situation he is in...and why should he be too trouble when he has powerful friends in Putrajaya?
After all the man who appointed him to be Chairman of Mara, Najib Razak, in whose personal bank account was found to have many billions for which, until today, we are none the wiser as from where it was sourced, is still in office.
Then there is Isa Samad, who, while he was Chairman of FGV, the world's largest palm oil producer, saw a decline in revenue, unusual stock loss amounting to RM57 million in a jointly controlled entity in Turkey, and another year of loss in 2016 as its net loss for the third quarter ended Sept 30 increased to RM94.87 million from RM33.93 million in the corresponding period the year before. And while Isa is no longer Chairman of FGV his spoils of office seems unencumbered
Taib Mahmud and a host of other Umno and BN "has been" are all rolling in the money and are all free and under no judicial process that will require for them to submit to the court the source of their insane wealth all acquired during the term of their public office!
So why should Annuar Musa be troubled?
If anything, at this very moment, Najib is already thinking where he can next positioned a man of Annuar Musa's capability and experience to further assist him in his odious political agenda.
After all a paedophile is Chairman of Risda. A "convicted of corruption taker" Isa Samad, was Chairman of FGV......and that mother of all "donation takers", Najib Razak seems to be going from strength to strength as he heads a government that makes corruption and political power the new normal of all things Malaysian!
Have no fear Annuar....Najib is here! Semua bisa di atur!
KUALA
LUMPUR: Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara) announced a 50 per cent discount to
Mara Education Loan borrowers who failed to make the grade in their…
thestar.com.my
steadyaku47 comment :Questions this idiot of a Chairman should first answer :
1. What is the percentage of loan repaid by students who have made the grade under a
MARA Education loan?
2. What is the percentage of loans repaid by students on MARA Education loans who have
failed?
3. Who the f@*k have to carry the burden of that 50% or any f@#king discount that MARA
has given or will be giving to those students who have taken MARA loans and failed or
simply have not paid their loans for whatever reasons?
Woi Annuar anak Musa....Ini kepala bapak engkau punya duit ka?
The truth of the matter is simply this.
This giving of discounts - whether 25% or 50% is just whitewash! MARA might as well give those students who have failed on a MARA Education Loan a 90% discount because the percentage of these students who pay back MARA the Education Loan extended to them is small...very small.
MARA is a rust bucket of a sinking steel ship that this UMNO led government keeps shoveling money into without any expectation of a reasonable return on investment made.
Has it help the Malays? Sure it has...but if any independent audit is made, if any fact check is made...if any serious attempt is made to gauge returns to the Malays against what has been "invested" by the Malaysian government into MARA the results will be laughable.
Take the above announcement by Annuar Musa for what it is : Empty rhetorics of an Umno led government hungry for anything that can boost their "image" in an atmosphere where it awaits it's impending demise with a sense of inevitability and coming doom.
