Is Anwar Ibrahim preparing Malaysians and the world for a joint development agreement with China that will include Luconia Shoals?

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

                                                                                 

The Star and ANN quoting Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim reported: 

“Malaysia will not back down from its claims. That is why the exploration by PETRONAS continues, even though it has been raised by China,” he said during Minister’s Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat on Tuesday (Oct 15).

He also said territorial disputes in the area involved other countries and so China should not be made the sole focus of the issue.

“(These countries include) Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei.

“That’s why we don’t agree if this problem is focused on China,” he added in response to a supplementary question by Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan (PN-Kota Baru).However, Anwar gave an assurance that the country’s firm stance would not hinder diplomatic relations, trade and friendships with the nations concerned

The Star report is generally faithful to Anwar's speech in Malay, reported in part by CNA (see Youtube recording above from 1:50-2:30). Having said that Anwar's words need closer attention, in particular his reference to disputes with Thailand and Brunei. Both have involved disputes over oil and gas exploration acreage and while these have been resolved, resolution has not necessarily been to Malaysia's advantage. Some in Malaysia consider the Malaysia Thai Joint Development agreement a triumph of diplomacy over economics for it gave Thialand access to oil and gas located in the Malay Basin which is mostly located in Malaysian wate., The deal with Brunei enetered into by then Prime Miniser Badawi was torn up by Prime Minister Mahathir Moahamad when he became prime minister for the second time in 2018 (see story below). 

Anwar's words suggest that he may be preparing the ground for a Thai or Brunei type agreement with China, quite likely over acreage  in the Luconia Shoals area.  Quite apart from the potential economic loss to Malaysia , a deal such as that with China will give the PRC recognition from at least Malaysia over the southern most point of its disputed Nine Dash Line.

END 

Monday, March 2, 2020

Mahathir terminated Badawi's bad Brunei oil agreement ; Muhyiddin should not restore that bad deal

by Ganesh Sahathevan



(Source:Were Blocks L and M previously part of Malaysia, revisited)


Energy Reporters has said:

Malaysia has cancelled a cross-border deal with Brunei to develop oil and gas fields along their shared maritime boundary.

Malaysian sources said state-owned Petronas had halted discussions earlier this month on collaboration over several drilling projects straddling the maritime boundary or within the Malaysia-Brunei Commercial Arrangement Area.


Malaysia has purportedly complained about the proposed revenue split, which was agreed by the previous government before the May 2018 general election.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 94, since returning to power as head of his Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition has reportedly taken a tough approach with Brunei and demanded a better deal.

The Brunei deal was in fact former PM Badawi's doing,and taken further by Najib. The new  Muhyiddin government  should not restore that bad deal.


END

Malaysia pulls plug on cross-border Brunei projects
By Energy Reporters | 29.02.2020 | Production


Malaysia has cancelled a cross-border deal with Brunei to develop oil and gas fields along their shared maritime boundary.

Malaysian sources said state-owned Petronas had halted discussions earlier this month on collaboration over several drilling projects straddling the maritime boundary or within the Malaysia-Brunei Commercial Arrangement Area.


Malaysia has purportedly complained about the proposed revenue split, which was agreed by the previous government before the May 2018 general election.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 94, since returning to power as head of his Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition has reportedly taken a tough approach with Brunei and demanded a better deal.

Brunei is supposedly keen to restart negotiations and develop a new source of natural gas.

The BP World Energy Outlook forecast that at its current pace of extraction, Brunei will have no hydrocarbon resources left in 15 years.

PetroleumBrunei is purportedly looking to work with Petronas to develop a group of gas-rich fields to supply the Brunei liquefied natural gas terminal at Lumut.


Declining hydrocarbon incomes are hurting Brunei, which is accustomed to extreme wealth. The tiny state has the world’s largest residential palace. Approximately US$1.4 billion was spent by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah on his home, which has 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms and 7,000 luxury vehicles in more than 100 garages.

This year unemployment is projected to rise to approximately 9.1 per cent, the highest level in Southeast Asia, despite the attraction of 0 per cent income tax. But foreigners continue to arrive, mainly from India, Bangladesh and the Philippines, to take up jobs the indigenous population does not want.

The authorities in Brunei offer residents free health care, free education and housing development programmes.


This generous welfare state will be under threat if new oil and gas sources are not found.

In October last year, France’s oil and gas giant Total agreed to sell its near 87-per-cent stake in a maritime block to Royal Dutch Shell for US$300 million. The agreement has now been delayed amid the bilateral wrangling with Malaysia.

A solution after this week looks far more distant as Mahathir has created a political crisis by bringing down the ruling PH coalition, leaving Malaysia’s royal leaders to try to establish a new government.

The dispute has created uncertainty for fossil fuel firms operating within Malaysian territory, which is expected to affect extraction investment in the future.


The delays will limit oil and gas production growth, reducing income for the Malaysian and Bruneian authorities.

"Supply chain attack" suggests that Hezbollah pager attack might be the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, not Mossad

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Pagers were widely used before the proliferation of mobile phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (Wikimedia Commons/Kevster). From "What Is A Peger", Indian Express

The Hezbollah  pager  "supply chain attack" (as the BBC says it might be)  suggests that the Hezbollah pager attack might be  the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, and  not Mossad.  It is to be noted that even the Russians are being circumspect, avoinding any direct refewrence to Israel or Mossad and instead to "the organizers of this high-tech attack". 



The BBC has reported:


Analysts have been quick to express shock at the scale of Tuesday's attack - saying Hezbollah prides itself on its security measures.

Some suggested a hack may have caused the pager batteries to overheat, causing the devices to explode. Such an act would be unprecedented.

But many experts say that is unlikely, with footage of the explosions inconsistent with the batteries overheating.

Some analysts say ithat some sort of supply chain attack, which involved the pagers being tampered with during their manufacture or in transit, was more likely.

Supply chain attacks are a growing concern in the cyber-security world with many high-profile incidents recently caused by hackers gaining access to products while they are in development.

But these attacks are normally contained to software. Hardware supply chain attacks are far rarer as they involve getting hands on to the device.

If this was indeed a supply chain attack it would have involved a huge operation to secretly tamper with the pagers in some way.

Security officials in Lebanon say that the pagers were packed with a small amount of explosives months before the devices entered the country.




Additionally Rueters is reporting:

The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.
Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that Gold Apollo named in a statement as BAC.
"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Hsu told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The stated address for BAC Consulting in Hungary's capital Budapest was a peach building on a mostly residential street in an outer suburb. The company name was posted on the glass door on an A4 sheet.
A person at the building who asked not to be named said BAC Consulting was registered there but did not have a physical presence. The CEO of BAC Consulting, Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono says on her LinkedIn profile that she has worked as an adviser for various organisations including UNESCO. She did not respond to emails from Reuters.
BAC's registered activities are wide ranging, from computer game publishing to IT consulting to crude oil extraction.

Meanwhile the Russians are being circumspect:

“We regard what happened as yet another act of hybrid warfare against Lebanon, which has harmed thousands of innocent people. It appears that the organizers of this high-tech attack deliberately sought to foment a large-scale armed confrontation in order to provoke a major war in the Middle East,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a statement.

The study of terrorist financing is primarily concerned with how, not why. 

The above suggests that the Hezbollah pager attack might be  the work of insiders in conflict with brethren, not Mossad.

END 

Curious that Senator Penny Wong has said nothing about fellow South Australian and Malaysian Adele Koh

  by Ganesh Sahathevan 

"The trouble is that the Australian press is still infantile....It does not know how to control its bowels. Only one paper has to get on to a good story and we get several cases of verbal and pictorial diarrhea, all trying to go one better"\

Adele Koh,c .1975

The Advertiser,,1977

                                SA State Library -Royal Visit archives
    

When campaigning for election in 2019 Penny Wong said that appointing her the first Asian-Australian foreign minister would send a strong message to Asians that Australia was not white and racist . Australian media, especially the ABC were happy to go along with that narrative, but a bit of research would  have shown that relations between Australians and Asians, including Malaysians,  were well underway at all levels long before Penny Wong Ying Yen was born.

It is highly unlikely that Penny Wong is unaware of that history, her Sabah Hakka-Cantonese father married an Australian from South Australia, while he was a student here. Given that history it is curious that Penny Wong has had nothing to say about fellow Malaysian and South Australian Adele Koh's contributions to that ongoing relationshsip.  Adele Koh's contributions were quite public, and the photo above from The Advertiser was front page of the Malay Mail in 1977, when that paper was the country's premier afternoon paper.                                                                                                                                                                       Those who knew her in Malaysia had a good laugh, all in the knowledge that someone whom they knew to be highly intelligent had conjured up yet another episode to amuse herself and entertain others. Wong's failure to acknowledge the work of others in an attempt to portray herself as the one born to redeem Australia's reputation in Asia and the world is even more galling given the record of the former South Australian Premier Don Dunstan's close relationship with Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Penang's Lim Chong Eu, and native appreciation of South East Asian culture. He was also married to Adele Koh, until her death in 1978.

END

See Also 

"The trouble is that the Australian press is still infantile," she said. "It does not know how to control its bowels. Only one paper has to get on to a good story and we get several cases of verbal and pictorial diarrhea, all trying to go one better."

Yesterday in their Reliving 40 Years series, the STAR featured two ladies I knew as friends.

I met Adele at one Press Ball. We used to have lots of Balls those days like the Ad Agency Balls. Every organization held one ball or another annually. However, when we questioned why nobody held the government’s Ball, a furor ensued and we never had anymore Balls and henceforth only Annual Dinners…..no more holding any Balls. Period. I digress….

Adele, when we reminisced, reminded me that she boarded with Mum when she had a brief stay in Taiping. I was training to be a teacher in Penang then. I remember Adele for many things, some told to me by her journalists’ colleagues. But we all agreed on one thing…..her legs were meant only for mini-skirts which was the rage then and dang, she did carry those minis so well. All typewriters stopped clacking when Adele entered the Press Desk. She had straight, healthy jet-black hair which was in vogue then. In 1975 she moved to South Australia as a political staffer and later became the wife of the 35^th Premier of South Australia, Don Dunstan. "She has the high cheekbones of her Asian forebears," wrote one, "and she walks with the in-born grace of the East." The fact that she was from Penang added to her exotic status. If you thought she was a bimbo, how wrong you are. She chided the Australian Press:

"The trouble is that the Australian press is still infantile," she said. "It does not know how to control its bowels. Only one paper has to get on to a good story and we get several cases of verbal and pictorial diarrhea, all trying to go one better."

If cancer of the lungs did not end this young firebrand’s life can you imagine what she would today say about our Main Stream Media! Maybe much worse things! No?

PwC's FCPA problems may include its conduct in the matter of Malaysia's 1MDB

by Ganesh Sahathevan 

      Nazir Razak paying a courtesy call on old friend and new chairman of the SC, Faiz Azmi

As previously reported on this blog,  PwC may have a FCPA problem, arising out of its business  dealings with the Communist Party China linked Top Education Group .

That however is not the only FCPA problem that PwC may have to contend with. As mentioned: 

PwC's Australian scandal reveals PwC has a global centre which can intervene in local operations; there are now more reasons to believe that PwC Malaysia's 1MDB work was compromised by the fact that PwC has been Goldman Sachs' auditor for over 30 years

 Concerns about PwC's conduct in Malaysia with regards the 1MDB have been raised on this blog since at least 2019 but PwC has been very good at playing Malaysian politics. Rather than pursue PwC  for 1MDB related damages, Prime Minister Anaw Ibrahim has appointed PwC' Malaysia's executive  chairman at all relevant times, Faiz Azmi, a known associate of Najib Razak's brother Nazir, the new chairman of the Securities Commission, Malaysia's primary corporate regulator.

To Be  Read With 

Monday, August 12, 2024

PwC may have a FCPA problem - The Communist Party China linked Top Group investment by PwC Australia and its partners can have consequences under US law

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

FCPA

Like many other of the Big 4 accounting firms PwC which has its headquarters in the United States, structures itself in a way  that allows the firm to claim worldwide reach, but where national firms can claim to be independent of each other. KPMG tried that during the 1MDB  kleptocracy investigation , and PwC seems to be attempting the same to avoid any connection to the Australian tax scandal involving a number of Australian partners.  The revelation that the newly appointed CEO Kevin Burrowes received undisclosed payments from PwC International further complicates the effort.

 

 In the course of the media's investigation into PwC's tax scandal the ABC's Investigation Unit discovered that PwC and a number of its partners had acquired IPO shares in Top Education Group Ltd, an Australian company that was sought and was listed on the HKEX. Top was listed in early 2018, in what appears to have been a ramp and dump of the type known to attract the attention of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). 

 

Top Group's listing was made possible only as a result of the company being granted what remains the first and only license to grant law degrees. The license was granted by the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, at  a point which coincided with donations from that company, and its then owner, Zhu Minshen, to the NSW Liberal Party. Zhu Minshen has since passed away, but in 2016, just two years prior to the IPO, and 3 years before his license to grant law degrees was renewed, Zhu's role in influence peddling on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party was given a very public airing.

The chairman of the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board at all relevant times was the then Chief Justice Of NSW, Tom Bathurst AC KC, who has been recently appointed by Kevin Brookes to oversee his review of PwC's processes, which is supposed to address  the  failings in governance that led to the tax scandal.

 

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act   has broad application . PwC's attempts to distance itself from the tax scandal of its Australian operations do not appear to working, and the Top Group affair, condemned by Australia's Minister For Education Jason Clare involves  Australian public officials at very many levels of government.

END

Singapore High Court clarification of directors' duties may have consequences for Australia's College Of Law and its senior directors who are also directors of the College's Singapore subsidiary

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

College Of Law CEO Neville Carter and  SLS President Gregor Vijayndran SC .Vijayndran and the SLS have been unwilling to answer queries abiut their business witht he College

In a recent decision the High Court Singapore held that non-executive directors were as responsible as executive directors for the governance of their companies ,and could not be excused for being unaware of matters concerning their companies.  The decision may have adverse consequences for the NSW Law Society's College Of Law, given its wholly-owned COL SIN P/L subsidiary whose directors include the College's most senior directors . 

The College  and its directors problems may arise from a likely failure to disclose to Singapore authorities various accounting and governance issues that arose in Malaysia (see story below) which remain undisclosed in its Australian annual reports. 

The College and its directors are very much part of the Sydney legal establishment , and they  have been able to escape scrutiny as a result. Their decision to venture into Asia and in particular Malaysia removed that shield, and it does appear as if the College's hasty and secretive withdrawal from that market was an attempt to escape uncomfortable questions about their business there. The College's long time CEO, Neville Carter, has ordered his staff to never answer queries from this writer.

END 

TO BE READ WITH 

Monday, July 13, 2020

Australia's College Of Law takes advantage of Singapore's regional HQ incentives: A first for an Australian not for profit ;meanwhile details about the incorporation of its College Of Law Asia remains elusive

by Ganesh Sahathevan


The chart below(click to enlarge) was sighted on the College Of Law webpage at this link.https://www.collaw.edu.au/-/media/col/au_files/downloads-and-forms/about/corporate-governance/college-of-law-corporate-and-academic-committee-structure-as-june-2019.pdf

           

The webpage was found when looking for an interesting new entity, 

COL SIN PRIVATE LIMITED.

A company search reveals that Col Sin Pty Ltd has listed its activities as "head and regional head offices, centralised and administrative offices.....".

It's directors are Neville Carter, CEO of the College Of Law, Joseph Catanzariti, its chairman, and Angie  Louise  Zandistra, who seems to have taken over the duties of Peter Tritt, Director College Of Law Asia (otherwise known as the College Of Law Asia Pacific). 

Col Sin has a paid-up capital of One Singapore Dollar.  The Singapore Government offers companies that locate their headquarters and regional headquarters in Singapore concessional tax rates. Why the College Of Law,which is a not for profit registered with Australian Charities And Not For Profit Commission (ACNC). 

TO BE READ WITH 

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

In search of the College Of Law Asia : College Of Law's Asian expansion still raising questions which Australia's legal establishment refuses to answer

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Australia's College Of Law, which is part of the NSW legal establishment conducts a number of postgraduate "applied law" courses. Among them is a Mergers & Acquisitions offering. Prospective students are enticed by statements such as this, contained in a course brochure (click to enlarge): 

The College Of  Law Asia seems an elusive creature. It first popped up in Malaysia, but then disappeared. Neither the College not the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board which regulates the College's activities have had anything to say about these issues (and others) reported in Malaysia:

Key person suddenly retired during extensive query

The College of Law used to be represented in Malaysia by its Director, Peter Tritt. Tritt have been queried extensively about the LLM and about the College’s business in Malaysia but has refused to provide answers. Tritt has been based in Kuala Lumpur since 2017 but announced on Friday that he had “retired” from the College on 30 June 2019.

It is understood that Tritt has forwarded queries sent him to his head office in Sydney and hence it appears that Tritt is under orders from his Chief Executive, Neville Carter, to remain silent.

Questionable advertising claims?

In advertising on the College’s website Carter has claimed that he had established a Professional Legal Training course for Malaysian Law students seeking admission to practise in Malaysia. There seems to be no evidence of such a course, or of any national level training course for the existing Certificate of Legal Practise.

Carter has also claimed to have produced the “inaugural” Handbook in Legal Practise for Malaysia, in the late 80s. A search of the main law libraries in Malaysia directed by the Chief Registrar, Federal Court Malaysia, has not found any such handbook.

He has also claimed to have, during that time to have identified and addressed “gaps” in Malaysian legal practise, but not even those in practice during that period and since have ever heard of him. Nor are senior practitioners aware of  “gaps” that needed that to be addressed by external consultants.

As CEO of the College Carter  has ultimate responsibility for the College’s Malaysian operation headed by Tritt and variously named the “College Of Law Asia Pacific” and the “College Of Law Asia”. A search by NMT has not revealed any entities registered under those names in Malaysia or in Australia, not even a foreign entities registered to conduct business in Malaysia.

Meanwhile the College, in collaboration with the Bar Council continues to sell its LLM and other courses in Malaysia, deriving a fee income from Malaysian courses.

TO BE READ WITH


Sunday, June 21, 2020

Singapore Law Society maintains silence on MOU with Australia's College Of Law,and has removed a website about which it was queried.: SLS seems to be following the lead of Bar Council Malaysia in re College Of Law

by Ganesh Sahathevan


  College Of Law CEO Neville Carter & SLS President Gregory Vijayndran SC . Vijayndran and the SLS have been unwilling to answer questions about their business with the College

As previously reported, the Singapore Law Society's confidence in its practical legal training partner, the College Of Law Australia, is not shared by participants in the Australia's market for legal education. 

The SLS's Dephine Tan has since been further questioned about an upcoming "master-class" that is to be offered by the College of Law and SLS, and presented by Raphael Tay of Malaysia, who is described as Program Director, LLM ASEAN+6 at The College of Law Asia 
Readers will note that they are reading a cached copy of the SLS website on which the "master-class" was advertised. The actual website https://www.lawsociety.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Brochure_eMasterclass-MnA-Webinar-PORTAL-1.pdf
seems to have been removed since questions were put last Thursday to Ms Tan and the SLS. 
It does look as the SLS is following in the footsteps of the Bar Council Malaysia, in not wanting to answer questions, and in removing websites related to work with the College Of Law.
The experience of the Bar Council Malaysia were also put to the SLS,and have also been met with stony silence. 

Posted by ganesh sahathevan at 6:24 PM

PwC may have a FCPA problem - The Communist Party China linked Top Group investment by PwC Australia and its partners can have consequences under US law

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

FCPA

Like many other of the Big 4 accounting firms PwC which has its headquarters in the United States, structures itself in a way  that allows the firm to claim worldwide reach, but where national firms can claim to be independent of each other. KPMG tried that during the 1MDB  kleptocracy investigation , and PwC seems to be attempting the same to avoid any connection to the Australian tax scandal involving a number of Australian partners.  The revelation that the newly appointed CEO Kevin Burrowes received undisclosed payments from PwC International further complicates the effort.

 

 In the course of the media's investigation into PwC's tax scandal the ABC's Investigation Unit discovered that PwC and a number of its partners had acquired IPO shares in Top Education Group Ltd, an Australian company that was sought and was listed on the HKEX. Top was listed in early 2018, in what appears to have been a ramp and dump of the type known to attract the attention of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). 

 

Top Group's listing was made possible only as a result of the company being granted what remains the first and only license to grant law degrees. The license was granted by the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, at  a point which coincided with donations from that company, and its then owner, Zhu Minshen, to the NSW Liberal Party. Zhu Minshen has since passed away, but in 2016, just two years prior to the IPO, and 3 years before his license to grant law degrees was renewed, Zhu's role in influence peddling on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party was given a very public airing.

The chairman of the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board at all relevant times was the then Chief Justice Of NSW, Tom Bathurst AC KC, who has been recently appointed by Kevin Brookes to oversee his review of PwC's processes, which is supposed to address  the  failings in governance that led to the tax scandal.

 

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act   has broad application . PwC's attempts to distance itself from the tax scandal of its Australian operations do not appear to working, and the Top Group affair, condemned by Australia's Minister For Education Jason Clare involves  Australian public officials at very many levels of government.

END

ABC's Britain Stole Brazil's Rubber Industry Documentary An Expensive Investigation Into Nothing Very Much - Costs Could Have Been Halved By Simple Desktop Research Out Of Sydney

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is an expert on everything , including the Malaysian and Singaporean economies. Learn from this episode of its Stuff The British Stole how Malaysia and Singapore, both former British colonies gained nothing from Sir Henry Wickham bringing to Malaysia and Singapore rubber seeds from Brazil.

Unfortunately for the ABC, the Rubber Trade Association Singapore has on its website a more definitive view of how Singapore and Malaysia grew out of Sir Henry Wickham's adventures.

In fact, a bit of research (online, out of ABC offices in Sydney) of the Singapore National Library's archive of Singapore newspapers going back to the mid 1800s would have revealed that Sir Henry Wickham was quite candid about his Brazilian rubber seed adventure.There was no need for an expensive ABC investigation that took its team to the Amazon jungles of Brazil Kew Gardens in the UK, and Singapore. In the words of Sir Henry Wickham, as reported by  The Straits Times, 28 September 1928 ( Page 9):

 

 

END 

SEE ALSO