Alex son of Malcolm Turnbull says he is a victim, not benefactor of Goldman Sachs 1MDB deals:Threatens legal action in Australia, while based in Singapore;raising questions about Turnbull and the judiciary

by Ganesh Sahathevan
The 1MDB saga continues  with this unexpected Linkedin email from Alex Turnbull, son of Malcolm Turnbull. Alex  Turnbull is based in Singapore ,and has threatened legal action in Australia against this writer. 
Alex started a hedge fund in Singapore after leaving Goldman Sachs.He has now revealed that he resigned his position at Goldman's for speaking out about 1MDB.

Be that all as it may, Alex prefers that I remove my 1MDB stories which mention him(which readers know will not happen),and has threatened legal action in Australia, despite his business and he being based in Singapore,and the readership of this blog being primarily in China,Malaysia, and other parts of South East Asia.
Singapore, which has some of the toughest defamation laws in the world would seem like a better place to commence legal proceedings, but the Turnbull's seem to prefer Australia.
The fact that Malcolm is currently PM and the family's choice of jurisdiction cannot be ignored.
END 

Now read on:

Alex Turnbull

• TodayAlex Turnbull sent the following message at 11:03 AM

  post about me and 1MDB

  Ganesh, hope all is well. I was wondering if you would take down those posts implying I somehow benefitted from 1MDB - I did not, quite the opposite in fact. I called out the insane pricing and bizzare structure at GS when the deal was done and got yelled at by compliance for casting doubt on the integrity of PFI, the group that did the deal. As a result I was "b tracked" and resigned. This will all come out in a book in September by Tom Wright at the WSJ. Cheers, Alex
• Ganesh Sahathevan sent the following messages at 12:24 PM
  Alex I am happy for you to post this on the comment section of my post. Regards
• Ganesh Sahathevan
  12:24 PM
• Alex Turnbull sent the following messages at 12:57 PM
  View Alex’s profile
  

  Hi Ganesh or we could move to a formal discussion about defamation law in Australia. Let me know. I am not going to do this in public to drive traffic to your site and cause a media circus.
• View Alex’s profile
  

  Alternately get in touch with Tom Wright and ask him.
  1:03 PM
• Ganesh Sahathevan sent the following message at 3:17 PM
  Why not you ask Tom and if you want to sue that is up to you.
  3:17 PM
• Alex Turnbull sent the following messages at 3:36 PM
  View Alex’s profile
  

  I've already spoken to Tom.
• View Alex’s profile
  

  Cool will do.
• View Alex’s profile
  

  Ultimately I'm not the one making unfounded ridiculous accusations. If you don't want to do even the vaguest bit of research and then publish that's your problem legally speaking.
  4:05 PM

Reference 

Malcolm Turnbull's

 son said to start hedge fund in Singapore

31 July 2014 — 10:56am

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Alex Turnbull, son of Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, is planning a Singapore-based hedge fund, said people with knowledge of the matter.

Mr Turnbull, who has been an executive director of Goldman Sachs Group's special situations group, will be the chief investment officer of Keshik Capital, said the people who asked not to be identified. The fund will be focused on Asia with flexibility to invest globally. It may start as early as January and will invest in equity and credit, including convertible bonds, they said.

Malcolm Turnbull. Like his father, Alex Turnbull has been an executive with Goldman Sachs.

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Keshik will be at least the third hedge-fund startup that is tapping Asian opportunities in recent years and involves a former member of the Goldman Sachs unit. The special situations group, known as SSG, invests in distressed debt and companies. It's part of Goldman Sachs's investing and lending operations, which generated $US4.3 billion ($4.6 billion) of pretax earnings last year, the most of the New York-based bank's four business segments.

Mr Turnbull, who is based in Singapore, worked for SSG for four years until earlier this year, according to his LinkedIn profile. SSG's investments include holdings in Japan's largest golf-course operator Accordia Golf and pizza-chain Sbarro.

Connie Ling, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment on Mr Turnbull's departure.

Goldman Sachs ties

The Sydney native studied at Harvard University and had a stint at Mount Kellett Capital Management, the investment firm founded by former SSG executives Mark McGoldrick and Jason Maynard. His other former employers include Deutsche Bank and Fortress Investment Group, according to his profile.

Malcolm Turnbull was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs's Australian unit between 1997 and 2001.

Jason Brown, a former global head of SSG, set up his own Hong Kong-based fund company Arkkan Capital Management last year, according to the city's Securities and Futures Commission.

Chris Mikosh, another former SSG managing director, co-founded Tor Investment Management (Hong Kong) with Patrik Edsparr, previously a Citadel executive, according to a December 2013 statement from backer Grosvenor Capital Management.

Bloomberg

LKY on the futility,and stupidity of a carbon tax

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Lee Kuan Yew: Because we are too vulnerable. If the water goes up by one meter, we can have dikes and save ourselves. If the water goes up by three, four, five meters, (laughs) what will happen to us? Half of Singapore will disappear! The valuable half - the seafronts!

Well, let us say, it has gone up to one meter and we have protected ourselves. But our neighboring islands have disappeared! And then Indonesia may not have 30,000 islands - many will be under water.

IHT: Yeah, so what's the answer to that, cap and trade [referring to a program to cap emissions and trade pollution allowances] or can you somehow tax industry a carbon tax of some sort?

Lee Kuan Yew: If you ask me, I think you can ameliorate this problem. But you cannot solve it. Because our dependency on energy will only grow - can only grow. I do not see any tribal leader, any democratic leader, any dictator telling his people, "We are going to forgo growth. We are going to consume less. Travel less. Live a more spartan life and we'll save the earth."

(Excerpts from an interview with Lee Kuan Yew)

END

Reference

Singapore wants to kill its refining ,petrochem industries to save the planet: Carbon tax beggars belief, then again taxes save governments begging

Singapore wants to kill its refining ,petrochem industries to save the planet: New carbon tax will kill a pillar of the economy, Singapore seems set to repeat the Lim Chong Yah " high wages shock therapy" experiment of the 1980s

EDITED ON 16 JUNE  2023

Singapore's domestic exports of oil last year firmed by 52.4 percent in nominal terms.

by Ganesh Sahathevan

There is nothing that needs to be added to the Strait Times story below , but readers are reminded that Singapore's contribution to world carbon dioxide emissions are probably negative,given its size (or rather lack thereof) and the fact of the yearly "haze" from Indonesia and Malaysia.

As to the effect of climate change on Singapore, one would think that a country that boasts of its ability to reclaim land from the sea would understand that reclamation is not without its own inherent
problems,that are of more immediate danger.

Meanwhile, Singapore's PAP seems to have forgotten that it relies on the very industries it wants to punish. On the other hand, this is a tax,it goes to government, government gains, but why this desperate measure? 

Readers might recall that Singapore experimented with a similar policy of restructuring the economy by force in the 1980s,  with disastrous results. 

That was of course the high wages policy, which reared its head again in 2012, and was quickly decapitated by Lee Kuan Yew. AsiaTimes.com.sg reported in 2012:

PM Lee rejected Prof Lim Chong Yah's "shock therapy" idea, explaining that it was better to apply sustainable measures.
Mr Lee was responding for the first time to the recent proposal for "shock therapy" by the well-known economist and former chairman of the National Wages Council, Professor Lim Chong Yah, to raise wages of the lowest-income workers by 50 per cent over three years.

Mr Lee said: "I appreciate his good intentions, I share his concerns over this group of workers. But I do not agree with his drastic approach because the only realistic way to move is step by step, with wages and productivity going up in tandem...as fast as we can, as fast as it's possible."
Mr Lee disagreed with the proposal, pointing to the 1980s when Singapore pushed up wages sharply and had "room" to do so. He said: "But even then, we ran into problems."

Mr Lee explained that in the 1980s, Singapore's economy was growing rapidly at 8 to 10 per cent a year. It also helped that the country's only competition then came from the "three little dragons" - South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. China and India were not on the scene, he added.
And during that period, the labour market was tight as multinational companies such as Philips entered the labour market, creating thousands of jobs.

He said: "In 1985, when the winds changed, when the conditions turned difficult, we plunged into a very deep recession...We had to cut wages sharply...so that the economy could recover."


Left unsaid is the fact that the architect of the 1980s wage increase was the same Lim Chong Yah .

END

$5 per tonne carbon tax 'fair' for 

firms: Masagos

A carbon tax is a common tool used to control the amount of earth-warming greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. PHOTO: ST FILE

PUBLISHED

FEB 23, 2018, 5:00 AM SGT

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Amount as a start will give big emitters time to 'adjust and get used to compliance regime'

Samantha Boh

Getting large carbon emitters to pay $5 for every tonne of greenhouse gases they generate is a "fair" way to start a compliance regime, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli said yesterday.

From next year till 2023, all facilities producing 25,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gas emissions a year will be taxed $5 per tonne of emissions - significantly lower than the $10 to $20 per tonne envisioned last year.

However, the Government will review the tax rate in 2023, and eventually increase the carbon tax to between $10 and $15 per tonne by 2030.

Mr Masagos called the starting $5 per tonne a "fair amount", which gives the affected 30 to 40 companies - which contribute 80 per cent of Singapore's greenhouse gas emissions - time to "adjust and also get used to the compliance regime".

He said: "They will need time to change their processes and improve their emissions."

He added that the transition period will allow the affected companies - mainly from the petroleum refining, chemicals and semiconductor sectors - to be better placed to comply with the higher tax rates to be imposed by 2030.

Mr Masagos was speaking on the sidelines of a visit to Bukit View Secondary School, where he launched a new green classroom comprising various eco-friendly features, including a green wall - covered in plants - and motion-activated fans.

A carbon tax is a common tool used to control the amount of earth-warming greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

About 67 countries and jurisdictions, including China, the European Union and Japan, have implemented or announced plans to implement such a scheme. They aim to encourage companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency.

Households here could see their total electricity and gas expenses increase by 1 per cent on average due to the carbon tax, which will be offset by additional Utilities-Save rebates.

Asked how companies can be made accountable, Mr Masagos said it is necessary to pass a carbon tax Act which will require companies to submit data on their greenhouse gas emissions, and which will impose stricter requirements on large emitters such as an audit report that confirms their data.

"By doing so we will have a better grasp of how much each of these industries and companies emit and, therefore, have an idea of how we can then nudge (them) to do better," he said.

The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources said there are no plans to make individual company emissions data public.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on February 23, 2018, with the headline '$5 per tonne carbon tax 'fair' for firms: Masagos'. Print Edition | Subscribe

Any Bumiputera has standing (locus standi) to bring to court matters concerning 1MDB :-The Bumiputera Economic Council serves Bumis, not Government

by Ganesh Sahathevan







This is from the Bumiputera Economic Council (MEB) website:

The Bumiputera Economic Council (MEB), chaired by the Prime Minister was established after the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Programme in September 2013 to replace the Bumiputera Agenda Action Council (MTAB).
With the establishment of the Bumiputera Economic Council, YAB Prime Minister monitors the implementation of initiatives under the Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Agenda closely across ministries and GLC.

Clearly, the BEC/MEB serves Bumiputeras, not the government. It does so by overseeing GLC's including 1MDB. It follows that any Bumiputera has standing (locus standi) to have any matter concerning 1MDB brought before the courts.

END 

KWAP is receiving regular payments on its SRC loan.....but perhaps not in cash

by Ganesh Sahathevan




Copied and pasted below is page 218 of   KWAP's 2016 Annual Report. As readers can see there has been  a sudden and unexplained increase in receivables from brokers. One would think that a RM 700 million increase in receivables would be explained, but not here.
Interest income from receivables has also risen, by RM 70 million.Interest on THAT loan ,  the "SRC International money in Singapore loan", would be about RM 132 million per annum, assuming a rate of 3% on about RM 4.4 Billion.
In 2014, interest receivables were only about RM 121 million. 

Meanwhile , KWAP  CEO  Datuk Wan Kamaruzaman Wan Ahmad  has had this to say about the SRC loan:

Currently, they are paying the interest on their loan which comes into two tranches of RM2bil each, due in 2021 and 2022, respectively,” he said to reporters on the sidelines of the Invest Malaysia 2016 here yesterday.

According to the terms of the loan, he said that the company was required to service interest on the loan in the first five years and interest and principal in the remaining five years.

“The loan is guaranteed by the Government to safeguard the interest of KWAP stakeholders,” he said.

END