The 480 companies are not successful and are not giving Mahathir and his family money. In fact, it is the other way around. Mahathir is giving these 480 companies money instead. Those 480 companies are being propped up as fronts to help launder money so that Mahathir and his family can spend the money and live like kings without attracting any questions or raise any eyebrows as to where this money came from.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist of the early 1800s. It was around his time that France experienced the Second Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army swept across Europe, and many more. Amongst de Balzac’s most famous saying is: ‘behind every great fortune lies a great crime’.
This may not always be true, of course. In some cases such as Soon Seng, Hong Leong, Kuok, Genting, YTL, Berjaya, etc., it took 40-50 years for the families to become billionaires. For example, Soon Seng was already around during the Japanese occupation, Genting started around the time of Merdeka, Berjaya began around 1970, and so on. They did not achieve billionaire status until at least the second or third generation.
And then we have Mahathir and his children — Mukhriz, Mokhzani, Mirzan and Marina. Combined they control 480 companies and is definitely a billionaire family. And the impression they create is that they are very successful business people and that they became billionaires because of their 480 companies.
This is actually a fallacy plus a great lie. The Mahathir clan may be a billionaire family but they became billionaires not because of their successful businesses or 480 companies. In fact, most of their companies are not really doing well and on their own would have collapsed long ago.
To start off, Mahathir’s children are not really that smart. Those who know them personally will tell you that Mahathir’s children are quite ‘slow’. The more unkind critics say that Mahathir’s children are actually idiots. They may own 480 companies but that is only because their name is Mahathir and for no other reason. Without the Mahathir name they would probably just be junior executives working for others.
The even more important question is are they billionaires because of their successful businesses and their 480 companies or is it the other way around? In other words, are their 480 companies giving them plenty of money or are they giving their 480 companies money instead?
Yes, as Honoré de Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” Mahathir and his children need to explain where their great wealth came from if not from a great crime. And the way they spend there is no denying that they have great wealth at their disposal (READ MORE HERE: SYED SADDIQ: ASKING A BOY TO DO A MAN’S JOB).
If you read that article above you can see that the Mahathir clan lives the life of a Saudi Arabian royal family. How can they afford such a lifestyle? The answer is: because they are successful in business and own 480 companies. Well, at least that is what they are trying to suggest.
But that is all a fallacy and a great lie. Their businesses are not doing great guns and bringing in billions as they are pretending. In fact, they are pumping money into these companies to keep them alive and save them from folding up.
These companies are just fronts. They are a facade and a charade to explain where their money is coming from. The companies serve only one purpose: to launder the money that they own so that no one will ask where all that money came from.
According to Barry Wain, Mahathir ripped off at least RM100 billion. That does not include another RM100 billion which is supposed to be Umno’s money but is not in Umno’s bank account. The system that Mahathir and Tun Daim Zainuddin set up when Umno Baru was formed in 1988 is that Umno’s wealth will be held under the name of trustees. And Mahathir and Daim were two of those three trustees.
So billions of what belonged to Umno was in the hands of Mahathir and Daim. And they created a system of proxies and nominees to spread the money around. And that is why the money is not in Umno’s hands but is in the hands of Mahathir and Daim (said to be RM100 billion in Mahathir’s hands and RM60 billion in Daim’s hands).
Daim parked his money overseas in a number of African and Eastern European banks while Mahathir parked his in the so-called 480 successful companies that the family owns. The money parked into those companies, which are not making money, then came back into the pockets of the family as ‘profits from successful businesses’. Then when they live the life of a Saudi Arabian royal family no one will be surprised and no one will question it.
READ MORE HERE
