Mahathir, Tengku Razaleigh, Ling Liong Sik and the birth of Makuwasa Securities Sdn Bhd
“The real reason Anwar was brought into UMNO is something I will discuss in a later part of this series. Suffice to say, the 22nd of April 1982 general election saw Razaleigh being retained as Minister of Finance and Ling Liong Sik being made his deputy. To appease the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Najib was appointed the Menteri Besar of Pahang on the 4th of May 1982. When Hamzah asked Mahathir what the latter had used as excuse to ‘boot’ Najib out from the federal, Mahathir sarcastically replied, “I needed Najib to learn the ropes.”
THE THIRD FORCE
On the28th of January 1983, the General Manager of Bumiputera Malaysia Finance (BMF), Ibrahim Jaafar, discussed with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah a 10th of November 1982 report by the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ). The duo was concerned that the front page exclusive by the daily was damaging to the Government of Malaysia (GoM) as it detailed the extent of BMF’s involvement with the Hong Kong based Carrian Group. The expose was the first of its kind by any newspaper anywhere in the world.
Razaleigh, who was then the Minister of Finance, confided in Ibrahim that “the leak was from the Carrian Group and had nothing to do with BMF.” According to him, the leak “could not have been from Kamarul, as he himself is liable for all decisions made by us.” The Minister of Finance was referring to the former Group Chairman of BBMB, Tan Sri Kamarul Ariffin Mohamed Yassin, who was replaced by Dr. Nawawi Mat Awin on the 9th of February 1982.
Now, the AWSJ expose caused the GoM Task Force (GTF) instituted by the CIA (REFER PART 1, LINK BELOW) to put the Carrian Group on its radars. The task force quickly discovered that Kamarul’s departure had something to do with the “mega loans that BMF was approving to the Carrian’s Eda Group and Kevin Hsu Group.” The head of Central Intelligence, William J. Casey, informed the then president of the United States (US), Ronald Regan, that BMF had extended a RM200 million loan to Maminco (REFER PART 1, LINK BELOW) through a subsidiary of its parent bank (BBMB) in Bahrain.
By then, the US president had already established a “mini tin council” with key personnel from the London Metal Exchange (LME) to crash the tin market. As a matter of fact, the Bolivian and the United Kingdom (UK) governments had already begun to speculate on tin futures through several of their affiliates based in the UK and Europe. By the time Kamarul left BBMB, the tin market was already in quite a bad shape. But none of that bothered Razaleigh.
What bothered him most was the information Kamarul had conveyed to him. On the 2nd of February 1982, the exiting BBMB chairman spoke at length about Jalil Ibrahim, a senior member of the group’s audit team who was exceptionally close to Nawawi, one of Razaleigh’s (then) affiliates. Kamarul expressed concern that Jalil had begun “digging into the books” and discovered that “the loans BMF was giving out to Carrian was quickly exceeding (the) capital reserves of Bumi (BBMB),” then estimated to be worth RM1.2 billion. The very next day, Razaleigh conveyed Kamarul’s concerns to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
The Minister of Finance figured that Mahathir would be shocked to discover Jalil’s alleged betrayal. But little did he know that the Prime Minister was being kept abreast of the goings on in BMF at all times by someone in BBMB. A wiretap reveals that Mahathir relayed whatever he learnt from Razaleigh to the late Tan Sri Hamzah Abu Samah, a former minister in the late Tun Abdul Razak’s government. On the 7th of February 1982 – just two days prior to Kamarul’s departure – a decision was made to “remove Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak from the post of Deputy Minister of Finance.”
The decision to ‘boot’ Najib from Federal was made by Mahathir, Hamzah and Daim (who was yet to join government). The trio felt that the son of the late Razak was “too well connected with the Palace of Pahang to be trusted.” What concerned them most was Najib’s links with the ruler of Pahang, Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, who was then also the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. The Prime Minister did not want the Agong to discover the wheeling and dealing that was going on between BBMB, BMF and the founder of the Carrian Group, a Singaporean Civil Engineer (and uncle to Danny Lee) who went by the name George Tan.
