Musa Aman caught with his pants down

Malaysia Today

On Friday, Malaysia Today revealed that Umno Sabah, though the newest member of the Umno ‘family’, is building its new headquarters that is going to put many ‘older’ state Umnos to shame. (Full story here).There is nothing wrong with this of course. What is, though, is the manner in which it is being done.First of all, there is no building committee and the entire exercise is being single-handedly executed by the Umno Sabah chief, Musa Aman, a one-man committee if you wish. Musa Aman is also the Chief Minister of Sabah.Then, a great sum of money is being collected in the form of donations from the public to help pay for the building. But no one, not even the Umno Sabah Treasurer, knows how much money is being collected -- other than Musa Aman, the one-man committee, that is.Again, collecting donations from the public is not a crime, unless, of course, the donations are coming from contractors and businessmen who are benefiting from donating to the Umno building fund by getting ‘negotiated without tender’ contracts from the state at much higher prices than if the contracts were tendered out.One crucial point to all this is, in the end, the state, meaning the taxpayers, are paying for the cost of the Umno building and Umno is actually getting the building free. And the way this is being done is by awarding ‘negotiated’ contracts to all those involved in the construction of the building so that they can ‘absorb’ the Umno building cost into their contract price and build the building at no cost to Umno.Sabah businessmen are most unhappy with this whole situation because they are being squeezed and are being forced into donating to the building fund. This means they have to jack up the prices of their contacts to cover this donation. Secondly, a few companies, those involved in the construction of the building, have been put on the favoured list and are monopolising all the ‘negotiated without tender’ jobs leaving very little jobs for the rest.One company that stands out like a sore thumb is Accodon Sdn Bhd. According to the signboard at the construction site, the building is owned by Badan Perhubungan Umno Negeri Sabah. However, no one in Umno Sabah seems to know anything about either the land or the building.If this piece of asset is really owned by Umno Sabah, then it would have had to be held in the name of trustees. But no trustees have ever been appointed by Umno Sabah to hold this particular piece of land or building on its behalf.Just below the name of Badan Perhubungan Umno Negeri Sabah, the alleged owner of the building, is the name of the so-called developer, Accordon Sdn Bhd.This means Accordon Sdn Bhd and not Umno Sabah is the real owner of the land and building.And why do we say ‘alleged’ developer? That is because Accordon Sdn Bhd is a dormant company. How could a dormant company be the developer of such a prized asset?Accordon Sdn Bhd is not an operating company but a shelf company and last year’s accounts filed with the Registrar of Companies shows a zero turnover. It also has no assets whatsoever. This means Accordon Sdn Bhd is merely a ‘paper’ company.But that is not the best part yet. The best part is that the Directors and Shareholders of Accordon Sdn Bhd are M. Sapawak @ M. Sapawai Bin M. Tussin and Nasrin Bin Asi who both own 125,000 shares each in the company.And who is M. Sapawai?M. Sapawai is the brother-in-law of the Chief Minister and Umno Sabah Chief, Musa Aman, the one-man building committee. Now, if this is not enough for the Anti-Corruption Agency to launch an investigation into this whole affair, then I don’t know what is.This time, Musa Aman has really been caught with his pants down. God help Sabah if Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi appoints him as Sabah Chief Minister for life.