Malaysia’s anti-graft agency cracks down on former finance minister Daim, seizes his flagship property Ilham Tower

The building is located in a cluster of prime commercial and high-rise residential properties around the iconic Petronas Twin Towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur and estimated to have been built at the cost of US$580 million.

SKETCHY INFORMATION

Financial executives close to the situation noted that the asset-declaration order in late May came together with the freezing of at least a dozen Daim-related business accounts.

The accounts remain frozen and all payments made for the running of his financial enterprises, including the payrolls, require MACC approval, the executives noted.

The MACC has been sketchy with information on the Renong-UEM deal.

Shortly after the probe began in late May, the MACC released a statement that the agency was gathering information into the “alleged embezzlement of state funds amounting to an estimated RM2.3 billion”.

The agency added that it had frozen bank accounts with funds amounting to RM39 million belonging to an unidentified former senior minister and two businessmen, who were also not identified. 

Government officials and anti-graft investigators directly involved in the probe told CNA that the alleged embezzlement of state funds was a direct reference to the RM2.3-billion-ringgit Renong-UEM deal. 

The three unnamed personalities are believed to refer to Mr Daim, who served as finance minister between 1984 and 1991; Mr Halim Saad, his long-time business protégé who at the time was a controlling shareholder of both Renong and UEM through a complex web of cross-holdings; and Mr Abdul Rashid Manaf, a prominent Kuala Lumpur-based lawyer who handled all of UMNO’s corporate affairs.

The MACC’s move to revisit a transaction that happened over 26 years ago has stirred widespread speculation that the ongoing investigation has a strong political dimension and is steeped in the country’s troubled and messy politics, particularly over how current premier Anwar Ibrahim was unceremoniously sacked and jailed in September 1998 after falling out with then-premier Dr Mahathir.

Mr Anwar, who replaced Mr Daim as finance minister in 1991 and had risen to become deputy premier, was hugely critical of the Renong-UEM deal at the time, which caused a meltdown in the Malaysian stock market.

Many analysts believe that the Renong-UEM deal was a critical flashpoint in the straining of ties between Dr Mahathir and his deputy.

With a business career that stretches back to the late 1960s, Mr Daim, a lawyer by training, is widely regarded in Malaysia’s business and political circles as one of the country’s richest personalities.