The High Court has set April 17 to determine whether the civil lawsuit filed by the children of the late Tun Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud against Datuk Patinggi Raghad Kurdi Taib and RHB Investment Bank Bhd falls under the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court, or the Civil Court.
Tan Kee Heng, the lawyer representing the second defendant RHB Investment Bank Bhd, emphasised that the court should adopt a subject matter approach to determine the appropriate jurisdiction.
He pointed out that the claim by the plaintiffs – Dato Sri Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib, and Datuk Seri Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib – in this case was based on their rights as beneficiaries and their inheritance rights over Taib’s estate.
“As the deceased was a Muslim and passed away intestate, the matter should fall under Section 10(3)(b)(viii) and (ix) of the Syariah Court Ordinance 2001 of Sarawak, which pertains to inheritance distribution and rights over the estate, making it the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court.”
However, the plaintiffs’ lawyer Alvin Chong argued that the defendants’ claim was inaccurate.
As Taib’s children and their younger step-mother squabble over who should inherit the former chief minister’s unexplained vast wealth a fascinating fact appears to have emerged, unspoken till this very moment.
According to the court report (bold added by SR), Abdul Taib Mahmud, widely believed to have been Borneo’s richest man – even richer than the Sultan neighbouring Brunei, once officially the wealthiest individual on the planet – died intestate!
Imagine having accrued the most enormous personal wealth on the entire planet yet without making provision for the day you die! He was kleptocrat without an exit plan, like so many of his greedy ilk.
Taib made his fabulous billions by virtue of plundering the lands put under his trust to govern wisely. Sadly, Sarawak’s native communities were not empowered to resist his corrupted decision-making, the cunning of the timber barons and the overwhelming influence of the western capital and technology that facilitated them all.
It has long been remarked that much of Taib’s enormous fortune was handily placed under the name of his popular, humble-born wife, Laila, who hadn’t been economically active since retiring from her job as a librarian to marry him.
Hence, for years after her death her estate which he administrated under her will, remained without probate, given he failed to execute the will and preferred to manage the money he had accrued himself.
The plaintiffs in this current case are Taib’s children, who ought to have been the beneficiaries of that will, according to its provisions. They are pointing out that their stepmother appears during Taib’s last declining days to have mysteriously benefitted from the transfer of hundreds of millions of shares from that estate (which her failing husband still administered) to her own bank account.
Again, no exit plan?
The plaintiffs case is that the second wife had no mention in the will under which the shares were held and such a transfer was never approved by Taib during the more than one decade during which, while compis mentis, he managed his deceased former wife’s estate.
Whether the Sharia or Civil court decide this matter is not really the issue for plain Sarawakians, who can doubtless reach their own conclusions about the actions of the various protagonists in this affair and what their motives have been since the day Laila Taib sadly died.
What will concern them is what on earth is this family doing with such a stash of cash in the first place when the native communities whose lands were pillaged struggle to survive the floods and other disasters brought on by indiscriminate logging and devastation?
Abang Jo seems most preoccupied with grand designs, space adventures, international energy visions and building his personal townships at the moment. However, he would score points if he intervened and confiscated this ill-gotten wealth of his predecessor to fund a trust to benefit the native victims of the Taib era and to initiate a serious environmental programme to rescue what is left from the destruction.