A Conman In a Poor Man’s Land – Abdul Taib Mahmud

Born into impoverished circumstances in 1936, Abdul Taib Mahmud is an ethnic Muslim-Melanau who traces an aristocratic link to the Royal Court of Brunei. But since becoming CM, Taib has been previously described, at various times, by the international media in the following terms: He is ‘flamboyant with expensive tastes’ and is said to have ‘purchased the piano of the late American showman Liberace for close to US$2 million’. He ‘lives in a well-guarded palatial home in Kuching and rides in a cream-coloured Rolls Royce. A dapper dresser, he is partial to double-breasted suits and sports a ring with a walnut-sized red gem surrounded by small diamonds’.

Presently, he lives in a palatial private estate outside Kuching along Jalan Bako in a choice location called Demak Laut fronting the Sarawak river.
In the late-1980s, clients loyal to Taib collectively were estimated to control 1.6 million hectares of timber concessions. By 2000, Mahmud family members had major investments not only in Sarawak and Malaysia but also in other parts of the world. Taib Mahmud’s sons, Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib and Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, are the two key directors of Cahaya Mata Sarawak (CMS), a multi-million ringgit financial and infrastructure conglomerate listed on the KLSE that thrives because it receives lots of patronage projects from the Sarawak government via PPES Works, a CMS subsidiary company jointly owned with the State government. CMS also owns Bank Utama that engineered a reverse takeover of RHB Bank in 2003. And CMS continues to eye the Bakun mega-project.

Source :- More info