COMMENT The recent Mara Australian property scam is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. If the suburban property scandal in Caulfield already raked up a scandalous mark-up of over 20 percent, imagine what three other downtown Mara Melbourne city properties would reveal?

After spending almost 14 years of my life in Melbourne, I have some idea what property is worth at those locations. Exhibition Street is in prime theatres and hotels and Victoria’s Parliament building neighbourhood. Swanston Street is in the central business district on the Melbourne University and RMIT tram line while Queen Street is in a prestigious office precinct.

Prime sites yield prime returns and I suppose would better disguise handsome returns on any illegal kickbacks. When the three locations were named, I was wide alert and prepared for further controversies.

These problems could have been avoided if only the government had the political spine to stand up to the earlier controversial Felda acquisition of a London hotel at an allegedly bloated price involving a son of a very senior Felda management  political figure. As usual things were brushed aside on the authorities’ so-called investigation when an obvious conflict of interest involving a son and a present Felda chairperson as a father is obvious.

Remember that justice must not only be done but also at least seen to be done! When you have been in power for so long, who cares! Of course the Felda chairperson also has a special place in our prime minister’s heart. The prime minister has also got a father, son and mama act ongoing internationally.

Perhaps we all should not be surprised that the earlier London Felda hotel acquisition fiasco and non-pursuance of father and son’s obvious conflict of interests situation encourages further transgressions.

If the London episode is allowed without further investigation, the Melbourne saga by Mara is only a natural development of another father and son teamwork. The father is director of operations while the ever-willing son executes things on ground.

Why should we be at all surprised by events unfolding as Malaysians and government-linked companies (GLCs) are making names for themselves internationally although for all the wrong reasons - Jho Low and Riza Aziz (another father-mama-son tag team) in New York, Felda hotel acquisition in London (father and son tag team), and the latest debacle down under in Melbourne apartments (latest father and son teamwork).

In all these scams there was hardly any attempts to even try to conceal the father and son or family teamwork! Why should they bother to even bother try conceal anything. Malaysian history has shown schemes like these had never ever been prosecuted successfully. Immunity for the ruling class is alive and well in Malaysia! Malaysia boleh!

‘Since when have the big fishes taken the fall?’

As for Mara’s unfolding Melbourne scam, its present chairperson should have enough experience to deal with it because when he was minister in charge of the Terengganu Tengah Development Authority (Ketengah) there was another multi million scandal where a few senior government servants took the fall although it was widely believed the actual big fish got away scot free.

Then again, that’s a very Malaysian way - since when have the big fishes taken the fall? It’s always the ikan bilis who end up the fall guy !

So Malaysia, wake up. Laws made and passed in Parliament are only meant to be applicable to others but never ever for the ruling elites. Some people are more equal than others. I was quite shocked when we were debating amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering Act in Parliament last year, the government had just moved billions of ringgit of 1MDB money to the Cayman Islands - the money laundering capital of the world.

When I asked the minister during the debate why, of all the places in the world, the government had chosen the Cayman Islands? The typically evasive answer given by Ahmad Maslan was, “It is only for the short term!”

Malaysia may be a rich country or perhaps used to be a very rich country. But it does not have a bottomless pit of money to bail out all the series of financial scandals by more or less the same serial offenders. Every pain has its threshold and everyone has a breaking point. Do we really know where we are now?

RAJA KAMARUL BAHRIN SHAH RAJA AHMAD is the MP for Kuala Terengganu.