Whistleblower website Sarawak Report has unveiled what appears to be another dubious land deal involving Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and his family - this time in the Sri Aman vicinity that is said to be worth up to RM90 million.

sri aman land grab The 8,800 hectares (22,000 acres) in question - in the Bijat district in Sungai Tisak, east of Kuching - is, according to Iban rights group Sadia, a native customary rights (NCR) land that belongs to the Ibans.

Sadia reported that 15 Iban communities occupying the land will be affected when the plot, allegedly given free to Taib’s son Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, 47, is sold to Felcra for planting oil palm.

“The local Iban people, who say that loggers moved into their area unannounced four months ago, have only just discovered the situation that is unfolding and they have reacted in fury.  

azlan “No one has informed them who the loggers are and they did not know about the involvement of Taib's son in plans to convert their area to oil palm,” the website reported on Wednesday.

It says the District Land Office several days ago issued 16 Iban headmen letters summoning them for a meeting, but without stating the agenda.

The headmen, Sarawak Report says, suspect that the meeting was related to the acquisition of their land, noting that the land had already been taken out of their hands two years ago.

Money for nothing

The report also says the deal was made in December 2008 when the Land Survey Department, which Taib Mahmud controls as minister of planning and resource management, had “officially handed” the land to Titanium Management Sdn Bhd.

Mahmud Abu Bekir Taib, taib mahmud's son and titanium shareholder Titanium is largely owned by the chief minister's son Mahmud ( right ) and a “well-known business crony” named as Chris Chung Soon Nam.  

The NCR land was awarded to Mahmud in return for an “unspecified payment in kind”, said the report, and it added that such transactions “in kind” were a trademark of the Sarawak government’s dealings with the Taib family to circumvent payment.

Titanium is notorious, said Sarawak Report, for “high-profile scandals over its receipt of state contracts in recent years”.

Last year, Al-Jazeera in an interview with Sarawak Land Development Minister James Masing had pointed out to the latter that the construction of several bridges had been awarded to Titanium Management, allegedly without open tenders.

Chung is reportedly attempting to sell the land to Felcra “for at least  RM3,200 per acre, but is trying to secure RM4,200 per acre,” says the website.

NONE In effect, it says, Mahmud and his partners are looking at a pure profit on the free land to the tune of RM70 million to RM90 million, courtesy of federal funds, with no known compensation for the rightful landowners, the Ibans.

Sarawak Report says that the deal with Felcra is yet to be concluded, and that “there is every sign that the Ibans of Sri Aman will not take this land grab lying down".

"Community leaders indicated that they will fight the development."

They are lamentiing that the land grab has come “just days after Minister James Masing, on behalf of the state government, informed journalists that BN is planning a ‘more aggressive conversion’ of NCR land in Sarawak to oil palm plantation”.

“If it wins the next election, BN plans to double the area of oil palm to two million hectares by 2020,” the report says.