Business tycoon Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary - a close associate of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad - has bought a 20 percent stake in the bestselling Malay daily Utusan Malaysia .

According to Singapore Straits Times , this is the 51-year-old businessman's second major investment in a newspaper. The first was in the country's leading English daily The Star , owned by Chinese-based political party MCA.

His RM400 million worth of shares in the daily were forcibly sold in 1998 - at the height of the regional financial crisis - by his bankers when he failed to provide extra collateral on loans taken.

Umno - the largest party in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition - is the biggest shareholder in Utusan Melayu Bhd, the publisher of Utusan Malaysia .

The party owns 58.31 percent through a nominee while the other significant shareholder is the Finance Ministry, which has a 10 percent stake.

News agency Reuters reported that the deal, an issue of new shares, was approved by Utusan's board last month and will leave Umno with a 51 per cent stake and the Ministry of Finance

with seven to eight per cent.

Utusan Melayu Bhd has said it had offered various parties 31 million shares, which based on today's share price of RM1.32 would be worth RM41 million.

Premier links

In recent years, Syed Mokthar who hails from Mahathir's home state of Kedah, has created a diverse business empire ranging from interests in ports to a bookstore chain.

He was best known for the launching of the Tanjung Pelepas port in Johor, which is seen as a major threat to the port in Singapore.

Through a private nominee concern, the low-profile businessman, who reputedly detests being labelled as one of the premier's favourites, controls a 20 percent interest in the Malaysia Mining Corporation (MMC).

According to a report in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Feer), MMC will eventually become the corporate figure's listed flagship company.

It added that he plans to manage his business interests - which associates said boast annual revenues of RM12 billion and more than 32,000 employees - through this company.

Syed Mokthar, who started off as a rice merchant, had dismissed talks that his business depended on his ties with the premier.

"Apart from the technical know-how, business in Malaysia is also about the know-who.

"Knowing Dr Mahathir is of course a big plus but we have never abused this," he said in a recent interview with Feer .

He also pointed out that unlike other Malay businessmen, he survived the regional economic crisis without a government bailout.

Among the most notable and widely criticised bailouts were former MAS chief executive officer Tajuddin Ramli and construction giant Renong's boss Halim Saad.

Checkered history

Utusan Malaysia

(earlier called Utusan Melayu ) was once an independent and outspoken Malay daily.

In 1961, it was taken over by Umno on the instruction of the country's first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to ensure that the paper's editorial would portray the ruling party in a favourable light.

Then editor Said Zahari wrote about the controversial takeover and the failed strike by journalists in his memoir 'Dark Clouds at Dawn', published last year.

Said was later jailed in Singapore under the island state's version of Internal Security Act in Singapore for 17 years.

Said Zahari - telling it as it is, as it was

'The struggle of memory against forgetting'

Press freedom award for Said Zahari