Brunei's fabulously wealthy ruler Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has married a 26-year-old former Malaysian television journalist, making her his second wife, reports said Sunday.

The 58-year-old head of the oil-rich state married Azrinaz Mazhar Hakim at a private ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on Friday night, New Straits Times said in a front-page report.

It cited an unnamed guest as saying the ceremony was attended by family members, relatives and close friends of the couple. No other details were given.

The report could not be immediately confirmed in Brunei, where the private lives of the royal family are often shrouded in secrecy.

Azrinaz was educated in Malaysia and spent several years as a broadcast journalist and later as a newscaster with private station TV3.

She left TV3 in May this year, saying that she wanted to "venture into other undertakings", NST said.

Abrupt divorce

Following her departure, rumours had been rife that she would marry the sultan, whose vast wealth is fuelled by his family's control of the oil-based economy.

In February 2003 he abruptly divorced his second wife, former flight attendant Mariam Abdul Aziz, and ordered all her royal titles withdrawn.

A royal announcement on state-run television gave no reason for the divorce from Mariam, who is mother to two of the sultan's four sons and two of his six daughters.

Polygamy is legal in the Muslim nation and the sultan remains married to his first wife Anak Saleha whom he wed in 1967.

Brunei, a cradle-to-grave welfare state on the north coast of Borneo island, is the world's fourth largest producer of natural gas and third largest oil producer in Southeast Asia after Indonesia and Malaysia.

The sultan was once rated the world's richest man, with personal wealth estimated at more than 40 billion dollars. But his fortune is said to have dwindled in recent years, partly because of the 1997-98 financial crisis.

A multi-billion-dollar financial scandal involving the sultan's brother Prince Jefri is also credited with leading to a change of tone in the sultanate.

The reported private wedding ceremony is extremely low-key compared with the legendary excesses of past years, including the sultan's 50th birthday party at which Michael Jackson was the headline performer.

The 2004 wedding of Brunei's crown prince to his 17-year-old bride was also seen as rather modest by previous standards.