Warisan: Sabah mining scandal will topple GRS like 1MDB did BN

Warisan believes the alleged mining scandal that implicated a slew of Sabah leaders will bring down Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) in the upcoming state election.

Speaking at the Kinabatangan Warisan division meeting yesterday, party information chief Azis Jamman recalled the 1MDB scandal that plagued BN and contributed to its downfall in the 2018 general election.

He said voters rejected BN due to the 1MDB scandal, even though there were no video clips of BN leaders discussing bribery.

“When the 1MDB case happened, did you see any video clip that shows half of the cabinet (discussing bribes) like the ones that had gone viral in Sabah?

“There were none, but still (the then) BN (government) collapsed in 2018 because the voters in the peninsula saw how the party had been corrupted from top to bottom.

“That was why the people in Peninsular Malaysia rejected Umno and BN in 2018,” Azis said, according to a video clip of his speech sighted by Malaysiakini.

Alleged licence approval

The Warisan leader also took a jab at Sabah Chief Minister Hajiji Noor, who allegedly supported Bumi Suria to get a mining exploration licence on 70,000ha of land area in the Kalabakan and Gunung Rara forest reserves near the Kalimantan border.

Bumi Suria is a company linked to the prime minister’s former aide, Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak.

“Did you see any video of (former prime minister) Najib Abdul Razak simply giving out approval (for projects)?

“(But in Sabah) approval was (allegedly) simply given for 70,000ha (of land).  Do you even know how big 70,000ha is? That is seven times the size of Kuala Lumpur,” Azis said.

The Sabah land authority has since denied that it received any application for a mineral prospecting licence from Bumi Suria.

In July, MalaysiaNow published audio clips of a purported meeting held by state-owned Sabah Mineral Management Sdn Bhd (SMM) where Hajiji, who is also the board chairperson, allegedly gave his support for Bumi Suria to obtain the licence.

However, earlier this month, MACC chief commissioner Azam Baki announced that Farhash had been cleared of alleged links to the mining scandal, after investigations revealed that no exploration licence was issued to a company he owned.

The audio clip from July, implicating the chief minister, had been part of a series of video leaks shared by whistleblower Albert Tei, who has since exposed several Sabah leaders and assemblypersons for alleged corruption.

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