Some of the most notable names among the individuals and entities are
Kamaluddin Abdullah, head of Feldspar Holdings and son of former Prime
Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; Mirzan Mahathir, son of Mahathir
Mohamad; and Mohamad Nazifuddin Mohamad Najib, son of the current prime
minister, Najib Razak. Mahathir’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Hashim
Mohammed Ali, the onetime head of Malaysia’s military.
Others
include Sultan Ibrahim Ismail of Johor; Abdul Aziz bin Tawfiq Ayman,
husband of Bank Negara Governor Zeti Akhatar Aziz; Muhammad Muhammad
Taib, former Rural and Regional Development Minister and UMNO
information chief, who since has joined the opposition Parti Keadilan
Rakyat; and Lim Kok Thay, the current managing director of Genting
Group; Abdul Halim Harun, former chief executive of UMW Holdings, one of
Malaysia’s biggest conglomerates; Sharifuddin Hizan Zainal Abidin,
former Group Managing Director of Felda Holdings Bhd; and Khoo Kay Peng,
one of Malaysia’s richest tycoons and head of MUI Group.
The list
also includes the late Hussain Najadi, the founder of what was first
known as Arab Malaysian Bank, later Ambank, who was murdered under
mysterious circumstances in 2013 after complaining, his son has
charged, about corruption in the United Malays National Organization.
Police said he had been killed in a land dispute. The late Tan Tiong
Hock, the former Malaysian Chinese Association secretary general, who
died in 1985, is also on the list, which can be found here.
The flow
of currency into the Panama entities is hardly the only destination for
money fleeing Malaysia. As Asia Sentinel reported in 2013, estate
agency Jones Lang & Wootton reported that in 2012 Malaysians
accounted for 17 percent of all buyers of new top-of-the-line central
London dwellings.
In other words almost as many Malaysian are buying
as Britons, who themselves accounted for only 19 percent of this
market. Identifiable Malaysians figured as buyers of One Hyde Park, the
most expensive new building in London overlooking Hyde Park and others
probably lie behind the various anonymous offshore companies which
figure as owners of most of the owners of apartments ranging in price
from US$12 million to US$50 million.
Whether there will be political
fallout from the list in Malaysia is another question. The country has
been enduring what seems like an endless corruption scandal over the
state-backed 1Malaysia Development Bhd. for almost two years, plus an
unexplained US$681 million in Najib’s personal accounts that appeared in
2013 before most of it disappeared back out a few months later into the
branch of a Swiss bank in Singapore, then vanished for good. So far,
the prime minister appears bulletproof. He is likely to remain that way
