KOTA KINABALU: Claims made by former Chief Conservator of Forests, Sam Mannan to try and ridicule Warisan’s timber policies are merely an attempt to seek justifiability for his sacking in July 2018.
Warisan President, Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal said Sam Mannan is trying to hoodwink people into thinking that some RM10 million were “lost” from the 40,000 logs that were seized due to illegal felling and extraction when in reality billions of ringgit that should have gone to the state coffers ended up in the deep pockets of a timber lord.
Highly corrupt politicians and equally corrupt officials in the Sabah Forestry Department during the then Barisan Nasional state government allowed billions of ringgit of timber to leave Sabah so that only a certain few could reap the profits but never the state of Sabah.
The Warisan-led government put an end to this illegal cartel and ensured that the timber money was retained in its rightful place and not in Hong Kong banks chosen by these corrupt people.
Industry people have alleged that only a few loggers that formed the cartel with the blessings of a one-time prominent politician benefited from Sabah’s timber profit.
“Actually, there was only one timber lord in Sabah,” Shafie said in a statement today.
He said: “The lucky few were all extracting the logs and exporting them but the bulk of the profits went to this one particular person who parked the billions in overseas banks”.
In 2012, an associate of the high profile timber lord was arrested in Hong Kong when caught trying to smuggle RM40 million into Malaysia.
Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption detailed how money was banked into the associate’s accounts from timber companies in Sabah and these were then transferred into accounts that were being managed on behalf of the timber lord.
“Rightfully, the profits from log sales, especially those extracted from Yayasan Sabah concessions, should have been returned to the Foundation, to be used for providing loans and scholarships to Sabahan children, as well as to help out with medical services for the rural poor,” he added.
Shafie said that if indeed RM10 million was lost from one concession, it was just a pittance compared to what Yayasan Sabah had lost to crooked deals.
Under the so-called watchful eyes of the Forestry Department, the more valuable species of timber were allowed to be smuggled out of Sabah, or underdeclared. Serious illegal logging was the order of the day. While the kingpins got off scot-free, those caught were only small fry.
“What has Mannan to say about all these as after all, he was the Chief Conservator of Forests of Sabah then,” he said.
Large tracts of timber land were given away to timber barons just before the 2018 elections.
The Warisan-led government managed to recover half of the land and returned it to Yayasan Sabah. Not an inch of timber land was given to any individual or company.
The only beneficiary was Yayasan Sabah to ensure that the foundation could focus on education and health services because the profits from timber had been squandered during the time of the Barisan Nasional government.
“When the Warisan-led government came in, Yayasan Sabah was in the red. This is ludicrous. With such large timber concessions, how did Yayasan Sabah end up being in the red?”
“Why didn’t Mannan query about this when he was the Chief Conservator? There were lop-sided deals. The logger is the same person who buys back the logs and then exports it for profit. Yayasan Sabah never got these profits.”
Sam Mannan liked to portray himself as a dedicated environmentalist on the international stage and would claim that many parts of Sabah are protected forests.
Yet, it is widely known in the logging circles that he issued licences to his timber cronies that let them into the pristine jungles of Danum Valley so they can chop down the trees and once they had finished plundering these areas, Mannan would then suddenly declare them as First Class Forest Reserves.
As Chief Conservator of the Forests, he presented Sabah to the world as an environmentally protected state while at the same time allowing the timber cartel to destroy the forests for timber money.
Is he not showing his double standards? Speaking of RM10 million being supposedly lost when the bigger picture is that billions more were lost to greedy politicians and cronies, much to Sabah’s detriment.
