Transmile’s RM333m shocker: Cooking the books in Malaysia

 Accountability, Malaysian finance/business  5 Responses »
May 312007
 

So a special audit of Transmile Group has discovered that its revenue for 2005 and 2006 may have been overstated by over RM500 million ringgit. Gulp! Let me say that again s-l-o-w-l-y: over RM500 million. And its pre-tax profit for 2006 of RM207 million may have been inflated by RM333 million – which means that its real bottom line should have been a pre-tax loss of RM126 million. Uh-oh, someone has been very naughty here. Cooking the books, it would appear. A fine work of “creative accounting”, indeed. And investment analysts have got egg on their face, expressing shock and horror at this turn of events. When news first emerged that something was amiss at Transmile after the firm failed to submit their audited account before the 30 April deadline, it seemed that the market consensus was that the bottom line was overstated by about RM50 million or so. But [Read more]

Constantine, Christianity and the values of Empire

 Christianity, Iraq, Militarism, Neo-liberal economics  6 Responses »
May 302007
 

Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity had a profound impact on history. The imperial values of the Roman Empire were pitted against the values of the Gospel, as expounded by Christ in the Beatitudes (Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek etc). That tension and contradiction has reverberated right down the ages. Many Christians, while on the surface subscribing to the teachings of Christ, were in reality taken up by the values of worldly empire, materialism and militarism rather than the renunciation, simplicity and non-violence that Jesus advocated. Although we do not have the Roman Empire with us today, we have other superpowers. The values of Empire – and a global neo-liberal economic structure that favours the rich and the powerful – are still very much in our world. If at all there is an unseen global enemy, it has to be the unjust economic system that these powers nurture. [Read more]

World Bank should go with Wolfowitz

 Accountability, Corporate agenda, Democracy, Development issues, Global justice movement, Human rights, IMF/World Bank, Iraq, Latin America, Marginalised groups, Militarism, Neo-liberal economics, Poverty  No Responses »
May 222007
 

So Wolfowitz goes without being held accountable for his criminal scheming against Iraq. After I wrote the piece below, an academic friend told me, “Although he did have to step down, it was hardly a fall — guy walks away with that statement about acting in good faith, plus a golden hand-shake of a year’s salary. The girlfriend gets to keep her pay increase and the pension of USD100k.” Well, he has a point. Still, Wolfowitz’s gone, with his reputation in tatters. And, as an Indonesian activist told me when I was writing this piece, now that Wolfowitz is stepping down, it is time for people around the world to realise that the World Bank’s role is over. ”We must learn from Hugo Chavez that there is no development and democracy with the World Bank,” he stressed. ”I hope it’s not just Wolfowitz stepping down from the World Bank, but [Read more]

“I don’t know anything about politics”

 Asean, Christianity, Democracy, Politics, Universal spiritual values  No Responses »
May 212007
 

Some people complain when they hear sermons from religious preachers which they think are too “political”. Many feel uncomfortable when these preachers question the existing social and economic and even political order and the prevailing values of the day. Politics, they feel, has nothing to do with religion. In fact, the sharpest critics of such preachers are those who have a conservative and narrow understanding of what it means to be a compassionate and concerned human being in a world where 2 per cent of the world’s population control half the world’s wealth. Others feel that politics is of no interest to them and they do not see how it is connected to their lives. In Christianity, Jesus himself was “politically incorrect” in his sermons: the values he expounded – compassion, sharing of resources, love, justice – were sharply at odds with the values of the Roman Empire as well [Read more]

The classic divide-and-rule strategy

 Christianity, Ethnic and inter-religious relations, Neo-liberal economics, United States  No Responses »
May 162007
 

As we celebrate 50 years of Independence and 44 years of Malaysia, we would do well to consider some of the cleavages in our society that have given rise to simmering tensions every now and then. Our ethnic-based political system compartmentalises us into neat categories of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Iban, etc. And now we have certain groups dividing us on the basis of religion. Granted, not all these divisions are created by the politicians but they have to bear some responsibility for allowing the system to unleash these forces and divisive laws and rules on the population. The bumi-non-bumi dichotomy is one such example; you know, the emphasis on race, rather than need, when it comes to affirmative action policies. In the last few years, a new divide has emerged: the Muslim-non-Muslim divide. This has arisen from a number of factors which we won’t go into in this piece. [Read more]

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