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]
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]
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]
