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By Kazi Mahmood KUALA LUMPUR (IslamOnline) - The courts in the Kingdom of Brunei were busy last week with the opening of a corruption case involving "staggering" amounts of money siphoned off from the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA).
The usually calm and quite island nation, located on the Island of Borneo bordering Malaysia, has been rocked this year by a scandal of enormous proportion. The ruling monarch, King Hasanal Bolkiah, considered to be one of the richest men on earth, ordered an investigation against his own brother, Prince Jefri. The king accused his brother of having misused millions of U.S. dollars belonging to the BIA, the investment arm of the government. On Thursday, the Brunei Magistrates Court formally charged Haji Awang bin Kassim, the 51-year-old former managing director of the BIA. Bin Kassem is also considered Prince Jefri's right hand man in the corruption case. Bin Kassim was on the run for the past two years in connection with BIA's missing billions, until the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Brunei spotted him living in the Philippines under a different identity. He was quickly repatriated to Brunei while his family remained. The Anti-Corruption Bureau revealed that Awang possessed several accounts in Brunei, some with deposits as large as $27 million. All the accounts possessed sums in the millions of dollars, the agency said. Bin Kassim disappeared after Prince Jefri was accused of mismanaging the BIA and other agencies in April 1998. Bin Kassim was the second respondent mentioned among 72 individuals and companies in the civil proceedings the state of Brunei and the BIA brought against HRH Prince Jefri in February. Prince Jefri is among those mentioned in the case along side Prince Abdul Hakeem, Jefri's son. A number of companies registered offshore have also been mentioned in the case against Jefri and Awang. A settlement was reached in May this year after a high profile two-month court battle in which both Prince Jefri and Prince Hakeem undertook to return all mishandled assets to the rightful owners. Investigation into the misuse of the BIA funds, which began in June 1998, was entrusted to the Finance Task Force, assisted by the several government officials and overseas professionals with expertise in the field. |
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