Playbook decodes the nexus of government, business and bureaucracy, a section within The Malaysianist. In today’s issue:
The high-stakes battle between the Malaysian government and Indonesia conglomerate for ownership of the Exchange 106 tower.
PM Anwar the crypto bro.
What Putrajaya should be reading: economic inequality.
Bureaucratic updates: the number of civil service jobs AI can predictably cut, KWAP’s Dana Pemacu private equity initiative, and appointment of new armed forces chief.
Some Sarawak sleuthing and the Petros-Petronas puzzler.
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When then-prime minister Najib Razak launched the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX), he claimed it was a tribute to his late father, Abdul Razak Hussein, Malaysia’s second prime minister.
At the heart of the development was Exchange 106 – a 96-storey skyscraper known as Najib’s tower intended to house major financial players from Malaysia and around the world.
However, TRX had its share of hidden problems. The entire project was tied to the 1MDB scandal and appeared more like Najib’s vanity project than anything else.
To get Exchange 106 off the ground, Najib enlisted the Indonesian conglomerate Mulia Group in 2012. But when the 1MDB scandal blew up a few years later, grabbing headlines worldwide, it complicated Mulia’s financing efforts.
Despite these hurdles, the tower was completed in December 2019, just before the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Fast-forward to today, Exchange 106 is at the centre of a heated legal dispute between its two main stakeholders: Mulia and Malaysia’s Finance Ministry.