Malaysia has a BO problem
All about that musky, elite deodorant.
The Selangor parking concession is back on the discussion table owing to a federal lawmaker harping about it and news portal Malaysiakini recycling the firm’s ownership and its royal links.
Yep, I published this on September 6 (and earlier one on July 18), so I’m not going to dwell on the similarities.
Since The Malaysianist is neither fat (deep pockets) nor privileged (grants), I’ll just have to punch above my weight.
Let’s take this forward. We have a BO problem.
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Calls to make beneficial ownership — clearly that was the BO I was referring to — data easily accessible stem from the fact that many are now claiming they had no idea the Selangor crown prince had an interest in the parking concession.
That’s true. But no one bothered paying a sum to unpack the ownership behind the concession, which is a joint venture with publicly listed ITMAX.
That company also issued a disclosure but it wasn’t thorough enough — that is, the beneficial owners weren’t mentioned.
You could argue that such a hurdle shouldn’t exist in the first place, given that this is a public project with the possibility of undue influence hanging around.
Also, it defeats the purpose of having a freedom of information enactment like in Selangor, since such requests were vetoed by the state government under the guise of the parking concession being an official secret.
At the national level, however, we’ve been struggling to make beneficial ownership properly public for a while.
A lot of it is political, some of it commercial. Let’s unpack both.