Subject: [MGG] Tan Sri Vincent Tan c##ks A Snook At The Government

THE DE FACTO LAW Minister, Dato' Rais Yatim, says damages awarded for defamation is grossly out of proportion to personal injury cases. He points to the Federal Court's affirmation of the RM10 million awarded to the Berjaya Group supremo and Big Mac chief, Tan Sri Vincent Tan. Dato' Rais' remarks, made when a Bar Council committee called on him on 04 September 00, castigates the Chief Justice (more popularly, Big Chief Injustice, in legal circles), Tun Eusoff Chin, and in terminal shock after He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost mercillessly castigated him for his corruption, bias, stupidity, injudicial conduct and much else in court recently. There is more to the bare bones of the news report than meets the eye. But when the government decides the courts cannot be depended upon to decide on defamation damages and on judicial discretion in contempt of court, and wants to codify the provisions, the genteel words exchanged hides not the bitter enmity between the law minister in charge of tables and chairs and the holiday companion of Tan Sri Vincent Tan's bodyguard and lawyer surfaces ineluctably..

Into this exchange, this "international business man of unquestioned repute" (IBOUR) -- if you would rather believe what his counsel thinks of him -- or "Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Dato' Seri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun" (YBTSDSVTCY) -- in his solicitor's considered view -- decides his satrap Big Chief Injustice needs his help. So he c##ks a snook at the government, the dispenser of his patronage, and a day after Dato' Seri Rais' defamation concerns, he goes in for the kill. He instructs his solicitors, Messrs Adam Bachek & (sic) Associates, to demand his Shylockian pound of flesh, the one Dato' Rais was concerned about, demands the RM2,000,000 the federal court awarded in a case in which his counsel wrote part or all of the High Court judgement, went on holidays with Big Chief Injustice and his bodyguard, and argued the Federal Court appeal before him. Tun Eusoff further strengthened his well-honed injustice when he insisted upon delivering the judgement after my counsel had wanted him recused for his biasness, after insisting there would be three separate judgements, and assuring the Bar Council a few months later and two years before a court flunky delivered judgement on his behalf. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Well that describes IBOUR YBTSDSVTCY perfectly. However, he looks at it, this demand for monopoly money misses the point.

He realises not -- he should -- UMNO turns against him. His enviable political connexions gets government privatisation projects and a cushion from the normal rules of businesses, thousands of acres of pristine land on a silver platter from several states, and except for gambling concessions made a mess of it all. He was awarded the Indah Water Konsortium concession, made a rumoured RM1.2 billion re-selling, ensured it would not succeed and the government has since re-nationalised it. His billion-ringgit project for Kuala Lumpur's monorail, which despite a further starting grant of RM300 million after an undisclosed grant of similar proportions, should have been ready for the Commonwealth Games in 1998, but today all he can show for it is an abandoned mess of unlinked solitary pillars, which doubles up as well-placed advertising boards for his struggling, barely profitable telecommunication company. He got the greenlight to build the world's only linear city, over the Sungei Klang, That is another billion and more ringgit worth. But he does not talk about it any more. He got 30 hectares, or thereabout, of beachland in Pulau Redang, off Trengganu, at less than RM1,000 per hectare, with a grateful government displacing the fishermen living there, who now have to walk down a hill to work. That is the subject of an official internal Trengganu investigation.

He believes, as a business man, he should be allowed to subborn justice. His mad crusade against a Malaysian journalist, Mr Ganesh Sahathevan, fought through the Industrial Court in Kuala Lumpur and the courts in Sydney, Australia, along with suits for hundreds of millions of ringgit in defamation damages, which began with his attempt to shut me up, continues. He has had the law changed, tried to in New South Wales to shut Mr Sahathevan up but the state authorities have stepped in. And he sues in Taipeh for the return of a few hundred million ringgit in bribes for a gambling licence he did not get. UMNO wags refer to him as the ultimate Bumiputra. In a sense, he is. UMNO wants to know how he could get all these lucrative concessions, getting another when each fails, as in almost every case. Which, I contend, is why he goes around trying to silence one and every who dares question his flips and flops. He thought his friendship with the Prime Minister and the finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, would sustain him. He wanted Malaysian business men's eternal gratitude by ensuring that business men can control the courts. He won the RM2,000,000 award with neither evidence or witness, producing neither evidence nor witnesses, getting his lawyer to write the judgement and other traversities. He thought he succeeded. Then the law minister comes to change the ground rules once again. And worms turn. Even fat ones like a M.G.G. Pillai or intrusive Ganesh Sahathevans. But then would a former insurance agent who becomes an international business men of unquestioned repute would not know that, would he?