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Samsudin Abu Hassan: Out of Africa
Uncle Sam strikes a pose
http://www.freemalaysia.com/samsudin.htm
Before he was out of Africa, Datuk Samsudin Abu Hassan was
said to be out of his mind. This assessment from his friends
and acquaintances is not quite accurate. Sam just stopped
thinking with his mind.
For those readers not up on Uncle Sam's 1995-96 marital
scandal -- rivaled only by his pal Tan Sri Halim Saad's ugly
and very public divorce -- freeMalaysia is pleased to
provide a recap. It's a tale worth retelling.
By most accounts, happy-go-lucky Sam was liked by all, at
least he had been until the mid-1990s. A once humble kampong
lad, the 43-year-old Sam discovered early in his business
career, as did so many other like-minded bumiputras, that
the quickest way to becoming rich and famous was to latch
onto the ringgit-collecting coattails of Finance Minister
Tun Daim Zainuddin.
Sam, trained as an accountant, was among Daim's earliest
recruits, along with Renong chief Halim Saad and Land &
General boss Wan Azmi Wan Hamzah. Together, they launched
semi-privatized Peremba, the management arm of the Urban
Development Authority, in the late 1970s and have been
dubbed Daim proteges ever since.
Unlike the other proteges, however, Sam was a bit late out
of the gate in striking a high corporate profile for
himself. But when he finally did, his timing was perfect,
coinciding with the most dazzling bull run in the history of
the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.
Bear in mind, however, that Sam became the "Midas Man" not
through his own business acumen. Rather, credit his
Daim-inherited connections and the market perception that
wherever Sam ventured, Daim was sure to be nearby. His
corporate trail was well marked, as were the companies he
touched, all of them counters linked to Daim and Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad's United Malays National
Organization (UMNO).
So let's pick up Sam's trail in 1993, when he used his
private Khidmas Capital to acquire a controlling 23.8% stake
in Landmarks Bhd., a property and hotel developer long
associated with Daim. Sam paid RM320 million to two other
Daim proteges -- Mohamed Rizali Abdul Rahman and Hassan Abas
-- for their interest in Landmarks. (A trademark of Daim &
Co. is always to keep assets in the fold, while trading them
incestuously to establish an artificial "market" price).
With Landmarks as his anchor vehicle, Sam began lending his
name to all and sundry - for a price. There was no
organization or logic to these new businesses and
associates, as long as the prices of their shares soared.
And did they ever, with the likes of Aokam Perdana Bhd. and
Granite Industries Bhd. pitching dubious tales of guaranteed
wealth on the horizon to local and foreign investors.
Few investors cared to investigate whether Aokam Perdana's
timber concession in Sabah was as well endowed as its
management maintained. Fewer still thought deeply about
Granite's unlikely prospects of securing a gambling license
in China. All that mattered was that their shares keep
appreciating - which they did, for a while.
By 1994, Sam had risen to tier-one corporate status, thus
securing for himself a seat on Dr. M's "Malaysia Inc."
express. On Mahathir's plane as a member of his entourage,
Sam began jetting about on the prime minister's
political-corporate junkets. It was more for the prestige
that Malaysian corporate chiefs jockeyed for tickets to
board the express. For they and their shareholders seldom
made much money from the Third World business ventures
directed their way whenever they traveled with Dr. M. And
they often lost much.
One of Sam's first trips was to South Africa. And judging
from the accounts of his former friends and acquaintances,
he immediately was smitten with the country.
Not only did he jump to fulfill Dr. M's desire to use
Malaysian corporate investments to cement diplomatic ties to
newly elected President Nelson Mandela's African National
Congress-controlled government, Sam also soon staked his
business - and personal - future on the country. Before
long, Landmarks was among the most aggressive Malaysian
investors in South Africa, acquiring huge parcels of
property between Johannesburg and Pretoria, a splendid
residential compound in the northern suburbs of
Johannesburg, and a controlling interest in publicly listed
Martin Jonker Ltd. The stake in Martin Jonker effectively
gave Sam control of Boland Bank Ltd., one of South Africa's
largest financial institutions.
If Sam's infatuation with South Africa had stopped there, he
would have remained in the good graces of his mentors and
minders back home. But he didn't, raising suspicions and
eventually triggering alarm bells back in Malaysian high
society. Sam, for the most part, was initially oblivious to
the rising concern. For not only was he smitten with his
adopted country, he also fell head over heels for a former
South African model and Penthouse cover girl, Melleney
Miller.
"I guess I'm just wired for speed. I'm hooked on fast cars
and fast men," Melleney told editors of the South African
edition of the magazine for its October 1992 issue, in which
she bared as much in a photo spread as South Africa's
pornography limits permitted.
But for the farm-raised Melleney, a finalist for Penthouse
Pet of the Year, baring her buns was only the means to a far
better end. "Being beautiful and sexy opens many doors of
opportunity," Melleney told the editors. "If you're smart
about your beauty and brains, the world is your oyster."
Two years later, Melleney not only found her oyster but also
her pearl. But to net her catch, Melleney had to rock the
boat. You see, she and the other pretty escorts she worked
with were just supposed to provide companionship and
entertainment for well-heeled foreign businessmen. In short,
they were there to help seal deals that required foreign
financial resources, which were in short supply in
post-apartheid South Africa.
But Melleney set about to hijack a deal for herself. She no
doubt provided the sort of sex Sam had till then only dreamt
about. Whatever her other charms were, the package proved
effective enough to just about cut off personal links
between him and his two Malaysian wives, as he spent more
and more time exploring business and other opportunities in
South Africa. Then she set about directing Sam on preferred
corporate ventures and partners, using her hard-earned
judgement and experience to ferret out both. But that
started to isolate him from the Malaysian corporate network
that made him a proxy tycoon.
Before even some of Sam's closest friends knew what was
happening, he was back in Malaysia announcing that he had
married Melleney and that -- though she converted to Islam,
adopting the name Melleney Farizah Samsudin -- she couldn't
countenance her man having two other Mrs. Samsudins. The
first two wives simply had to go, she insisted. And they
did, in an abrupt way that was considered kurang ajar by
many of Malaysia's elite, particularly by Siti Hasmah Ali,
Dr. M's wife.
Happy-go-lucky Sam and street-wise Datin Melleney quickly
got the message. He and especially she were not wanted in
Malaysia. Or that was the high-society edict put out by the
leading women of UMNO. But even those in the party who
didn't care what Sam did with his personal life had a reason
to shun him. Sam and other Malaysian businessmen had been
directed by Dr. M to joint venture with up-and-coming black
South African entrepreneurs and to spread the benefits of
the New Economic Policy's success to other Third World
societies.
The problem was that Melleney didn't know, intimately or
otherwise, any of South Africa's prominent black businessman
and political leaders. And since she effectively had become
Sam's primary corporate and personal adviser, there were no
newly empowered blacks to which she could introduce her
husband. So for Sam, it was white partners or nothing.
If that's how it was to be, Sam and Melleney wanted nothing
more to do with Malaysia. They simply would sell their
Malaysian holdings to the highest bidder and head off with
the proceeds to expand their budding South African empire.
At least that was the plan.
Daim and the rest of UMNO's leadership, however, had other
plans. After all, Landmarks belonged to them. Sam was merely
the custodian. Therefore, they had a say on the sale of the
company. And they weren't about to let Sam and Melleney make
full use of the proceeds to finance their new South African
ventures.
This was the state of affairs toward the end of 1995. And it
quickly got worse, after Sam badly miscalculated the racial
rules of corporate Malaysia. New to the country, Melleney
was of little assistance in this area.
Sam, for whatever reason, took a liking to high-flying Soh
Chee Wen, now a corporate flame-out, alleged white-collar
crime suspect and ostensible public corporate enemy of
cohorts in Dr. M's regime. He contracted to sell, at a steep
premium to the prevailing market price, all of his shares in
Landmarks to Soh for RM400 million through a typical
Daim-esque scheme. (At least Sam learned something from his
mentor.) But it quickly unraveled.
Though he should have known, Sam didn't appreciate the
social and political sensitivities attached to much of the
Landmarks-owned land, which had been proscribed by the
government as Malay-only property. Less important, but also
a factor, was the fact that Sam had piggybacked on the
government's diplomatic efforts in South Africa and then was
turning his back on the same government that helped him set
up his corporate empire there.
After four months of messy legal actions and brass-knuckle
tactics by all parties involved, the brawl was settled in
March 1996. And Daim's handwriting was all over the
settlement. Sam sold the bulk of his Landmarks stake to
Mohamed Annuar Senawi, chairman of a government-owned
insurance company and, more important, Daim's nephew.
Disgraced and out of favor, Sam and Melleney slumped back to
South Africa. But even there, their ability to sniff the
political winds hadn't sharpened. After an initial burst of
activity at their Samrand property development company, SMG
Holdings stockbroking firm and Boland Bank, poor Sam and
Melleney again were out of favor - and not just with the
black political establishment. The old, white corporate
elite also found the couple to be tasteless bores and
unreliable business partners.
(For an inkling of just how much Sam and Melleney have
fallen out of favor in South Africa, fM readers may want to
tune in to a report that appeared in the 7 March 1999
edition of the country's highly regarded Business Times.
Sam, it appears, is mired in a nasty liquidation exercise,
which threatens his SMG Holdings Ltd.'s 75% interest in New
Republic Bank.)
Fast forward to 1999, after three desultory years as rich
outcasts, and we find Sam cast in the role as Malaysia's
prodigal son, who has returned to his homeland in its hour
of need. And wouldn't you know, he picks up where he left
off.
This time it's Bolton Bhd., a construction company, and
Kejora Harta Bhd., Bolton's listed property development
subsidiary, that are the recipients of Sam's Midas touch.
Rumored to be eager to shed himself of some of his US$100
million in cash on recession-depressed Malaysian assets, Sam
again is working his market magic, making both companies
darlings on the Malaysian bourse.
Hard to believe that the market is suffering from a massive
case of amnesia. But freeMalaysia concedes that the head-on
crash from the Asian financial crisis can do that to
depressed Malaysian punters and shell-shocked political
players. It also helps that Sam seems to have more money
than most of the other wounded Daim proteges to throw
around.
So, for the time being, Sam is out of Africa and back in
Malaysia. And maybe, just maybe, he's no longer out of his
mind. fM, however, would like to offer one final suggestion:
The next time Dr. M invites Sam on his "Malaysia Inc."
express, tell him to leave the Viagra at home. |
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Author
Post time 9-8-2016 05:15 PM
datuk shamsudin abu hasan.ex-wife 
