Dear Editor,
FOR more than a decade Sabahans have forgotten about Joseph Ambrose Lee Yok Min, 52, who once boasted of himself as the new Syed Kechik of Sabah, after he failed in his scandalous schemes to take over the RM30-billion timber wealth of Yayasan Sabah.
The late Syed Kechik was the de facto Chief Minister of Sabah when he was legal adviser to the late Tun Datu Mustapha bin Datu Harun who ruled the state with an iron-fist from 1967 to 1976.
Ambrose was back in Kota Kinabalu, having made his home in Perth, on August 7 at the Sutera Harbour Resort defending his bosom buddy Yong Teck Lee, who was Sabah Chief Minister from 1996 to 1998, over the fiasco of Saham Amanah Sabah (SAS) arising from a scandalous share-swap between Warisan Harta, the Sabah government’s investment arm, and Ambrose’s Suniwang Holdings Sdn Bhd.
More than 55,000 Sabahans, most of them pensioners and low-income civil servants, lost all their life-savings when the price of the state unit trust plummeted to 17 sen from its RM1.00 unit price soon after he sealed the deal when he became Chief Minister.
At the press conference, Ambrose (that’s what his few friends and many foes call him) made a feeble attempt to defend Yong over the missing RM50 million from the share-swap which Yong has been unable to explain to Sabahans.
Ambrose stressed that he paid RM50 million in cash through Innosabah Securities, the stockbroker to Warisan Sabah in a deal that saw him exchanging his over-priced shares of NBT and Sugar Bun for Warisan’s blue chip MISC shares.
No one has disputed this. But what has not been answered is that the money received by Warisan was never given to SSB as Yong has said. Yong was the Chief Minister and Warisan Chairman. Yet he has failed to tell Sabahans what happened to the RM50 million which he, as Warisan Chairman, received and which he never gave to SSB.
Dr Yee Moh Chai, Minister of Resource Development and Information Technology, told the assembly on August 3 that Saham Sabah Berhad (SSB) which manages the SAS has confirmed to him that it has never received the RM50 million out of the share dealings of Warisan Harta.
At the assembly, Dr Yee pointed out that it was Yong who linked the disastrous share-swap of blue chip MISC shares belonging to Warisan with shares of NBT and Sugar Bun, which were cornered speculative stocks. The swap resulted in a loss of RM114 million to Warisan.
Yong had defended the share-swap. As Warisan’s chairman, he was on record to say that “the wider policy in entering into this transaction was that the Government through Warisan Harta could utilize the RM50 million fund.”
Yong said the RM50 million was to support counters (stocks) on the then Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE,now Bursa) in which Warisan and the people of Sabah had investments. The true outcome, according to Dr Yee, is that as a result of the share-swap deals, Warisan Harta lost RM114 million.
Ambrose blamed Warisan for the loss because it refused to accept his offer to pay RM96 million for the difference between its purchase and market price of NBT and Sugar Bun shares which he said fell sharply because of the Asian financial crisis.
What he failed to, in Ambrose’s own words, tell the “entire populace of Sabah” was that he did not have the cash to pay RM96 million. He suggested another share-swap! Thus Warisan sued Suniwang for RM179,825,000. True enough, Suniwang folded. Warisan did not get a sen. If Ambrose had the money, would his flagship Suniwang Holdings Sdn Bhd collapse like a pack of cards?
Ambrose blamed Musa Aman, who was then Finance Minister, for rejecting again his proposal in 2007 to settle his debt of RM179,825,000 by transferring shares of Borneo Marble Corporation Sdn Bhd which he owned through proxies.
He said Warisan had entertained his proposal but the Sabah government rejected it. Warisan officials said it was true that they entertained his proposal but it did not accept it because the company was a liability.
Recently filings with the Companies Commission of Malaysia have proved this to be so. Borneo Marble was formerly known as Galmore Resources Sdn Bhd and was a fully-owned subsidiary of Suniwang Sdn Bhd which was owned by J Ambrose Sdn Bhd.
As at the end of December 2006, Borneo Marble suffered a pre-tax loss of RM108,793. There are no records of its financial filings from 2007 to 2009.
Ambrose boasted that his NBT owned 200,000 acres of timber land under Forest Management Unit which was bought by someone else.
Officials said what he failed to say was that NBT was in debt to the tune that the company was worthless and the timber land was pledged to a bank as collateral. The property was sold by the bank to recover its loan to NBT.
Ambrose had banked on the Sabah government to bail him out which it had rightly refused.
By his own admission, he has a Receiving Order of the court placed on his assets under the control of an official assignee. He has not been adjudicated a bankrupt yet.
Any chance of the Sabah government bailing him out now hinges on the remote chance of Yong Teck Lee becoming Sabah’s Chief Minister again. And why shouldn’t he? After all it was Yong’s late father, Yong Yun, who financed Ambrose’s law studies in London.
Regards,
SAS VICTIM
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