Who is checking the Petronas accounts?
Published on: Sunday, March 10, 2019
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Even the judiciary has been suspected of corrupt practice and impropriety. Prominent political leaders have called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry. Past prime minister has been accused of wrong doing and misuse of government funds and has been charged in court.
A party president has been charged with misuse of funds, top civil servants have been charged with corruption. Past bank governor had been accused of being responsible for losing billions of government funds in risky ventures.
Millions of ringgit of supposedly government money were found in the offices and at homes of senior officials. How careless could the government financial controllers be?
Banking establishments have been accused of illegally transferring funds in and out of the country in collusion with money launders. A former chief minister has been charged with receiving millions from timber concessionares for party funds. In Singapore a priest was convicted of misusing millions of dollars of church funds. Even international audit firms have been found cooking books to hide the misdeeds of their clients.
Who is clean? Who can be trusted now with public money coming from taxpayers’ pockets and state’s resources? Which institutions are still untouched by corruption and mismanagement of funds, Felda, Umno, Mca, Mic, Pas?
Malaysia’s biggest money-maker- Petronas has so far escaped from accusations of corruption. Perhaps the management has been successful in keeping its operations secret. It is one of the top 100 companies in the international corporate scene. Each year it earned over RM100 billion in profit. Its investments span the globe. Fully one-third of its oil revenue comes from Sabah oil and gas fields which the company has been pumping for 45 years non-stop. So far the Sabah Government has been very trusting of Petronas. Sabah receives 5pc of royalty each year without question, without so much as asking how the amount of money had been derived.
In the early days when oil and gas was still in Sabah’s hands, Multi-national operators reported the exact amount of each shipment of oil that had gone out directly from off-shore wells. The state government never questioned the accuracy of the figures submitted. It had not sent any professional to the ships 40 to 50 miles out in the South China sea to check whether the figures were accurate.
Anyway, the State government never had a professional like petroleum engineer that could verify the accuracy of the figures. It was and still is a complicated matter to figure out the amount of barrel of oil in a ship. You got to know the exact capacity of the ship. Every ship has different capacity.
The shippers don’t necessary tell you the truth if you don’t ask- There are numerous meters to read. Now you want to give up? There are still other variables in determining the exact amount. It is a specialized job.
Big business people who have dealings with oil and gas companies often said that these companies became that big because they routinely cheat. When Persident Maduro said that United States stole billions from Venuzela, he probably meant that US oil importers of Venuzela oil had been cheating him left and right. He should know as he must have been sending his Navy ships to check on every oil shipment.
Big oil company officials from chairman to presidents and down to MDs and GMs get the fattest pay cheque plus getting millions of dollars of annual bonuses and other perks. Big oil companies have to earn lots of money anyway they could, including cheating to keep the top managers happy.
How does the state government determine whether the annual amount of royalty remitted was correct or not? The state government does not have Navy ships under it’s command. The absence of any effort to check the records invites the keeper of records to fake figures. In a big organization like the government and GLCs there exist minor Napoleons who would cheat clients without the knowledge of the boss.
Petronas operates in secret. It only reports to the prime minister. Even that may not necessarily be accurate reporting. Its books are not subject to external auditing, Even if billions were channeled to political parties and politicians as directed, who knows? It is not answerable to parliament.
No Sabahan occupies posts in Petronas that could have access to any figures. Even if a Sabahan was appointed vice president, he wouldn’t necessarily have access to the books. Is it by trust that the state government received its 5pc for 45 years? But recent corruption cases show that no one, no company nor corporate officials can be trusted, least of all companies that make billions in profit.
Billions of ringgit of Sabah’s oil is being produced each year. No Sabahan wants to know whether Sabah got the right deal? Shouldn’t the new state government get responsible and count the monies that go into the government coffer? Mr. Lim is going back and counting the asses the previous government had committed. Perhaps Sabah should get a few billion ringgit more to develop the state’s more urgent projects – a dam, a few thousand miles of highway and kampung roads, housings for poor, etc, etc I know, Mr Lim would say.
The amount can’t reach distant Sabah. All available money has been allocated to multi-billion ringgit projects in peninsula. Even if he sends any money it would be “hijacked” halfway. It is more reason that the state thinks of ways to increase its revenue.
While the two CMs are having negotiations with the PM now on Sabah/Sarawak rights and additional oil royalty, why not demand that Petronas operations be more open to the two partners. The two states contribute more than two-third of Malaysia’s oil/gas output.
Surely the two governments have the right to know how the company has been managing their resources. Perhaps the two states could recover some un-remitted royalty if the books are open to scrutiny. You never know if the middle rank accountants have ideas of their own on deciding how much royalty Sabah and Sarawak should get or should not get.
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