Bankrupt & Corrupt

The former mentri besar of Selangor is surely one of the richest people in this country although he is not listed in the Forbes’ list of the wealthiest. He can afford to pay cash in the range of RM 250,000 to RM 500,000 for several installments to a freelance landscaper for transforming a bungalow in section 7, Shah Alam into a Balinese mansion.

And the landscaper was a bankrupt and therefore not having any bank account and of course he didn’t disclose such a huge sum of money he received for the renovation job to the Department of Insolvency despite being a bankrupt. And perhaps that was what the former mentri besar had wanted, low profile, no record, no traces.

For ordinary taxpayer like us, we are required to keep all the stupid receipts big or small amounts so that if the notorious income tax department decided to check into every single detail of your expenditures, we have the evident to support. It is a requirement by laws anyway that the taxpayers need to keep the receipt for a minimum of 7 years for the purpose of auditing.

But for rich people like the former mentri besar, there is no such requirement; no receipt is required even though it was such a huge sum of RM 500,000. And he had trusted a bankrupt landscape architect so much that huge sum of money paid without any proper contract or documentation to renovate a bungalow amounting to RM 6 million. As they say, easy come easy go, I guess that’s what it is, the money has come so easily that it had been given out simply without any fuss.

Spending RM 6 millions just to renovate a house is quite ordinary for the wealthiest people but to a government servant; surely the people are curious to know how much actually a mentri besar can earn to allow him to live such a lavish life. A RM 6 million renovation plus the RM 3.5 million being cost of purchase and the mansion of the former dentist-turned-mentri besar will cost a whooping RM 9.5 million, let us jaw-dropping at the same time puzzling.

That Balinese mansion is without doubt one of the main factors leading to the downfall of BN government in Selangor.