Borneo's secret Canadian businesses

Bruno Manser Fund / Bergli Books

New book claims to expose Ottawa connections

to Borneo 'kleptocrat’s' secret Canadian businesses

An explosive new book to be released in Canada in November claims to expose a Malaysian despot’s million-dollar-businesses in Canada, including his investments in the Nation’s Capital.

The money trail leads from the rainforests of Borneo to real estate developments in Ottawa, to the Ontario government and to the FBI.

Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia is to be published by Bergli Books. It will be launched in Canada at public events in November in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.

Money Logging explains how The Taib family of Malaysia is behind multi-million dollar investments in Ottawa, including a major office complex on Preston Street. The buildings were built by the family’s daughter who married into a well-known family of Ottawa architects with close ties to the federal and provincial political establishments.

Currently, eleven Ontario government ministries are renting office space from the Taibs.

The book’s author is historian Lukas Straumann of Switzerland, the executive director of the Bruno Manser Fund, a Swiss human rights and environmental organization that advocates the rights of Borneo’s indigenous peoples.
 
Money Logging investigates what former British prime minister Gordon Brown has called ‘probably the biggest environmental crime of our times’ — the illegal logging of the tropical rainforests by Malaysian loggers and the laundering of its proceeds in Western countries.

Straumann goes in search not only of the lost forests and the people who used to call them home, but also the network of criminals who have earned billions through illegal timber sales and corruption.

He singles out Abdul Taib Mahmud, current governor of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, as the kingpin of this Asian timber mafia, while he shows that Taib’s family have used Canada as a safehaven for their illicit assets since the early 1980s.

Money Logging raises serious questions over the effectiveness of the Canadian government’s anti-money-laundering policies. The book shows that Ottawa is the centre of an international money-laundering operation that involves properties in the US, Australia and the UK. Shockingly, even the FBI’s Seattle Field Office, the Abraham Lincoln Building in downtown Seattle, is owned by the Taib family and administered from their Ontario business hub.

More information and pre-orders at: www.money-logging.org

Journalists can request a review eBook now by emailing info@bergli.ch
 
 “One of the most comprehensive and brutally honest investigations into the intrigues of the Malaysian and international timber Mafia.” – Sueddeutsche Zeitung –
 
“A unique way of life in the rainforests has been destroyed in a single generation. Read this book and weep. But then get angry.” – Wade Davis –
 
Bruno Manser Fund, Socinstrasse 37, 4051 Basel / Switzerland, Tel. +41 61 261 94 74
www.bmf.ch, www.money-logging.org