Genneva gold investment firm slapped with 926 charges

KUALA LUMPUR: Six senior officers from controversial gold investment company Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd were slapped with more than 900 counts of money laundering, illegal deposit-taking and false advertising involving an alleged sum of RM5.5 billion.

Company director Datuk Phillip Lim Jit Meng, 57, was charged with 246 counts of money laundering allegedly committed at CIMB Bank Bhd and CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd in Jalan Kuchai Lama between January 2011 and last December.

Jit Meng, who represented two companies — Genneva Malaysia and Success Altitude Sdn Bhd—was charged with 222 counts in his capacity for the first company and eight counts for the second company.

Another director, Datuk Tan Liang Keat, 41, was charged with 226 counts. Company advisers Datuk Ng Poh Weng, 63, was charged with 155 counts, Datuk Chin Wai Leong, 37, with 23 counts and Datuk Marcus Yee Yuen Seng, 61, with 17 counts. General manager LimKah Heng, 42, was charged with 16 counts of money laundering.

They allegedly committed the offences at the same time and same place. At the same court, Genneva Malaysia, Jit Meng, Tan and Kah Heng were also charged with receiving deposits from the public without a  licence via a scheme involving gold transactions at CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd, Jalan Kuchai Lama, between Jan 10, 2011, and Oct 1 last year.

Ng was also charged with abetting them.

Deputy public prosecutor Dzulkifli Ahmad proposed that bail be denied as it was a non-bailable offence.

"However, if the court allows bail, the prosecution would like to suggest that each accused be allowed bail of RM5 million. This case involves approximately RM5.5 billion in investments from 35,000 depositors."

Dzulkifli said the bail amount should reflect the severity of the offences.

In pleading for a lower bail, defence counsel A.S. Dhaliwal said the fixed deposits of all the accused had been frozen by Bank Negara since last year.

He proposed bail be set at RM50,000 for each accused.

Judge Mat Ghani Abdullah allowed bail at RM1 million for each of the accused. He also ordered them to surrender their passports.

The judge fixed an additional RM100,000 in two sureties for offences under the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001.

Ghani allowed the prosecution's application for a joint trial and fixed April 7 until 24 next year to hear the case.

Dzulkifli informed the court that the prosecution would call about 50 witnesses to the stand.

Datuk Philip Lim Jit Meng.

Its directors Datuk Philip Lim Jit Meng and Datuk Tan Liang Keat faced 246 and 226 counts of money laundering respectively; business advisers Datuk Ng Poh Weng (155), Datuk Marcus Yee Yuean Seng (17), Datuk Chin Wai Leong (23), and general manager Lim Kah Heng (16).

All six claimed trial to the charges.

The company itself, Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd, faced 222 counts of money laundering and Success Attitude Sdn Bhd, eight counts.

Four of them, Philip Lim, Tan, Hah Heng and Ng, were also charged under the Banking and Financial institutions Act 1989 with two counts each of accepting deposits without a valid licence via a scheme involving gold transactions.

Earlier, Philip Lim and Tan pleaded not guilty at another Sessions Court to making a false statement in an advertisement on the company's website, saying its gold trading was in accordance with Islamic law.
Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd also faced a similar charge.

The case has been set for mention on Oct 28 and the two were granted bail of RM20,000 each.

Contributed by PUNITHA KUMA NST;  M.MAGESWARI and Maizatul Nazlina The Star/Asia News Netowork

e-Tanah probe begins

The Penang Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has begun an inquiry into the RM66 million e-Tanah facility, a computerised land administration and management system, as only four of the nine programme modules are up and running.

State PAC chairman Wong Hon Wai said the federal funded pilot project started in 2005 but only the revenue, strata title, registration and consent modules were working.

He said problems encountered with the land development, land disposal, land acquisition, and enforcement and auction modules were highlighted in the 2011 Auditor-General's Report.

"We are duty bound to investigate anything pointed out in the audit report. The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources project did not pass the integrity, economy, effectiveness and efficiency (IEEE) tests which were the terms outlined by the state PAC in conducting their tasks," Wong said after chairing this term's first PAC meeting on Wed

In the meeting, State Land and Mines Office director Datuk Arifin Awang, South and North Seberang Perai district officers Rohani Hassan and Shadah Nawawi were called to give their statements.

According to the e-Tanah portal, the system was to handle the administration and management of land offices, with Penang chosen as the state for the pilot project.

Last updated in 2009, the FAQ portion of the portal stated that there were 72,160 transactions and some RM385 million in revenue collected.

Wong said the PAC will be tabling a report and the recommended solutions on the matter in a future session of the state legislative assembly.

"Some of the issues we are looking for are possible leakages in the procurement process as well as loopholes," he said.

- TheSundaily

Portal e-Tanah :: Kementerian Sumber Asli Dan Alam Sekitar

Innovation Value and key Drivers to Success

The ability to increase business value through innovation is a critical success driver for most organizations. The markets that we operate in provide both opportunity and risk from an innovation perspective as they are rapidly changing.

Markets provide opportunities if we get it right and threats if we do not, particularly given the intense competitive nature of most industries. Our quest to realize innovation results is further complicated by the complexities involved for most firms – the sheer number of players to potentially coordinate with in the value chain; rising costs; margin erosion; increasing regulatory, customer and consumer demands; evolving business models; shorter cycle times; and new sources of competition, just to name a few.

The good news is that if you can get it right, you stand to gain a competitive advantage and will reap the benefits of increased revenue and profits. Hence, the lure of identifying new growth opportunities, increasing volumes and market share, securing a competitive advantage, improving margins and strengthening brand loyalty, provides a powerful incentive to be successful at product innovation. However, the challenges that organizations face do not make this easy. Developing new products and technologies is consequently one of the more complicated initiatives an organization can undertake.

Take for example the telecom market wars occurring over the past year. Samsung and Apple have emerged as two clear winners that have been able to leverage powerful innovation machines. The competition (Nokia and Research in Motion) have stumbled badly in their respective innovation capabilities and ultimately paid the price in the marketplace.

Figure 1: The Innovation Performance Framework

The Innovation Performance Framework™ (Figure 1) is a useful framework that examines the complexity and addresses some of the challenges in product innovation by separating them into four key themes: product innovation strategy; portfolio management; new product development process; and climate and culture (see Figure 1 for illustration). Interestingly, past studies suggest that organizations that excel or master these four key themes do, in fact, achieve better results from their product innovation efforts.

Let’s examine some of the challenges innovators have in each part of The Innovation Performance Framework:

Product Innovation Strategy: It all starts at the top. If there is not a clear and crisp product innovation strategy that supports the business strategy, problems begin. Some key challenges are: Do we have one? Is it clear? Is it the right strategy? Is everyone aligned? Are people walking the talk? Are there realistic expectations on new product revenues?

Lack of a product innovation strategy tailored to support the strategy of the business is often cited as a most common problem.

Portfolio Management: This is the strategic allocation of resources that ensures innovation efforts advance the product innovation strategy. This is also the prioritization of projects in the pipeline to ensure that resources are being tactically deployed on the right projects for the right reasons. Some key challenges are: too many projects and not enough resources to get everything done, difficulty in deciding which projects to select (when evaluating multiple projects that are competing for the same resources), difficulty in optimizing the portfolio of projects (i.e. short-term versus long-term, high-risk versus low-risk), poor alignment on priorities, and resources that are simply stretched too thinly.

Idea-to-Launch Process: This is the roadmap or playbook that takes each project from idea to launch including all of the activities and decisions that must occur in order to be successful. Some key challenges are: not enough high quality ideas; not having a standard playbook that can be used repeatedly for projects; leadership that cannot articulate the importance of their idea-to-launch process; employees who have not received training or have not developed a knowledge foundational base on and around innovation best practices; not tailoring the development process to support the business strategy and project needs; being unable to say no to projects and/or the need to be realistic with actual time and resource expectations that otherwise lead to unrealistic speed-to-market pressures; expectations for resource commitments to work on projects that are not in the official process; too many minor projects that negatively impact the resources available for innovation projects; and the inability to yield effective decisions in a timely manner (i.e. everything is a high priority thus creating ‘gridlock’ which in turn results in significant delays). It is no wonder given the above why achieving and then sustaining success is so difficult for many companies.

Climate and Culture: This is ‘the way the organization works’: the typical behavior, norms, values and leadership style that enables or hinders product innovation performance. Some key challenges are: difficulty in striking a healthy balance between ‘discipline and focus’ and ‘flexibility and judgment’, driving projects to successful completion while managing cross-functional teams (i.e. shortage of trained project leaders, staff turnover, gaps in necessary skills, lack of training and/or experience), management of failure, and poor support from other parts of the organization. In other words, creating and supporting a climate and culture that supports innovation company-wide.

How is your organization performing at product innovation and how does it compare to other companies? Without clear metrics and a way to compare them it can be difficult to know whether you are doing good or bad at product innovation; whether your investment in R&D is producing the desired results, and what areas of your performance in and around the Innovation Performance Framework might need to be improved or strengthened. The good news is you can change, the question is do you want to?

Contributed by 

Related post:    Mental Exercises For Battling "It Won't Work" Syndrome

Singapore's new hiring rules: citizens first, foreigner curbs target professionals

 
Singapore Makes Firms Consider Citizens Before Hiring Foreigners

Singapore will impose new rules prodding companies to consider locals before hiring foreigners for professional jobs, according to the Ministry of Manpower.

The city state will set up a job bank where companies are required to advertise positions before applying for so-called employment passes for foreign professionals, it said. The advertisements must be open to all Singaporeans.

“Even as we remain open to foreign manpower to complement our local workforce, all firms must make an effort to consider Singaporeans fairly,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said in a statement today. “‘Hiring-own-kind’ and other discriminatory practices that unfairly exclude Singaporeans run against our fundamental values of fairness and meritocracy.”

Singapore tightened restrictions on foreign workers for a fourth straight year in February, in part because of voter discontent over congestion, rising property prices and greater competition for jobs and education. The curbs have led to a labor crunch and rising wage costs for companies, which the government has said will probably hurt growth in Southeast Asia’s only advanced economy.

Local Talent

Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with senior management in a number of financial companies to emphasize that they should make a concerted effort to develop a local talent pipeline, the manpower minister said in Parliament in March.

“We must set expectations about what is acceptable and what is not,” Tan said today. “It requires persuasion, explanation and leading by example. The worst employers must be taken to task.”

Singapore will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders to S$3,300 ($2,600) a month in January, according to the statement. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it said. Companies with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from the new rules, as well as jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary of S$12,000 or more, according to the statement.

The government will also identify firms “that have scope to improve,” such as those with a lower concentration of Singaporeans at the professional, managerial and executive levels, compared to their peers, or those that have faced nationality-based discriminatory complaints, the ministry said.

Foreign employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first half of 2013 from a year earlier and the labor market will remain tight for the rest of 2013, the ministry said this month.

Singapore Foreigner Curbs Target Professionals: Southeast Asia

Singapore's Tan on Foreign-Worker Curbs

Singapore will widen foreign-worker curbs to professional jobs as the government clamps down on companies that hire overseas talent at the expense of citizens, stepping up efforts to counter a backlash against immigration.

The Southeast Asian nation said yesterday it will set up a job bank where companies are required to advertise positions to Singaporeans before applying for so-called employment passes for foreign professionals. The unprecedented policy will target jobs that currently pay at least S$3,000 ($2,400) a month.

“There are concerns among Singaporeans, which I think is fair, and so it’s timely for us to introduce this,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday. “There are Singaporeans out there, well-skilled and capable, who are looking for jobs and I think this step would actually facilitate that process.”

The country is persisting with a four-year campaign to reduce its reliance on foreign workers, after years of open immigration policy led to voter discontent over increased competition for housing, jobs and education. The move has led to a labor shortage and pushed up wages, prompting some companies to seek cheaper locations.

“This is a step up from the government’s efforts to tighten the quality and the quantity of the foreign worker inflows,” said Chua Hak Bin, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in Singapore. “We’re moving to another phase now where they’re looking to ensure that opportunities for the middle-income Singaporeans are maintained.”

Better Matching

Singapore will also raise the minimum pay for employment-pass holders by 10 percent to S$3,300 a month in January, the Ministry of Manpower said in a statement yesterday. The job bank will be set up by mid-2014, it said. Companies with 25 or fewer employees will be exempt from the new rules, as well as jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary of S$12,000 or more, the ministry said.

“It makes a lot of sense to hire locally from the communities that we operate in,” said Audrey Tan, a Singapore-based spokeswoman for Pratt & Whitney, the jet-engine unit of United Technologies Corp., where Singaporeans make up 75 percent of its more than 2,000 workforce in the city.

The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 2.1 percent in the second quarter, with the resident jobless rate at about 3 percent.

That “translates to 50,000, 60,000 Singaporeans without jobs,” Tan, the minister, said. “What the regime allows is that there may be a better matching of demand and supply” between companies and job-seekers, he said.

Fewer Locals

The government will also identify firms “that have scope to improve,” such as those with a lower concentration of professional Singaporeans compared with industry peers, or those that have faced nationality-based discriminatory complaints, the ministry said.

Responding to feedback from Singaporeans that some companies are hiring foreigners over citizens, Tan and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with senior management in a number of financial companies to emphasize that they should make a concerted effort to develop a local talent pipeline, the manpower minister said in Parliament in March.

Citigroup Inc., which has about 10,000 employees in Singapore, said citizens and permanent residents make up 82 percent of its workforce.

‘Right Balance’

“It is essential that we strike the right balance,” Adam Rahman, a Singapore-based spokesman at the bank, said in an e-mail. “It is important to have some foreign talent who have global perspectives, expertise and skills to complement the overall development of Singapore as an international financial hub.”

Standard Chartered Plc, which has 7,600 employees in the city, said it will study the impact of the framework, which it expects will create more opportunities for locals. “The new portal will provide greater transparency and continue to promote fairness in hiring processes,” Peter Hatt, head of human resources for Singapore and Southeast Asia, said in an e-mail.

Singapore was ranked the most-favored expat destination based on economic factors such as income and housing in a 2012 survey of more than 100 countries released by HSBC Holdings Plc. Including the criteria of lifestyle and well-being of children, Hong Kong topped the list.

Second Choice

“Hong Kong and Singapore vie for talent on an ongoing basis,” said Marc Burrage, regional director of Hays Plc in Hong Kong. “If these changes are going to make it harder for expats to find work in Singapore, then what that could mean is that people will start to consider Hong Kong whereas in the past it may have been their second choice in Asia.”

Singapore’s inflation rate quickened to 2 percent in August. Domestic cost pressures are expected to persist amid continuing tightness in the labor market, the central bank and the trade ministry said in a statement yesterday.

“Further tightening on foreign labor participation should place upward pressure on wages and therefore core inflation,” said Daniel Wilson, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore.

The city’s population has jumped by more than 1.1 million since mid-2004 to 5.3 million, driven by immigration. A proposal to boost the population to 6.9 million by 2030 prompted thousands to protest in February.

The framework “is designed to placate the electorate,” said Lee Quane, Hong Kong-based regional director at ECA International, which provides research on employment, relocation and compensation. “The impact is going to be negligible. Singapore has almost full employment.”

The city studied employment policies in markets including Hong Kong, the U.S. and U.K. before developing its framework, the minister said.

“We’re very mindful that there’s no one silver bullet that solves everything and we’re also mindful that every country has their own slightly different circumstances,” Tan said.

Contributed by  By Sharon Chen Bloomberg

China fights corruption, Bo Xilai sentenced to life in prison

Bo Xilai (sitting on the defendant's seat), former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, is sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Jinan City, capital of east China's Shandong Province, Sept. 22, 2013. He was deprived of political rights for life. The court announced the verdict. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) 

Bo Xilai (C), former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, is sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Jinan City, capital of east China's Shandong Province, Sept. 22, 2013. He was deprived of political rights for life. The court announced the verdict. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) 

Bo Xilai, former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Sunday for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

He was deprived of political rights for life, and his personal assets were also confiscated.

The Jinan Intermediate People's Court in east China's Shandong Province announced the verdict.

Bo was found guilty of taking bribes totaling 20.44 million yuan (about $3.3 million), either personally or through his family members, between 1999 and 2012.

Bo's position had been rising during this period, from the mayor of the Dalian in northeast Liaoning province, to the CPC secretary of the city, to the governor of Liaoning and Commerce Minister.

In return, Bo helped Dalian International Development Co. Ltd., of which Tang Xiaolin was general manager, in taking over the Dalian City liaison office in Shenzhen and also helped Tang obtain quota licenses for importing cars, the court said.

According to court findings, Bo granted Xu Ming, chairman of Dalian Shide Group Co. Ltd., favors in the company's introduction of a football-like sightseeing hot-air balloon and in its bid for a petrochemical project.

The court found that Bo directly accepted cash totaling 1.1 million yuan from Tang. He was aware of and showed no objection to the fact that his wife Bogu Kailai and their son, Bo Guagua, accepted monetary gains and properties worth 19.33 million yuan from Xu.

According to the verdict, Bo Xilai, while Party chief Dalian in 2000, assigned Wang Zhenggang, then urban planning chief of the city, to take charge of a project to be built by Dalian for an unidentified higher authority.

In March 2002, after the project was completed, the higher authority allocated 5 million yuan to refund the project. Wang proposed that Bo, who had moved to become the governor of Liaoning, use money to cover the expenses of his family. Bo consented and asked Wang to approach his wife Bogu Kailai for the matter.

The 5 million yuan was eventually transferred to an account designated by Bogu.

The court's judgement said on Nov. 13, 2011, Bogu and Zhang Xiaojun murdered British citizen Neil Heywood by poisoning him at the Lucky Holiday Hotel in Chongqing. Heywood's body was found on Nov. 15.

Guo Weiguo, then deputy police chief of Chongqing, was in charge of the Heywood case, but he failed to pursue the case to protect Bogu, the court said.

On Jan. 28, 2012, Wang Lijun, then Chongqing's police chief and vice mayor, told Bo Xilai, then Chongqing's Party chief and member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau that Bogu was the suspect.

Bo later lashed out at Wang for framing a murder accusation against Bogu, slapping Wang's face and smashing a cup.

At the request of Bogu, Bo asked Wu Wenkang, then deputy secretary general of Chongqing's Party committee, to launch an investigation against Wang Zhi and Wang Pengfei.

The two had been involved in the investigation of the Heywood case but had then handed over a resignation letter in order to expose the murder case.

Bo asked Chongqing's Public Security Bureau to interrogate Wang Pengfei. Bo proposed and approved the withdrawal of the nomination of Wang Pengfei as a candidate for deputy head of Yubei District of Chongqing.

In his bid to prevent a review of the Heywood case, Bo also violated the organizational procedures and convened a Standing Committee meeting of the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee to remove Wang Lijun from his position as Chongqing's police chief.

After Wang Lijun's defection to the US Consulate General in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province on Feb. 6, Bo allowed his wife to take part in official meetings to deal with the impact, and sanctioned her suggestion of asking a hospital to fake a diagnosis that Wang suffered from mental illness. Bo also approved the release of the false information that Wang was receiving a "vacation-style treatment."

The verdict said Bo's these actions were important reasons behind Wang's defection and why the Heywood case was not handled in a timely and legal manner.

All these had created an extremely adverse social impact and greatly hurt the interests of the country and its people, the court said.

The court found Bo guilty of bribe-taking, in that as a public servant, he used his power to seek benefits for others and illegally took money and properties from others.

Also as a public servant, Bo took advantage of his position and embezzled public funds with other accomplices, the facts of which constituted the crime of embezzlement.

The court said Bo's abuse of power is extremely serious and has led to huge losses to the state and the people.

The court held that there are sufficient and authentic evidences to support prosecutors' charges against Bo: accepting bribes worth 20.44 million yuan (about $3.3 million), embezzling public funds of 5 million yuan and abusing his power.

Though Bo himself and his lawyer had denied all three charges, the court said these charges are supported by testimonies by several witnesses including Tang Xiaolin, Xu Ming, Bogu Kailai, Wang Zhenggang, Wang Lijun and others, as well as other evidence such as photographs of physical evidence, documentary evidence and electronic data.

In addition, Bo himself has also confessed to part of the facts, and his confession corroborated with those facts.

The court did, however, exclude 1.34 million yuan from the bribery accepted by Bo, saying that there are not enough evidence to support the charge that Xu Ming paid the amount in air tickets for Bogu Kailai and Bo Guagua and that Bo was aware of this.

The illicit money and goods that Bo accepted as bribes or embezzled have been recovered or compensated, the court said.

The Jinan Intermediate People's Court said its verdict was based on the facts, the nature and the circumstances of Bo's crimes and their harm to the society.  

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