If you think Najib was crooked, we have our very own here in local soil. There is no doubt that the rich will become richer, some through legitimate means, others through cheat and lies.
Oil tycoon, Lim Oon Kuin, and his two children, Evan Lim (son) and Huey Ching (daughter) are being sued over $4.8b in debt. The evidence unearthed was as blatant as they were unbelievable. Court documents show they were charged with “fraudulent trading” and “breaching their fiduciary duties as directors.”
To start with, it is reported that they had paid themselves a whopping $90m in dividends even though their company was practically insolvent. ”They were accused of deliberately concealing (Hin Leong’s) losses and portraying it as a profitable company when in fact it was massively insolvent.”
The methodology is as simple as it is malicious. Fraud at all levels has its own elegance, and it is the elegance of a polished image seeking to deceive. That is essentially how the Lim family allegedly profited insanely from their ill-gotten gains.
From the father to his children, the image was one of trust, lies and betrayal. That appears to be their modus operandi as reported.
“The alleged fraudulent activity included the creation of fictitious gains to conceal accumulated trading and losses, the forgery of documents, the manipulation of Hin Leong’s accounts through irregular accounting entries, the overstatement of Hin Leong’s inventory and the obtaining of financings through improper means.”
Seen from those allegations, the company was practically exploited as a prostitutional vehicle for the carnal pleasures of its controlling masters driven first and foremost by insatiable greed and incomprehensible desperation. And here is the polished or spruced up image part for your digest.
“As a result, they presented a vastly misleading picture of its financial health to external parties and deceived its lenders into extending financing, even though Hin Leong has been insolvent since the financial year ended Oct 31, 2012.”
Imagine perpetuating a lie to so many people (or institutions) who had trusted them and doing it for years so as to keep up with appearances and reap the status quo of immense wealth. And if this does not speak of a conscience that is not only broken, but also sold to the highest bidder in the marketplace of greed and avarice, then I do not know what it is.
The lesson here is the lesson familiar to all of us. Social experiments on greed in real time have been done on mankind throughout history, and those who stumble and fall are generally in the majority.
When placed in a position of inordinate power and wealth, the temptation itself is equally inordinate. And many will testify that none are exempted from it. Even the most seemingly pious of us all falls prey to their own unquenchable appetites for never having enough or believing that they are different.
But confronting a universal reality or truth about us doesn’t mean that we have not seen or witnessed inordinate courage and moral stamina demonstrated by people existing in the continuum of the most ordinary to the most extraordinary.
Some lead selfless lives. Others mislead with what is projected as selfless lives. However, both life choices over time define them. One will be remembered as a narrative of hope and moral courage in the face of the toughest, most visceral human temptation. The other will go down in history as a creator of his own misfortune, by blindly believing in his own invincibility.
Alas, what is reported about the Lims and how they had manufactured lies in fictitious accounts in order to feed their endless appetites for a lifestyle and a reputation that many can only dream shows not just a gapping hole in morality, but also a bankruptcy of humanity.
FYI, this is what was reported. “Given the magnitude and extent of the fabricated gains and forged documents, Evan Lim and (his sister)...ought to have known that fictitious swap trades were created to conceal Hin Leong’s losses, interbank transfers were executed to give a false appearance that payment was received in respect of these swap trades, and that documents were forged to support these fictitious swap trades.”
You will have to read the suit and all its allegations to have a feel of that which cannot be denied, and that is, where one’s treasure is, there you will find his heart.
At all times, we are driven by the lust of our nature. No one stands at an untouchable distance from it. When we give in to it, both willingly and unwittingly over time, we transform ourselves eventually to the worst that our nature has designed for us.
Indeed, our humanity cries out for salvation, for redemption from our nature, but our inhumanity accuses us of the weakness in our humanity to make unheeded cries, believing that we can change for the better.
What therefore becomes of us depends on whether we give in to our cries to seek authentic change or we stand on the heap of our perceived achievements to accuse those who humble themselves as failures or underachievers, not knowing their fall from the top comes in many ways, and it doesn’t need to be material bankruptcy; it could be the bankruptcy of the soul.
So, where our treasure is, there is where our heart resides. And the treasure we seek defines us. Some ultimately seek to control us, to take over. Others, for the treasure that requires us to seek with earnest, faithfulness and hope, once found, they aim to transform us. The choice is still ours to make.
