by Ganesh Sahathevan
On January 12, 2009, the Department of State announced that sanctions will be imposed on 13 individuals and three private companies for their involvement in the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network (www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/01/113774.htm)
Sanctions have been imposed under the following statutes and against the following persons:
Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act (NPPA): Selim Alguadis, Kursad Zafer Cire, Muhammad Nasim ud Din, EKA Elektronik Kontrol Aletleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., ETI Elektroteknik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Muhammad Farooq, Paul Griffin, Peter Griffin, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Shamsul Bahrin bin Rukiban, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, and Shah Hakim Shahnazim Zain
Export-Import Bank Act (EXIM): Selim Alguadis, Kursad Zafer Cire, Muhammad Nasim ud Din, EKA Elektronik Kontrol Aletleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., ETI Elektroteknik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Muhammad Farooq, Daniel Geiges, Paul Griffin, Peter Griffin, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Gotthard Lerch, Shamsul Bahrin bin Rukiban, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, Gerhard Wisser, and Shah Hakim Shahnazim Zain
Executive Order 12938: Selim Alguadis, Kursad Zafer Cire, Muhammad Nasim ud Din, EKA Elektronik Kontrol Aletleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., ETI Elektroteknik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Muhammad Farooq, Daniel Geiges, Paul Griffin, Peter Griffin, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Gotthard Lerch, Shamsul Bahrin bin Rukiban, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, Tradefin Engineering, Gerhard Wisser, and Shah Hakim Shahnazim Zain
Executive Order 13382: Selim Alguadis, Kursad Zafer Cire, Muhammad Farooq, Daniel Geiges, Paul Griffin, Peter Griffin, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Gotthard Lerch, Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir, and Gerhard Wisser
Shah Hakim Shahnazim is CEO and controlling shareholder of the Malaysian public company SCOMI Group Bhd. A subsidiary of that company, Scomi Precision Engineering , was an important part of Khan's network. The manager in charge of SCOMI Precision , Shamsul Bahrin bin Rukiban is also among those listed.( See http://www.asahi.com/english/world/TKY200410140154.html & http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E3D8153DF93BA25751C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all & http://www.nti.org/f_wmd411/f2i7.html & http://www.comesatradehub.com/company_details.asp?member_id=5734)
Shah Hakim Shahnazim and his partners control SCOMI via a 34.3% stake in that company held via a private company , Kaspadu Sdn Bhd. His main partner in the company is one Kamaludin bin Abdullah, whose father Abdullah Badawi is Prime Minister of Malaysia.
(See http://www.scomigroup.com.my/investor/annual_PDF/SG/2007/analysis_shareholding.pdf)
Past partners in the company , at the relevant time , included the wife of BSA Tahir, who himself served as a director of that company.
Investigators have said that Tahir, a Sri Lankan who came to Malaysia in the mid-90's by way of Dubai, may have been sent by Mr. Khan to secretly procure nuclear parts. ( see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E3D8153DF93BA25751C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all & http://www.nti.org/f_wmd411/f2i7.html)
Tahir's family was closely connected with Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader living in Pakistan, who had helped the nuclear and missile establishments of Pakistan in their clandestine procurement and shipping activities. The Dawood group is well-entrenched in Singapore and Malaysia. Its activities in Singapore include: Investment in real estate; a shipping company (name not known) and hawala operations to South India. Among the hawala operators of Singapore allegedly associated with Dawood is a company called the Abdul Gafoor and Company. Before Musharraf visited India in 2001 for the Agra summit, the ISI secretly sent away Dawood to Malaysia through Singapore with the help of one Rakesh Tulshiyan and Shahid Sohail. He stayed in Malaysia as a guest of Tahir's family. He returned to Karachi later. Dawood is believed to have extensive mining interests in Malaysia from where he and his group indulge in the smuggling of silver into India via Nepal.
(www.saag.org/common/uploaded_files/paper931.html)
Dawood's involvement in the financing of terrorism has been reported previously-see http://www.terrorfinance.org/the_terror_finance_blog/2008/11/dawood-ibrahim-and-the-let-jihadists-the-mumbai-underworld-and-terrorism.html
Sec. 6303 (2) of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act (NPPA)
provides that the person listed may not, directly or indirectly -
(A) commence any line of business in the United States in
which the person was not engaged as of the date of the order;
or
(B) conduct business from any location in the United States
at which the person did not conduct business as of the date of
the order.
( see http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/22C72.txt)
In addition pursuant to Executive Order 12938, Section 4 (b)
no department or agency of the United States Government may
procure, or enter into any contract for the procurement of, any goods or
services from any foreign person described in subsection (a) of this
section. It is also provided that the Secretary of the Treasury shall prohibit the importation
into the United States of products produced by that foreign person.
SCOMI conducts much of its business outside Malaysia, and has offices in the USA-see
http://www.scomigroup.com.my/investor/annual_PDF/SG/2006/Corporate_Directory.pdf
It is difficult, to see how, in practical terms, the acts of the company might be divorced from the sanctions imposed on its Chief Executive Shah Hakim. Consequently, SCOMI's business activities may be significantly curtailed.
It is also difficult to see how his acts might be divorced from the business interests he holds jointly with Kamaluddin Abdullah, the Malaysian Prime Minister's son.
A number of US institutional investors are listed among SCOMI's largest shareholders . These may be required to divest of their shareholdings for they could be construed as being involved in the financing of the activities in question by the person/s listed. Such a divestment would adversely affect both men's joint shareholding in the company. (See http://www.scomigroup.com.my/investor/annual_PDF/SG/2007/analysis_shareholding.pdf)
Given the above, the sanctions imposed on AQ Khan and his associates are likely to adversely affect the interests of the Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi. While Badawi is due to retire in March 2009, the tribal and dynastic nature of Malaysian politics will ensure that his supporters and he remain a force in Malaysian politics. He is also likely to remain influential among the leaders of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conferences (OIC) which he chaired from 2003-2006.
These sanctions have therefore the effect (probably unintended) of putting on notice anyone , including heads of state, who might support any type of activity that might be deemed to be in breach of internationally accepted norms of what constitutes acts in defiance of nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and indeed terrorist activity .
In this regard it should be noted that a number of Muslim countries were, and remain in support of the Pakistani nuclear project , better known amongst themselves as the Muslim or Islamic bomb project.( see for example http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/a_blind_eye_to_the_islamic_bomb_130413)
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