Word: mokhtar
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...Mokhtar now administers his far-flung holdings entirely through nominees: associates say his name hasn't appeared in Kuala Lumpur's Registry of Companies since he progressed beyond his first cattle and rice trading ventures in the 1980s. Still, there is no mistaking that he is the 76-year-old Prime Minister's new favorite son, and to many of those following his sudden rise, the story sounds all too familiar. (Mahathir did not respond to TIME's interview requests; Mokhtar declined to be interviewed.) Since the 1997 financial crisis, Malaysia has been treated by the international financial community...
...many observers that argument is harder to believe because of the Mahathir-Mokhtar connection, which looks very much like the so-called "crony capitalism" that stained Malaysia's economic credentials in the first place. In the 1990s, Mahathir's administration showered huge government contracts and favorable loans on a select few businessmen. The policy, which was designed to create a group of model entrepreneurs among the country's majority ethnic Malays, was criticized at home and abroad as opaque, unfair, hugely wasteful and largely ineffective. The 1997 crisis hit Mahathir's handpicked favorites particularly hard; their inefficiently run and deeply...
...bullish as some observers are about the country's new direction, plenty of reservations remain. Mokhtar's detractors say he appears to be just the latest rider on Malaysia's crony-go-round. "Mokhtar is enjoying a rapid rise like Halim Saad and Tajudin Ramli and is closely aligned with Mahathir," says Terence Gomez, who teaches economics at Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya. The issue has roiled the usually placid waters of Malaysia's press. Writing in the business weekly The Edge, journalist P. Gunasegeram penned a column about Mokhtar titled, "When One Man Gets Too Much." Gunasegeram chronicles...
...neighbors?has abandoned his cherished head start program for Malays. "He definitely wants the emergence of the Malay capitalist," says Megat Najmuddin Khas, who heads the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance. "There is nothing wrong with the policy," Megat argues?as long as the right people are chosen. And Mokhtar has "better credentials" than most, says Megat...
...supporters and associates, that is the critical issue. Mokhtar is a shrewd, self-made entrepreneur. "The man comes from the school of hard knocks. He wasn't an accountant who had everything handed to him on a silver platter like the others," says one close adviser. "His father was a cattle farmer. He took a loan from the government in the '70s to buy his own trucks to carry cattle from one state to the next to get a higher price. Then he started transporting rice in the same trucks and bought his own paddy fields...