Company owners marry four wives to build cartel empire for govt tender bids - MyCC

UALA LUMPUR - More than 500 companies are on Malaysian Competition Commission’s (MyCC) 'radar' for allegedly building ‘cartels’ to bid for government project tenders.

Among the modus operandi was for the company owner to marry four wives so that they could build their empires, allowing them to use the names of their wives and wives' relatives as proxies.

MyCC chief executive officer Iskandar Ismail said the companies involved were detected trying to manipulate the tender offers.

"Among the modus operandi is that these people conspire with each other and submit tender bids to (for example) 50 companies at a time.

“After that, they will fill up the required forms together and go for site visits together... if the letter contains a spelling error, it will be reflected on all the other forms as they used the same printer.

"So these people will 'determine' who is the winner (by agreeing on the tender price) and then distribute among themselves as if the government tender is their 'property'," he said in an interview on the Niaga Awani programme entitled 'Jangan Duga Taring MyCC’, yesterday.

Iskandar said one of the ways they used to increase the number of companies that only acted as proxies was to marry multiple wives.

"There are company owners who marry four so that they can build their empires where 'A' (company) will be held by the first father-in-law, company 'B' will be held by the second father-in-law, company C will be owned by the sister-in-law, company D will be held by the nephews while the other companies are held by their wives.

"This is like creating an empire with 50 companies (for example) bidding together," he said.

He stressed that the government was opening tenders to qualified parties with the aim of getting the best company that can offer quality services at a reasonable and competitive price.

However, the action of these companies only created an illusion that their price offer was the best, affecting the opportunities of other companies that were truly capable.

Besides the fake government contract bids, Iskandar said the commission was also monitoring activities involving cartel companies related to food and agriculture supplies.

However, he said that there were constraints as the investigation process might take longer as the commission needed to collect solid evidence before presenting it to the commission. - AWANI