In the wake of the newly revealed RCI report and the uproar it has unleashed, another chapter of the Tabung Haji scandal demands scrutiny.

Beyond the depositors’ losses lies the story of how its corporate arm crushed the very Bumiputera businesses it was meant to uplift.

The RCI may only be the tip of the iceberg. What emerges is a picture of an organisation where deception was not an aberration, but a culture, one con after another, carried out behind the sanctity of Tabung Haji’s name.

By all appearances, it was supposed to be a noble venture. A Malaysian flagship project. An oil and gas deal that would showcase Bumiputera capability and reward those who dared to dream.

Instead, it became a scandalous execution. Not just of a contract. Not just of a company. But of the livelihoods, integrity and trust of Malaysians — especially the Malay-Muslim community — who never saw it coming.

This is the story of how TH Heavy Engineering Berhad (THHE), a company once under the control of Lembaga Tabung Haji, used the cloak of religious sanctity to destroy vendors, and leave behind a trail of unpaid bills, broken spirits and unanswered questions. A betrayal so complete, so morally offensive, that it warrants not just moral outrage — but legal retribution.

And yet no one has been held accountable.

Hidden agenda

Let’s not pretend this was just about business. The agenda was always set, the only question was who would benefit, and when. From the moment Ramunia Fabricators rebranded into TH Heavy Engineering (THHE), the path was already paved for failure. The so-called Bumiputera agenda became both a shield and a scapegoat, first to justify its survival, then to excuse its collapse.

The selection of board members and key stakeholders wasn’t strategic. It was sabotage in slow motion. Tabung Haji may plead ignorance — then and now — but the truth is, the DNA of this disaster was imprinted from the start. This happened under the watch of Najib Razak and Rosmah Mansor.

The chairman? Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim of Baling. His fingerprints are everywhere, from the boardroom to the burn site. Free or not, the legacy is inescapable.

How the con began: A deal turned death trap

In 2014, Globalmariner Offshore Services (GMOS) — a small Bumiputera-led engineering outfit — entered a joint venture with THHE to acquire and upgrade the FPSO vessel “Deep Producer 1” for JX Nippon’s Layang oilfield. It was the brains and sweat. THHE, the brawn and capital — or so they claimed.

The joint venture set out to deliver a world-class FPSO for the Layang oilfield project. But Deep Producer 1, a vessel originally purchased for US82.5 million — with another RM602 million poured into it — was never used. Around RM1 billion in value left to rot in a foreign dockyard, while dreams, investments, and trust quietly sank with it.

But the JV was built on sand. While GMOS owned 20%, THHE controlled 80% and the board. That control would become a weapon.

Despite investing heavily, the minority shareholder was sidelined. Vendors hired to upgrade the vessel weren’t paid. The FPSO sat idle in a Dubai shipyard as invoices piled up. Eventually, the ship was sold as scrap. All the value — gone.

Why the JV never used the ship

The Layang oilfield contract was initially meant to be executed using Deep Producer 1. But THHE, already financially distressed, could not raise sufficient funds to complete the FPSO conversion. It defaulted on payments, mismanaged vendor contracts, and allowed the project to stall.

THHE secretly negotiated a novation of the contract to Yinson. With no contract and no funding, the JV had no basis to deploy the ship. The asset was abandoned, while insiders prepared to profit.

Yet here’s the twist: instead of pushing the project through, THHE secretly planned to transfer the oil contract to another company, Yinson Holdings — in a RM374 million deal. A deal that completely excluded the original stakeholders.

And who greenlit this betrayal? The same THHE board packed with Tabung Haji representatives: then-CEO of Tabung Haji Johan Abdullah, CFO Rozaida Omar, and directors including Nor Badli Munawir. These were the people who signed off on financial statements that even external auditors refused to endorse for years.

The fraud: How Tabung Haji profited while everyone else burned

Before the novation deal to Yinson was made public, Tabung Haji — through its investment arm — bought 5% of Yinson’s shares in April 2017. Just in time to ride the price surge that would follow the Layang FPSO announcement.

Insider knowledge? Without a doubt. TH board members were directors of THHE. They knew the deal was coming. They knew Yinson was the next big winner.

And so, while vendors remained unpaid, TH quietly cashed out its Yinson shares by 2018 — booking profits off a deal it helped engineer behind closed doors.

Let’s be blunt: this was not shrewd investing. This was betrayal with a songkok on.

And steering the ship through all this? Suhaimi Badrul Jamil — CEO of THHE from 2016 to 2020, and previously its CFO. It was under his watch that the RM374 million novation deal with Yinson was sealed.

He publicly claimed the deal would satisfy creditors and “regularise” THHE’s PN17 status. Instead, it became a smokescreen. THHE’s largest creditor and joint-venture partner — got nothing.

The promised equity instruments never materialised. Vendors were left unpaid. And while Suhaimi talked up turnarounds, the company spiralled into deeper debt and delay. Then in 2020, he quietly resigned “to pursue other interests.” No accountability. No restitution. Just another executive who left the wreckage behind while others were crushed beneath it.

The court steps in — and the truth unravels

In July 2023, the High Court finally delivered a damning judgment: THHE had wrongfully breached its JV, and was insolvent since 2016. The court awarded the JV partner US$63.4 million in damages. Yet when time came to pay up, THHE pulled its final trick — it declared insolvency.

But even that wasn’t done in good faith.

In late 2023, THHE’s directors initiated a voluntary liquidation and appointed their own “friendly” liquidators — the same guys who had advised them during their failed restructuring. This wasn’t liquidation. This was a cover-up operation.

The court was not fooled. In June 2025, the judge converted THHE’s voluntary liquidation into a compulsory one, replacing the liquidators with truly independent professionals. In his judgment, he highlighted:

• Questionable solvency declarations.

• Suspicious inter-company loans from Tabung Haji’s successor company, Urusharta Jamaah Sdn Bhd.

• A pattern of transactions designed to avoid paying creditors.

In short: the directors tried to bury the truth. And the court stopped them.

The victims: Malay entrepreneurs left to rot.

Bumiputera vendors — companies who delivered real work, issued real invoices, and employed real Malaysian workers — were left in the dust.

Under THHE’s 2017 scheme of arrangement, creditors were forced to take a 50% haircut. Only 75% of the remaining debt was paid in cash. The rest? Islamic convertible preference shares — in a company that never recovered.

The RM374 million that Yinson paid to THHE for the Layang FPSO contract was meant to compensate creditors — a final chance to make things right under a court-sanctioned scheme. Instead, it became a bonfire. A few creditors were partially paid, but many got nothing. 

The promised ICPS equity? Never delivered. The bulk of the cash was burnt through without explanation, vanishing into “operating expenses” while the company spiralled deeper into insolvency. But here’s the real question: why did Yinson pay so much in the first place? Why RM374 million for a contract that — even at full extension — would only yield just under RM900 million? 

Why not form a joint venture, share the risk? Why a full novation, unless the goal was to wipe the slate clean, lock the JV partner out, and reroute the spoils? And if THHE had that kind of cash in hand, how could they justify not paying the JV partner a single sen? 

No proper records. No accountability. The High Court was forced to intervene. That money, meant to rescue businesses, was likely siphoned to reward insiders — a robbery buried beneath religious robes.

It was theft, sanctified in legalese.

These companies collapsed. Employees lost jobs. Some owners never recovered financially. Many blame themselves. But they were up against something more insidious: a public institution weaponising religion to commit corporate malpractice.

These were not just vendors. They were mostly high-skilled Bumiputera engineering firms — crushed, unpaid, and discarded while THHE burned through RM374 million in cash. 

Eight years have passed. Some of the Bumiputera contractors ruined by the Deep Producer 1 betrayal are gone — their businesses destroyed, their founders either buried or broken. No one talks about them. No one even remembers. Like so many scandals in this country, this one was quietly swept aside.

And make no mistake — the scale of this debacle rivals that of 1MDB. But today’s PKR-led government is still silent. It is because too many of them now share the same bed as the very UMNO warlords who orchestrated this mess?

And where is Tabung Haji today?

Let us not forget: THHE was a Tabung Haji company. When it was failing, the LTH board knew. When it plotted the novation to Yinson, LTH profited. When the ship was sold for scrap, LTH walked away unscathed.

This isn’t the first time Tabung Haji has been caught in the web of dubious dealings.

• Around the same time, THHE’s Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) scandal unravelled. A RM738.9 million contract to build three Offshore Patrol Vessels — including OPV1 Tun Fatimah — ended in disaster. OPV1 was delivered three years late after the government injected RM152.6 million in bailout funds. OPV2 and OPV3 were eventually scrapped. Contractors were never paid. Another national project, cloaked in religious and patriotic branding, reduced to rubble under Tabung Haji’s oversight — and no one has been held accountable.
• In 2018, the government revealed that Tabung Haji had accumulated billions in losses from dubious real estate and plantation deals — many linked to politically-connected individuals.
• In 2019, TH offloaded underperforming assets worth RM10 billion to a Finance Ministry SPV, Urusharta Jamaah, in a controversial rescue plan.
• In July 2025, its TH Plantations Bhd CEO, Mohamed Zainurin Mohamed Zain, was placed on garden leave after allegations surfaced of RM5.1 million in unauthorised payments and internal governance breaches. He was removed from operational duties pending an audit investigation.

What’s clear is this: Tabung Haji has been misused by a string of cronies, cloaked in religion, to funnel money, reward allies, and punish critics.

In the case of Sime Darby, when their former CEO Ahmad Zubir Murshid and his cronies caused massive losses through shady payments and project mismanagement, the company stood up and did the right thing.

They sued their own. They dragged their ex-top guns to court. And guess what? The High Court ordered those men to pay back over RM350 million. Personal accountability. Corporate integrity. That’s how justice is supposed to work.

Now contrast that with THHE. After being ordered to pay nearly RM289 million to its JV partner for breaching a joint venture, what did THHE’s board — packed with Tabung Haji-linked directors — do? They ran. They tried to quietly liquidate the company, appoint their own insiders as liquidators, and bury the evidence. No lawsuit. No admissions. No decency.

The difference? Sime Darby confronted its rot. THHE tried to incinerate the files and escape through the back door. Had it not been for a few brave creditors fighting back, justice would’ve been hijacked. We’re lucky the judge didn’t blink.

But the question remains — why must justice depend on who dares to fight?

No more hiding behind the kaabah

Enough.

For too long, institutions like Tabung Haji have hidden behind the sanctity of Islam to commit economic violence against their own people. They use the haj fund, the sacred pilgrimage account of millions of Malaysians, as a piggy bank — while presenting themselves as pious stewards of public trust.

Ask yourself: if Tabung Haji runs on scams like this, isn’t every sen of dividend they declare — and every ringgit they use to subsidise a pilgrim’s haj — really wang haram, blood money tainting what should be the holiest journey of a Muslim’s life?

To the entrepreneurs who lost everything: join forces. Form a class action lawsuit. Force these cowards into the light.

It is time for Malaysians — Muslims especially — to wake up.

To policymakers: reform Tabung Haji’s governance. Demand transparency. End political appointments. Make public the full audit trail of all TH-linked investments.

To the rakyat: question everything. Just because it wears a songkok doesn’t mean it speaks for you.

Religion is not a business licence

THHE may be gone. But its sins linger.

What happened to the vendors is not just a corporate scandal. It is a religious betrayal.

Because when you wear Islam on your sleeve — when you claim to manage pilgrimage savings, to steward public wealth for the ummah — and yet engage in fraud, insider trading, and deception?

You are not a trustee. You are a traitor.