☕️ Yes - Najib is in prison, receiving 'very special' treatment, according to former prisoner

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

As of the third quarter of last year, there were 25,311 unsold new properties valued at RM17.4 bil, as disclosed in the Dewan Rakyat. These unsold properties represent approximately 19.4% of the total 130,753 newly launched units across the country. This data, provided by the Housing and Local Government Ministry, is based on information from the National Property Information Centre (Napic). So, if you’re looking for a property in 2024, this may just be your year.

It’s the tax season, and when you come clean on your past financial sins, the Man will be happy. The Inland Revenue Board (LHDN) has approved 72,534 voluntary tax declarations worth RM652.5 mil (almost RM9,000 per individual), of which RM284 mil have been collected as of February 29, 2024. The government is running PKPS 2.0, a voluntary disclosure programme, as one initiative to expand the number of taxpayers and encourage tax compliance to increase the country’s revenue. PKPS2.0 basically offers a zero per cent penalty offer for voluntary disclosures made between June 6, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Just to scare you a little — the amount of additional taxes and penalties from the results of auditing throughout 2022 and 2023 were RM8.2 bil and RM6.2 bil, respectively. So IRB may just be knocking on your door if you’ve been naughty.

Ko Muang Phet, an extraordinary albino buffalo under the ownership of Damrongsak Morakot in Phetchaburi province, recently grabbed headlines with its sale for a staggering THB18 mil (approximately RM2.3 mil). Renowned for its striking appearance and massive size, this buffalo is celebrated for its exceptional breeding capabilities, with 90% of its offspring inheriting the albino trait. This makes it a highly valued asset in the buffalo breeding industry, as the majority of its calves are born albino. Despite being only around five years old and towering at an impressive height of 180cm, Ko Muang Phet has consistently dominated competitions, earning the esteemed title of Thailand’s top giant breeding buffalo.

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

The green wave has smoked to high gears

• New solar incentives for the rakyat - Deputy PM cum Energy Transition Minister Fadillah Yusof has launched the Solar for Rakyat Incentive Scheme (SolaRIS) to encourage the public’s participation in renewable energy generation. Under SolaRIS, below are the newly announced special incentives:

  • Additional 100 megawatts (MW) quota under the People's Net Energy Metering (NEM) Program, bringing the allocated quota under NEM to up to 350MW;

  • A rebate of RM1,000/kWac up to a maximum of RM4,000 will be given to new NEM applicants who submit NEM applications to the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Malaysia on or after April 1 this year.

  NEM is one of the options for you to generate electricity from your own solar PV system and offset or reduce your electricity bills. This system is designed to provide you credit for any excess solar energy you generate. It is then used to offset your next electricity bill.

  On another related news, Petronas’ clean energy arm Gentari Sdn Bhd agreed to form a consortium that consists of solar industry players who are qualified to be awarded contracts in the future. This move was made to help the local players in the solar industry.

• ST to streamline charging points application process - According to The Edge, most public electric vehicles (EV) chargers in Malaysia are unlicensed, mainly due to Tenaga Nasional Berhad's (TNB) new requirement that each charging site needs to have its own TNB electricity meter and Energy Commission (ST) public distribution licence. According to ST CEO Abdul Razib Dawood, because of this, ST is in talks with Putrajaya to exempt condominium owners from having a distributor licence to install electric vehicle charging bays (EVCB). ST is working hard to reduce the red tape while not compromising safety.

• Perodua to produce affordable EV by 2025 - MITI Minister Tengku Zafrul has revealed that Perodua has been chosen as the local car manufacturer to produce affordable EV under the New Industrial Master Plan 2030 (NIMP2030) by 2025. One interesting fact is that 2025 is also the year that the RM100,000 price cap for imported EVs under MITI’s Franchise AP policy expires. If the price floor is removed, Perodua will have difficulty competing with China’s car brands such as BYD, GWM and even Chery.

Najib in the limelight

• Najib the ‘chess grandmaster’
  Regarding SRC International’s RM5.58 bil civil suit against Najib Razak, SRC International Sdn Bhd’s former director, Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi, revealed that Najib Razak is not a pawn in what has happened within the company but a “chess grandmaster” in the scheme of things. Shahrol told the court that SRC International’s board of directors was mainly a puppet awaiting instructions from Najib via his proxy, Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil.

• Najib’s ‘very special’ jail treatment
  At the moment, Najib Razak has been in prison since 2022 for his conviction of misappropriating SRC International’s RM42 mil funds. But, is he really in prison though? The answer is yes and no. According to preacher Wan Ji Wan Hussin, recently released from the Kajang prison, he shared that the former PM is indeed in jail (Wan Ji saw Najib from afar) but receiving ‘very special treatment’. But how special? Wan Ji said that Najib does not have to wear the prisoner garb and instead can wear normal clothes. Najib was also housed in a ‘special block’ in the prison. The statement by Wan Ji reminded us how drug lord Pablo Escobar was then ‘imprisoned’ in a lavish prison dubbed La Catedral.

Transportation stuff

• Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced that Putrajaya is open to extending the RM50.27 bil East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project to the Thailand border. The move is mooted to increase economic cooperation with our regional neighbours plus, ECRL is also a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

• The 30-year monopoly of Puspakom in the vehicle inspection services sector will come to an end as the Road Transport Department (JPJ) will open the application for a license to become a vehicle inspection service provider (VISPs). Puspakom is not a government entity but a monopoly business 100% owned by DRB Hicom Bhd. DRB Hicom is indirectly owned by Syed Mokhtar Albukhary via a company called Etika Strategi.

• As expected, the Malaysian Government has announced a two-day toll holiday on April 8 and 9 in conjunction with the Aidilfitri celebrations. This toll holiday will only apply to Class 1 vehicles (private vehicles) and the Government is expected to spend RM37.6 mil on this goody.

Shorts

1. The high-value goods tax (HVGT) will not be implemented yet on May 1 as announced during the Budget 2024 speech. This is because the Ministry of Finance (MoF) decided not to introduce HVGT in the current session of the Parliament. The next Parliament session is in June.

2. Amanah Saham Nasional Bhd (ASNB) has announced a total income distribution payout of RM2 bil for the financial year ending March 31, 2024, for Amanah Saham Bumiputera 2 (ASB2) and Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM). The distributions of ASB 2 and ASM translate to total returns of 5.25% and 4.75%, respectively, both outperforming the benchmark of Maybank’s 12-month fixed deposit at 2.84%.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

UN-appointed expert: “Reasonable grounds” Israel is committing genocide
A UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, issued a report (view the 25-page report here) that there are clear indicators that Israel has violated 3 of the 5 acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention. She had found “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met”. 

Genocide is a specific legal term and as Albanese’s report is titled “Anatomy of a Genocide”, it suggests some of the legal criteria have been fulfilled. She highlighted the three elements which point to a possible genocide:

• Killing members of a group

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (i.e. destruction of life-saving infrastructure, including hospitals and agricultural land)

The other 2 acts under the convention are imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Learn: UN on Genocide

These UN special rapporteurs, whilst tasked by the UN to examine and advise on specific situations, are independent of it.

Interesting AI news ahead

Amazon double down on OpenAI competitor
6 months after making a USD1.25 bil investment in Anthropic, a competitor to ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Amazon has exercised its option to bring its total investment to USD4 bil, adding USD2.75 bil. Anthropic was started in 2021 by a group of researchers from OpenAI - at that time, many of the researchers were concerned about OpenAI’s growing relationship with Microsoft. 

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has sold two-thirds of its 8% stake in Anthropic for USD884 mil, which it bought for USD500 mil. Good gains there to compensate its creditors that it has scammed. Also yesterday, a US judge sentenced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison on seven criminal counts over the collapse of FTX. Sam and his inner circle of executives funnelled customers’ funds amounting to USD11 bil for their own benefit.

Competitors coming after NVIDIA’s secret sauce - its CUDA software
It’s one thing to build a tool, it’s another thing for the tool to be easily used. In the case of NVIDIA, its dominance today, which seemed to have been built overnight, was conceived in the 2000s, when it released its CUDA software with a global community of 3 mil developers using it. CUDA has made it easy for developers by easily linking NVIDIA’s graphic processing units (GPUs) to any AI applications a developer wants to run, no matter how complex. 

This is not lost on on NVIDIA’s competitors - Reuters reported that a group of them including Qualcomm, Google and Intel have quietly grouped together in a consortium named UXL  Foundation to develop a similar open-source software as CUDA to eat into NVIDIA’s economic moat (this term was popularised by Warren Buffett).
Read: EXCLUSIVE: Behind the plot to break NVIDIA’s grip on AI by targeting software 

AI weapons that could have as great impact on warfare as atomic bomb
Silicon Valley defense tech startup founder and CEO told FT that his startup is working on products that have the “capabilities that give us the ability to swiftly win any war we are forced to enter” and when asked if it could be as decisive as the atomic bomb in WWII, he replied: “We have ideas for what they are”. All of Anduril’s tech operates autonomously and runs on its AI platform called Lattice.

Luckey elaborated that as weapons become more autonomous, it makes AI weapon systems key to military deterrence as they show adversaries that these weapons do not cost that much money and don’t cost human life. Luckey might not be a household name for most people, but his previous startup could be one - Oculus. He founded the virtual reality company when he was 20 in 2012 and sold it 2 years later to Facebook for USD2 bil. The success of Anduril has sparked a wave of defense startups chasing after a slice of the USD842 bil US defense budget. 

Shorts 

1. Prosecutors seeking jail for female footballer kissing incident
   Spanish prosecutors are seeking a 2.5-year jail term for disgraced former Spanish football chief Luis Rubiales, who is facing trial for kissing Spain female midfielder Jenni Hermoso on the lips (watch the incident here) against her will during the award ceremony after Spain beat England to win the Women’s World Cup final. The kiss took place in front of the world’s cameras, sparking outrage. In Spain, a nonconsensual kiss can be classed as sexual assault. 

   ‘One kiss is all it takes’ - Dua Lipa

2. Baltimore bridge collapse to cost multi-billion dollar insurance loss
   The cargo ship that crashed into the bridge in Baltimore could cost insurers claims of up to USD4 bil, which makes the tragedy a record shipping insurance loss, surpassing the USD2 bil record insured losses of luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia that capsized in 2012 in Italy (view the capsized cruise here). It’s estimated that it would cost the government USD600 mil to rebuild the bridge. As much as it’s a big damage, the ship’s insurers are also somewhat insured by reinsurers, with approximately 80 reinsurers providing cover to the ship’s insurers, effectively spreading the claims.
   Learn: What is reinsurance

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. The name’s Bond, Techbond. Follow Frankie from the FAQ Show to understand what the RM214.2 mil market cap Techbond Bhd does and its investment potential. Check out previous interviews including the likes of Farm Fresh Bhd founder Loi Tuan Ee and prominent economist Prof. Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

2. China’s Xi Jinping on Wednesday met more than a dozen US CEOs including Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), Raj Subramanian (FedEx) and Stephen Scwarzman (Blackstone Group) to reassure foreign investors on the importance of the Chinese market and China’s future.

3. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back for another Bad Boys movie!