Last Page of Revelation X

From: Modemac <modemac@modemac.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Aug 8, 2001 6:13 PM
Message-ID: <59e3ntsmbbsmhkprrnd5gmcmfof6187n6s@4ax.com>

The Sultan of Brunei project may have to be put on hold. Here's why:

A Whopper of an Auction to pay off Prince's
Creditors in Brunei

Thomas Fuller
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, August 8, 2001

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei In what is perhaps the
final insult for a royal family plagued by financial scandal,
liquidators here are preparing for a six-day auction of chandeliers,
hot tubs, gold-plated light fixtures and thousands of crockery sets
- all ordered but never used by a now disgraced prince and his
business partners.

The auction, which is scheduled to begin Saturday and includes
more than 8,000 lots, will help pay back the creditors of a failed
construction company owned by the prince, Jefri Bolkiah, in a
financial calamity that has dragged down the economy of this tiny
oil sultanate on the northern coast of Borneo.

The irony of the auction is not lost on residents here: Brunei, home
to one of the richest families in the world, is selling crockery to
pay
its debts.

Court documents released last year revealed that Prince Jefri had
personally spent an average of $747,000 per day over a period of
10 years, for a total of $2.725 billion.

It may never emerge in this secretive sultanate exactly what he
bought for that money - as well as what he did with the billions of
dollars of public funds he has been charged with misappropriating
- but the auction has already provided a small window into a lavish
lifestyle of unaccountability.

Listed in the catalogue are what appear to be some very expensive
adult toys: an Airbus A340 flight simulator, a Comanche attack
helicopter simulator and a Formula 1 simulator.

Then there are the 21 warehouses filled with more mundane luxury
goods and furnishings. Brunei residents have been encouraged to
visit the warehouses to rummage through dusty piles of boxes and
crates filled with everything from grand pianos to paintings and
Jacuzzis. There is an entire storeroom dedicated to chandeliers. A
warehouse next door is filled with gym equipment.

"This is unbelievable," said Erin Anderson, a travel agent scouring
a room filled with furniture and light fixtures. "It's like a giant
garage sale. There's some beautiful stuff and some real rubbish."

The auction is being carried out by Smith Hodgkinson, a British
firm called in several months ago to label and organize the 21
warehouses. "It's not the biggest auction we've done," said Neil
Duckworth, a partner in Smith Hodgkinson, "but it's probably the
most eclectic."

Included in the catalogue are more than 3,000 lots of crockery,
silver trays, bowls and tumblers made by Asprey, the London
jeweler that until three years ago was owned by Prince Jefri. Many
of the furnishings and crockery were intended for palaces around
Brunei and hotels developed by the prince's former company,
Amedeo Development Corp.

Organizers of the auction do not rule out the possibility that the
entire inventory could be sold privately before Saturday - if the
price is right. Advertisements in local newspapers caution that the
auction is scheduled to take place from Aug. 11 to 16 "unless
previously sold." Canceling the public sale would be a
disappointment to the thousands of Bruneians who have come to
Bandar Seri Begawan to bid on the items.

Potential buyers of individual items have already put down
deposits of 1,000 Brunei dollars ($560) each, which are
refundable if no purchase is made. With no minimum price to begin
the bargaining, bidders said they were planning to try their luck
with lowball bids.

Lily Yong, a Bruneian who owns a lingerie shop, said that she was
considering putting in a bid for one of the 20 television sets still
in
their original packaging.

"But $50 is too much," she said. "What if it doesn't work?"

By selling everything from silver ice buckets to thousands of tons
of precious teak - symbols of the go-go days of economic excess
- the government and royal family hope to bury the legacy of
billion-dollar embarrassments and white elephants scattered
throughout the country.

During the roaring '90s, the country seemed to be in a perpetual
state of construction, with many of the projects supervised by
Prince Jefri's company.

The scandal surrounding the prince, who was once finance minister
and is accused by the government of misappropriating $15 billion
in public money, has scarred the country and punctured its
economy. Although oil prices remain relatively high, banks are
laying off workers and stores are closing down.

The government has spent a good part of the past year selling the
prince's assets, including his massive yacht and choice properties
in London and other world capitals.

Prince Jefri, the younger brother of Sultan Muda Hassanal
Bolkiah, now divides his time between London and Paris. As part
of an out-of-court settlement with the government last year, the
prince agreed to relinquish his assets and received a
$300,000-a-month allowance.

In April, liquidators auctioned off 40 cars owned by the prince's
former company. They included a Bentley, a Jaguar, a Porsche
and several BMW and Mercedes Benz models.

Other assets have been reshuffled. Prince Jefri once controlled a
string of luxury hotels around the world: the Dorchester in London,
the Plaza Athenee in Paris, the Beverly Hills and Bel-Air hotels in
Los Angeles, and the Palace in New York.

Creditors have tried, and failed, to serve him with summonses in a
multimillion-dollar civil action.

Rather than clarifying the finances of the sultanate, the asset sales
and auctions have served to underline the fact that no one seems
to know what is owned by the government and what is owned by
the royal family in Brunei. With only very limited financial
disclosure, the lines between the privy purse and public purse are
at best blurred.

The country's normally restrained newspapers, which have been
given virtually free rein to report on the excesses of the wayward
prince, run banner headlines asking who owns million-dollar
power plants and water treatment plants.

"Whose $90 million project is this?" was the headline of the News
Express on Monday, referring to an unfinished series of water
treatment plants. In a barometer of the financial opacity in Brunei,
the answer is not officially known.

Of course, for the people who have visited the warehouses this
week, larger financial issues were not the chief concern.

Families perspired in the stuffy warehouses, digging through crates
marked "Made in Italy" and past rows of bidets and gold-plated
hotel fixtures.

No matter how frivolous the purchases, buyers are advised to
have their assets in order come Saturday. Unlike the uncertain
finances of Brunei's national accounts, the rules of the auction are
abundantly clear: immediate payment - and no credit cards.

--
First Online Church of "Bob"
http://www.modemac.com/

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Original file name: Last Page of Revelation X - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:25