A PRO-PAKATAN Harapan (PH) social media influencer has come to Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli’s defence in the wake of former UMNO supreme council member Isham Jalil claiming that it was a sheer lie that fishing vessels are being used on a large scale to smuggle diesel.
For starters, Najib Bakar (@najib_bakar_) reckoned that obviously the Pandan MP was not referring to small fishermen boats belonging to fishermen in the East Coast of Malaysia but big fishing vessels a.k.a. tongkang leased by fish wholesalers.
“I chatted with a friend who is in the shipping industry and he confirmed that what Rafizi has claimed is true! (that the government could have lost RM7 bil-RM8 bil in diesel subsidies a year or an estimated equivalent to 20 million litres daily due to diesel being smuggled out of the border through land and sea ways)” shared Najib in a post on the X platform.
“My friend knows the ins and outs as well as the inner secrets that we don’t know. Anyway, how are we able to see it when transactions happen in the middle of the sea?”
Isham Jalil pun amik kesempatan jadi hero mengecam YB @rafiziramli tentang isu penyeludupan berkait nelayan.
Mula sekali, YB RR tak merujuk kpd nelayan kecil di Pantai Timur perahu tu. Beliau ada tegaskan dlm ucapan itu, boleh dgr semula.
Jd kpd siapa YB Rafizi rujuk?
🧵1/n pic.twitter.com/HK0yEnMaE0
— Najib Bakar (@najib_bakar_) June 20, 2024
Divulging further details, Najib said the so-called mid-sea Malaysian barge cartel “does not catch fish but operates as a subsidised diesel merchant”.
“Their call sign is ‘seahorse’ and they communicate via radio. They sell subsidised diesel fuel to foreign fishing barges and bunker vessels,” revealed the social media influencer.
Mid-sea barter trade
“One barge can fit 100,000-300,000 litres of diesel. Transfers take place in the middle of the sea using a hose. The selling price is around RM2.50/litre to RM3/litre. Diesel price in Singapore is currently around 90 US cents/litre (RM4.20).”
In exchange for the illicit diesel trade, the ‘Malaysian barge cartel’ “will be rewarded with fish and cash by the foreign fishermen”.
“The profit from diesel is already there. Then the fish is sold expensively in Malaysia. It’s two-pronged profits. Hooray! But of course, not all Malaysian fishing barges engage such work. This is the work of a cartel.”
According to Najib, there are also Malaysian bunker vessels that buy and use the smuggled diesel, of which his friend shared some company names with him “but I can’t write here because it’s sensitive’.
“Some people wondered how the Malaysian barges could stop to meet the big ships in the sea without being detected. Tracking such ship is not like tracking an airplane,” explained Najib.
“The AIS (Automatic Identification System) system that sends the ship’s location to other entities can be shut down at any time by the skipper. And it can just deviate from the maritime route.”
To justify the colossal amount of diesel smuggled out of Malaysia in recent times, Najib said diesel sales in the country has spiked 77% from 6.1 billion litres (2019) to 10.8 billion litres (2023) whereas the number of diesel vehicles has only risen by 3%.
“That surely doesn’t make sense.at all,” he added. – June 21, 2024
