KUALA LUMPUR – Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings Sdn Bhd (GISB Holdings), the company facing allegations of child and religious exploitation, has a huge multinational presence.
At one time controversial because of its roots in the banned Al-Arqam movement, it is again in the spotlight over horrific discoveries uncovered by police in recent raids on 20 welfare homes in two states where 402 children were believed to have been physically and sexually abused under the guise of supposed religious treatment.
GISB Holdings has denied these allegations and as authorities continue to investigate the matter, Scoop takes a look at the corporate figures in the company, the history behind its formation and its controversies.
Who is in GISB Holdings?
Based on information on its corporate website, the private Muslim conglomerate boasts an impressive global presence, with its businesses spanning convenience stores, restaurants and bakeries operating branches in Asia, Europe, Africa and Australasia.
In August, it was reported that the group’s network consists of 415 business outlets across 20 countries, with 5,346 staff employed under its 25 subsidiaries in a diverse range of various sectors, including biotechnology, maritime, travel and security services.
Among its global assets worth around RM325 million are a desert oasis offering recreational activities in Saudi Arabia, accommodations in Turkiye and a hotel in Sarajevo.
According to Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) documents, GISB Holdings was incorporated in October 2013, with its nature of business involving “investment holding, manufacturing and general trading”.
The company’s RM2.98 million share capital is currently distributed between four individuals, with the group’s former CEO Lokman Hakim Pfordten owning the majority stake of RM1.26 million shares while retaining a directorship position.
Other directors and shareholders are Hasnan Abd Hamid and Nik Hazani Nik Mohammad, who hold an RM760,800 stake each. The duo are listed as the company’s chief operating officer (COO) and Middle East representative, respectively, on its website.
The remaining 6.71% of the company’s shares are held by one Mohd Rasidi Abdullah, who is understood to have previously been a GISB Holdings executive officer, based on social media posts by an account affiliated with the company.
GISB Holdings’ last filed its annual report for its financial year ending on December 31, 2021, with the report and its accompanying financial statements circulated in November last year.
In delivering its basis for a qualified opinion, company auditors Ismawadee & Co noted that they were unable to review the group presentation of the company as its subsidiaries had not prepared their audited accounts.
For the record, a qualified auditors’ report indicates certain issues, potentially regarding a limitation in the auditor’s work scope or a disagreement with management on accounting policies.
Not the first time GISB Holdings’ entities are under scrutiny
In June 2015, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) reported that a “mysterious farm” on “isolated” property linked with Global Ikhwan Sdn Bhd was causing concern among nearby residents in Mangrove Mountain, a suburb in the Australian State of New South Wales.
The farm, which was said to be built on land earmarked for an international agricultural boarding school, was believed to have housed up to 50 people, including women and children.
While the Gosford City Council had reportedly investigated the farm earlier that year and identified “several unauthorised structures”, a Global Ikhwan “member” confirmed with ABC News that goats and cattle were being reared on the site.
The individual, however, “downplayed” the number of people living on the farm.
Checks by Scoop on SSM found that Global Ikhwan, incorporated in 2008 with an RM100,000 share capital, was dissolved in 2017.
About a year prior to its dissolution, the company recorded several letters under Section 308 of the Companies Act 1965 on the registrar’s power to strike-off defunct companies.
However, another company named on the farm’s signboard, GISB Australia Pty Ltd, is deemed by the Australian Business Register to still be active. The Australian company is listed as the holding company of two other businesses – Butcher Ikhwan Australia and Ikhwan Cafe Sydney.
Continuing global expansion
One notable location on GISB Holdings’ map of branches is the Russian city of Kazan.
While the company’s website does not state its nature of business there, the International Islamic Trade and Tourism Expo (IITE) previously shared details on cooperations between GISB Holdings and the International Association of Islamic Business (IAIB) in Russia.
IITE, in a Facebook post on June 15 this year, said GISB Holdings had forged a “strategic partnership” with the Russian chapter of IAIB to “strengthen the existing network” between GISB Holdings and IAIB.
GISB Holdings’ ties with Russia can also be traced back to 2019, when several of its advisory board members held a meeting in St Petersburg with representatives of a Russian closed joint-stock company known as BARS.
A website called Anjang Muor, which appears to document some of GISB Holdings’ dealings over the years, said the Russian company which manufactures war ships, submarines, rockets, tanks and high-speed trains, among other mechanical engineering products, had expressed hope for GISB Holdings to “help market its products”.
Another of GISB Holdings’ expansion plans, as reported by The Malaysian Reserve last month which interviewed the company’s executive chairman and CEO Nasiruddin Mohd Ali, is poultry production in predominantly Muslim Southern Thailand.
Back home in Malaysia, the company plans to develop 25 factories across the country to produce halal food products, aiming for enough economy of scale to supply so as to grow its chain of supermarkets. It already has 36 supermarkets throughout Malaysia and five factories.
‘Spirituality as part of business’
How did GISB Holdings get so big?
CEO Nasiruddin told The Malaysian Reserve the company’s expansion is funded internally and from co-investments with individuals or other businesses in the spirit of following Islamic principles in doing business.
GISB Holdings’ roots can be traced to Arqam Group, the business arm of the banned Al-Arqam movement, a deviant Islamic sect founded by its founder and spiritual leader Ashaari Muhammad, commonly referred to as ‘abuya’ or father in Arabic. The movement was declared illegal by the National Fatwa Council in 1994, and Ashaari was detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
Arqam Group rebranded itself to Rufaqa Corp which underwent another renaming exercise to become Global Ikhwan which was registered in in 2008, two years before Ashaari’s death in 2010 due to a lung infection.
According to Universiti Sains Malaysia’s political science professor Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, Arqam Group was said to have US$116 million worth of assets through “highly diversified intercontinental business networks” prior to Malaysia’s clampdown on its activities in mid-1994.
In his 2015 journal article Spirituality as an Integral Part of Islamic Business: The Case of Global Ikhwan, Fauzi said the Arqam Group’s economic success “debunked the stereotype of Malays as dependent, subservient and passive economic actors”.
“Rather than appreciating Arqam as a complementary partner in its endeavour to economically uplift and modernise Malays, the state treated the movement as a political threat to its dominance over Malay-Muslim loyalty,” he said in the paper published in Pacific Affairs.
Fauzi said the themes reiterated by authorities in justifying crackdowns on Al-Arqam, which allegedly saw “human rights violations”, were the Sufi-revitalist movement’s alleged “theological heterodoxy and undesirable advocacy of polygynous marriages”.
In banning the movement, the government said its Shiah members were practising a deviant form of Islam contrary to the ‘Sunnah wal Jamaah’ school of Islam adhered to by Malaysia.
Shiah ideology is one of the different Islamic sects religious authorities here have consistently tackled, with then-home minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi saying in 2013 that the spread of the understanding is an “issue of faith and national security”.
Last month, Nasiruddin told The Malaysian Reserve that the stigma associated with the group’s origins in the banned Al-Arqam movement might be a factor as to why it is able to more easily expand its businesses in neighbouring countries compared to Malaysia.
Nasiruddin also asserted that while the group has been cleared of any wrongdoing by Bukit Aman’s Special Branch agency, negative rumours persist within the religious community. – September 14, 2024
