Taib’s wife, Toh Puan Raghad Kurdi Taib, 44, sensationally “kidnapped” him from the hospital earlier this month of February 3.
According to the viral post containing a photo of the police report, she was alleged to have removed all medications attached to Taib without informing hospital staff. Taib was then said to have been placed in a wheelchair by her assistant and bodyguards before being moved to a vehicle at the hospital’s main entrance.
Taib’s brother, Datuk Mohammad Tufail Mahmud, lodged a police report on February 7, claiming that “none of my siblings, nor any of my brother’s real children, knows of his current whereabouts and the current condition of his health.” He insisted that the family holds Ms Raghad fully responsible.
Tufail has also claimed that Taib's family will hold Raghad "fully accountable and responsible" if anything happened to the 87-year-old Taib.
Now that Taib has died less than a month after Raghad had removed him from the hospital, we will have to wait and see if Taib's family, like his brother Tufail said, is indeed going to hold Raghad “fully accountable and responsible”.
Toh Puan Raghad, of course, vehemently denies the charges that she had removed Taib from the hospital against his doctor's advice.
"That's not true. This is the proof," she wrote on her Instagram account.
The “proof that she attached is the images of what appeared to be a nurse's note.
The note, which was dated Feb 2, was mostly made up of illegible handwriting, and was purportedly signed off by a nurse named Benedette Tommy. We might not know what the note fully says on account of its illegibility, but whatever it says, it is strange indeed for a nurse to be authorizing the discharge of an extremely ill patient, and that too patient as high profile as Taib.
According to Raghad, what she did when she wheeled Taib out of hospital with just a nurse's note was an act of love. She did what she had to do for the best interest of her husband she says. She did not kidnap husband and put his life in peril through her actions. What she did instead, she claims, was to look out for the best interest of the love of her life and try to save his life.
That is what she says anyway.
What we know is that there is a vicious inheritance dispute that is breaking out within Taib’s family for the ownership of his estate.
Watchdogs such as the Bruno Manser Fund – named after the rainforest and human rights campaigner who went missing in Sarawak in 2000 – have alleged as far back as 2012 that Taib is worth US 15 billion (RM 71.7 billion).
Internal conflict among the Taibs has already surfaced publicly since mid-2023. Taib’s children with his first wife have already sued their Syrian-born stepmother over a disputed transfer of 50 million shares in a family-controlled firm that has long been the beneficiary of various government projects in the eastern Malaysian state, dating back to when Tun Taib was chief minister from 1981 to 2014.
The stocks worth about RM50 million are said to be just the tip of the iceberg of Taib’s wealth, who many believe is unofficially, the richest man in Malaysia.
Taib, of course, has not been in good health for a long time. Speculation about his frailty and rumours of his death has been making its round since 2023.
Considering his ill health and advanced age, there is off course the likelihood that his death is a natural event.
But the fact that Raghad had wheeled Taib out a hospital with just a nurse’s note, and kept Taib’s whereabout a secret even from his family for days, less than a month before he died, will likely raise the question as to just how much of her action was responsible for Taib’s demise.
Not much is known about Raghad, a former air stewardess, who was reportedly already a widow with her own children when she wed then Chief Minister Taib in 2010. At the time of their marriage, she was 30 years of age, while he was 73. She was less than half his age and younger than all of his children from his first marriage.
Through her marriage to Taib, not only did the Syrian born Raghad and her sons gain Malaysian citizenship, she was also granted voting rights and native status, which allows her to have direct ownership of limited native land in Sarawak. This has sparked outrage among activists fighting against strict state regulations that they say make it difficult for even bona fide natives to inherit ancestral land.
Considering that after Taib’s death, Raghad, who is not a native of Malaysia or Sarawak, will be fighting for a portion of a wealth that many people believe rightfully belongs to the Sarawakians themselves, against the other family members of Taib who are all bona fide Malaysians and natives of Sarawak , after enraging Sarawakians by claiming to be a native and owning limited native land in Sarawak despite being a foreigner, it does seem unlikely that her part in the last few weeks of Taib Mahmud’s life, will not escape scrutiny.
Since the beginning of February, viral photos of Raghad overseeing a row of suitcases and boxes have already sparked rumours of an attempt to flee the country, although there is also a possibility that she could well have been moving house, given that she had to vacate the governor’s official residence, after Sarawak had elected a new governor to replace Taib late last January.
Whatever be the case, it might be prudent for Raghad to not unpack her bags just yet, for there is a real probability of her needing to make a quick getaway out of the country in the near future.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, The Star, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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