
Hampshire House, 12 Hyde Park Place - The Taibs occupy the spacious ground floor flat
It  is undoubtedly one of the smartest addresses in London.  Hampshire   House is an enormous and gracious period building overlooking the   world-famous Hyde Park, just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch and Oxford   Street.  It contains some of the largest apartments in the capital,   including the regular ‘pied a terre’ of Chief Minister Abdul Taib   Mahmud.
The ground floor apartment used by the Taibs is worth around £8.5   million (RM 43 million) and measures over 4,000 square feet.  A sense of   its grandeur can be gained by looking at the pictures of a  neighbouring  flat that was recently put on the market at this price.   All the  Taib family are known to regularly use the building and it is  likely  that they own or have access to more than just one of the flats,  since  so many are able to reside there at one time.
Detour on the way to Haj!

Gracious interiors - worth RM45 million (£8.5 million)
Indeed  we can report something that was not mentioned by Sarawak’s   tame media on Tuesday, when Taib’s departure from Kuching to perform Haj   was extensively covered.  Instead of going straight to Mecca, the  Chief  Minister in fact came directly to his luxurious Hampshire House  in  London, which is an over-shoot of his nominal   target by several thousands of miles.  The decision to go to the UK   first will have shortened his advertised pilgrimage by a number of days.
Sarawak Report has learnt that one reason for the detour was that   the Taibs had planned a major family reunion before going on to do their   pilgrimage.  The day before the Chief Minister himself arrived staff  at  Hampshire House were in full preparations and our information   suggests that the family have decided to stage a’ coming together’ to   try and repair some of their public feuds and rivalries.  It is believed   that this is an attempt by the Chief Minister to present a united   family front as he gets ready to appeal to increasingly fed-up voters in   the coming election.

Spacious interiors
Even  Onn Mahmud, the brother who had once acted as Taib’s closest  business  fixer, but then fell out with him, has been included in the  gathering.   Onn, who was directly implicated in taking millions of  dollars in  timber kickbacks by the Japanese authorities, has barely  spoken to many  members of the family for years and has been excluded  from Taib’s  inner circle.  The plan for this event was that family  members should  ask for each other’s forgiveness and make amends with  each other,  before travelling to Mecca to ask forgiveness of Allah.   They are  clearly hoping that this idea of forgiveness will also catch on   with the voters of Sarawak.
![Rahman_Hamp[1]](http://www.sarawakreport.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Rahman_Hamp1-165x300.jpg)
Sulaiman   Rahman Taib, photographed arriving at the gated entrance of Hampshire   House on Tuesday 9th November the day before his father's arrival. 
However, there is likely to have been another compelling reason  behind  the Chief Minister’s decision to visit his Hyde Park mansion on  the way  to Mecca, as he may have been meeting his son.  The day before  his  arrival a Sarawak Report photographer spotted the Chief Minister’s   absent son, Sulaiman Rahman Taib, arriving in a black chauffeur-driven   Mercedes and slipping into Hampshire House, where he is apparently   staying.
Sulaiman Taib has failed to appear in public in Malaysia for the  entire  past year, despite his role as a member of the Federal  Parliament,  which has been the subject of considerable speculation and  concern.   However, the Taib family has refused to make any statement as  to his  whereabouts. He has not appeared in his constituency or set foot  in  Parliament, which is a blatant neglect of the public duties for which   he is handsomely paid.  Indeed his extraordinary disappearance has   sparked several rumours that he might be dead or under-going treatment   for a disease which the family is unwilling to discuss.
So Sarawak Report is pleased to be able to perform a public service  in  confirming that the Chief Minister’s son is alive, appears well and   presumably drawing his salary in London.  In fact ‘Rahman’ has been   spotted a number of times in and around London over past months and it   is certainly open to speculation that he is indeed benefiting   from Britain’s advanced medical skills in the treatment of a number of   diseases that might not receive the necessary expertise in Sarawak or   Malaysia.
Taib employee assaulted our photographer

Rahman's   driver left opens the door for more passengers after assaulting our   photographer. Pictures of the assault have been made available to the   police.
However, it is clear that  despite their public  position, the Taibs do not appreciate our  publicising of their  whereabouts or possessions.  Rahman Taib spotted  the young  female photographer and clearly pointed her out to employees  who came  out of the building to identify her.
A short while later the driver of his car  assaulted  her in the open street as she attempted to take more  photographs of  female passengers leaving the building and entering his  car.  The Taib  driver grabbed the young woman by the neck and forced  her to erase her  photographs until she was rescued by an onlooker.  The  matter is now  being investigated as an assault by the police.  This  kind of brutality,  though regularly meted out to members of the  public under Taib in  Sarawak, is strictly prohibited in the UK.
Late on Tuesday the photographer believes she also spotted the Chief

Taib slipping in at dusk?
Minister  entering the building himself  not long after his Singapore  Airlines  flight touched down in Heathrow.  Sarawak Report would like to  invite  any readers who might have better photos of the Chief Minister  going in  or emerging from Hampshire House, 12 Hyde Park Place, London W2  to  send them to us and we will be pleased to publish them.
Who owns the multi-million pound flat?
Sarawak Report would also be interested to know exactly who owns the   ground floor flat which is so frequently used by the Taibs and which   appears to be the current home of Sulaiman.  According to the official   Land Registry the public owner of the property is Sultan Abdul Halim   Mu-Adzam, the Malaysian contact of the Taibs who invested Onn with his   title of Datuk.
The relationship between the two families and who really holds the   possession of one of London’s smartest properties is clearly a matter of   public interest.  The Chief Minister, given his official salary over   the past 30 years should never be able to afford such a residence, yet   in fact this is just one of a string of such properties that the Taibs   do own.  Taib himself has been recorded saying “I have more money than I   can ever spend”.

Cleansing - a bathroom at Hampshire House
The  Chief Minister is also known for attempting to hide his real  ownership  of companies and properties behind the names of others who  have  privately agreed to hand over their control of the assets via   covert deals that give Taib ultimate control over the wealth of his   family and friends.  Sarawak Report has proven a number of cases where   the Taibs use such nominees to hold their shares secretly in trust and   this includes Abdul Taib Mahmud.  The confused ownership of mansions   handed to the Taibs by Samling in the United States is another example   of tactic, which was previously exposed by Sarawak Report.
So, does the Hampshire House residence in fact belong to the Taibs,   while being registered under the name of a friendly sultan?  If not   and the property is indeed that of the Sultan, why does he allow the   Taibs to treat it as their own?   A statement from the Chief Minister on   this and all the other matters we have raised with regard to his   staggering but inexplicable wealth would, as ever, be truly appreciated.