BPMB VTEL Loan Saga Series: The Cold-Blooded Institutional Assassination of Malaysia’s 1,500 km Terabit Backbone

By Naren Yogananda
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)

Kuala Lumpur – 27 February 2026

It is time to dismantle the grotesque fiction that Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad (BPMB) peddles through a compliant media: the myth that the RM400 million facility for V Telecoms (Aries) was a 'phantom project' or a 'corrupt loan.' This narrative is a convenient lie designed to justify the state-sponsored destruction of a national asset. Nowhere was this deception more blatant than when BPMB’s now-disgraced lawyer, Dato’ Lim Chee Wee—himself a shareholder in Ranjeet’s company—brazenly declared: 'RM400 million for nothing!'

The primary sources – documents created and signed by BPMB itself – annihilate that lie.

On 28 October 2013, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, stood on a public stage in Kuala Lumpur beside the Minister of Communications and the Chairman of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and formally launched, as a matter of explicit national policy, the completed 1,500-kilometre Next Generation Carrier-Class Terabit-capacity DWDM Coastal/Terrestrial Network Infrastructure. Cameras rolled. National television broadcast it. The event was reported in real time. This was no private ribbon cutting. This was the state itself declaring to the world that Malaysia now possessed a sovereign, operational, carrier-grade fibre backbone running from Johor Bahru to Padang Besar, linking core nodes in the Klang Valley and multiple independent international gateways. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drXrpGanMTU. 

That single, irrefutable public act should have ended any honest debate. Yet today the same institution that verified every drawdown, inspected every site, and authorised every payment pretends the network never existed. This is not bureaucratic amnesia. This is calculated, institutional perjury on a grand scale – a web of lies constructed to shield the guilty, scapegoat the innocent, and bury the human wreckage left in its wake.

The record is merciless. BPMB’s own Independent Checking Engineer reports from 2012 and 2013, prepared by Silver Ridge Holdings Berhad and explicitly counter-validated by BPMB officers, confirmed physical progress against every tranche released. Multiple BPMB personnel conducted on-site inspections and signed off on the works. Audited financial statements show revenue directly attributable to the Coastal/Terrestrial Network exploding from RM62.8 million in 2013 to RM194.9 million in 2016, with EBITDA margins reaching 77 per cent. In 2014, real international carriers including TOT and DTAC of Thailand, purchased capacity on the very backbone BPMB now denies existed.

Even after seven years of total abandonment, organised cable theft, road damage, and monsoon erosion following the 2018 licence expiry, BPMB’s own 2025 expert inspection still located labelled Aries/VTEL fibre cables, protective HDPE sheaths, purpose-built exchange cabins, and route-aligned infrastructure precisely where the original drawdown documents placed them. ICIJ’s independent forensic site investigations in late 2025, comprising thousands of photographs and measurements across the documented 1,500 km routes, confirm the same stubborn physical reality: the network was built, it operated, it generated nearly RM800 million in audited revenue, and its remnants still bear witness.

No rational actor can reconcile these facts with the bank’s current position. The contradiction is not accidental. It is the entire point.

The Hijacking: How Two Court-Adjudged Perpetrators of Corporate Misappropriation Seized Control and Turned a National Asset into Private Loot

From December 2010 to July 2014 – the precise window in which the BPMB facility was drawn down – Tan Sri Syed Yusof and his long-time associate Ranjeet exercised effective control over more than 78 per cent beneficial ownership of VTEL through layered Vasseti entities. Malaysian High Court judgments record, in black and white, that they acquired the company from Open Fibre Sdn Bhd without ever paying the agreed consideration. A RM150 million damages award followed. It was never honoured. English courts later issued multiple judgments against them for hundreds of millions in losses inflicted on global shareholders for fictitious unpaid share scandal, including to the original owners. These are not allegations. These are adjudicated facts. Tan Sri Syed Yusof and Ranjeet are court-adjudged perpetrators of corporate misappropriation.

Ranjeet, the operational nerve centre whose tentacles have repeatedly reached into enforcement agencies and the judiciary, then installed his business partner Tan Sri Rashpal Singh Randhay onto the BPMB board. Rashpal’s résumé has been separately exposed as containing fabricated credentials. The appointment reportedly followed the placement of over half a million ringgit worth of redeemable preference shares in Kuber Venture Berhad under the name of a former Prime Minister’s daughter – a transaction that remains conspicuously un-investigated by the very institutions now prosecuting others.

Inside the bank, the indispensable facilitator was Afidah Mohd Ghazali, then CFO/COO and later acting CEO – a documented close ally of both Tan Sri Syed Yusof, who she knew was the son of the founding chairman of BPMB, and of Ranjeet. The architecture of control was now complete: external predators on the share register, internal protectors in the executive suite, and a compliant board member to grease the wheels.

The IPO Assassinations: Two Deliberate Executions to Prevent Full Repayment

VTEL secured regulatory approval for two separate London listings – first on AIM in 2015, then the Main Market in 2017 – each structured to raise GBP100 million solely to repay BPMB in full.

Both were executed with clinical precision.

In 2015: after a successful roadshow and during the mandatory cooling-off period, Tan Sri Syed Yusof filed a false MACC complaint denying his own signature on share transfer forms. MACC raided VTEL offices while the IPO deal was still live. Evidence in ongoing proceedings indicates Ranjeet fed live raid updates to the UK bankers. The listing collapsed overnight.

In 2016/2017: despite the BPMB CEO’s and the then Prime Minister’s documented support for the second attempt, Afidah quietly transferred VTEL into the bank’s “recovery” department before the roadshow even began. When prospective investors called BPMB’s Nik Nor Aini for verification, confidence evaporated once she told VTEL is under recovery department. The second IPO died.

Two court-approved, market-ready opportunities to repay every ringgit in full – both strangled by the same internal-external axis operating from inside the lender itself. This was not commercial caution. This was sabotage.

The Protected Money Trail and the Merciless Scapegoating

The only documented commission flow runs Ranjeet → Tan Sri Syed Yusof’s PA (Datuk Adah) → Sidqi. Yet BPMB and MACC spent years fixated on the late Dato’ Zafer Mohd Hashim – a man who was not even in Malaysia when the board approved the facility in 2012 and who received a formal NFA from MACC in October 2022. Zafer died of depression just weeks after BPMB filed what the evidence now shows was a sham suit (WA-22 NCC-264-06/2022) against him and 26 others.

The human carnage did not stop there.

Tunku Muzaini, mother of defendant Tunku Mazlina binti Tunku Abd Aziz and a respected member of Negeri Sembilan royalty, collapsed emotionally and psychologically after learning that her daughter had been dragged into fraud and corruption allegations by a government-owned bank. She did not survive the trauma. The late Mohd Radzi Mohamed, a man from a prominent family of corporate and banking leaders who had served BPMB honourably for many years with no connection whatsoever to VTEL, was nevertheless attacked mercilessly by his own juniors – including Nik Nor Aini – in Suit 264 and in public media statements. He died merely months after Suit 264 was filed, after the suit-related depression led to medical complications. The bank turned on its own without hesitation, sacrificing loyalty and decency on the altar of narrative control.

These are not collateral footnotes. These are lives destroyed by the reckless, vindictive machinery of a state institution that chose to protect predators while devouring the innocent.

At what body count does BPMB’s depravity end? How many more deaths and cold-blooded corporate murders are required to satisfy such a hollow and evil ambition?

The Final Institutional Cruelty: Winding Up a Live Asset Over RM70,000

By June 2022, under BPMB-appointed Receivers & Managers (Deloitte), VTEL was wound up by LHDN over a trivial RM74,680 tax bill. Millions in post-appointment collections sat untouched. A company that had generated nearly RM800 million from the very asset BPMB now claims never existed was allowed to die while under the bank’s direct control.

This was not administrative oversight. This was the deliberate extinguishing of evidence.

The Web of Lies: Res Judicata, Merger & Lack of Locus

When the defendants finally launched a ferocious counter-offensive in Suit 264, their strike-out application did more than just challenge the claim—it unmasked a legacy of judicial manipulation. Armed with a devastating trove of evidence, they forced BPMB to a cold realization: the charade was over.

In late January 2026, sensing an imminent defeat, BPMB launched a desperate gambit to derail the court’s February 23rd decision. By lodging two separate MACC reports against Silver Ridge and its directors, the bank sought to manufacture a scandal—hoping that well-timed arrests would poison the judge’s mind and force a dismissal of the striking-out applications.

BPMB’s gambit collapsed. Their attempt to weaponize the MACC ran headlong into the fallout of Bloomberg’s 'MACC Cartel' exposé, leaving the commission wary of further manipulation. Despite Ranjeet and BPMB’s efforts to fabricate a partnership between the former Silver Ridge director and Ranjeet himself, the deception failed. The reality is far less conspiratorial: the two men had met exactly once, at a public corporate function. Undeterred by the facts, the bank continues to lead investigators down a fictitious path, sacrificing a man's reputation to save their own.

The Striking Out Decision

On 23 February 2026, the court's hand was forced. Citing res judicata and merger, the bench was restricted by technical doctrines that effectively buried the full conspiracy before it could be litigated on its merits. Most damningly, BPMB was found to lack locus standi—ruling that the bank had spent years pursuing a claim it had no right to bring. This judgment stands as a grim monument to institutional survival: using procedural shields to evade substantive justice.

BPMB is now ensnared by its own perjury. After years of swearing under oath that no corruption existed, even well after Suit 264 was filed, its sudden pivot to a 'January 2022 admission' is a desperate, legally bankrupt reversal. If this admission were real, why did BPMB bury it from the MACC for years? The bank's past court filings have become its own gallows, tightening with every new lie. This house of cards is now collapsing under the weight of Ranjeet’s July 2025 arrest—a grim reminder that while he escaped charges then, the stench of bribery is permanent.

Bribery allegation now denied

The irony was absolute. On that same day, the MACC hauled Ranjeet into the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court on the very bribery charges he had 'admitted' to in January 2022 to prop up BPMB’s Suit 264. For years, under the shield of BPMB’s board and Rashpal’s MACC cartel, Ranjeet had weaponized false sworn admissions to dismantle his enemies. Yet, the moment the handcuffs were his own, the script changed. Suddenly, the 'bribery' vanished; he pleaded not guilty!

Kudos to MACC’s Senior Director, Dato' Mohamad Zamri Zainul Abidin. In a stunning display of integrity, his team dismantled the protection racket run by Rashpal’s cartel. For two decades, Ranjeet moved through the shadows of the Malaysian corporate world with total impunity. That era ended today.

The Reckoning That Cannot Be Delayed

The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable:

• BPMB’s own ICE and site-visit records
• The 28 October 2013 national launch by the Deputy Prime Minister
• Audited revenues approaching RM800 million
• Surviving physical traces confirmed in 2025
• Two London IPO approvals structured for full repayment
• ICIJ’s review of thousands of forensic photographs
• Court judgments against Tan Sri Syed Yusof and Ranjeet in Malaysia and UK
• The documented internal role of Afidah Mohd Ghazali as seen in the counter claim of Suit 313
• The human deaths – Dato’ Zafer, Tunku Muzaini, Mohd Radzi Mohamed, and others crushed by depression and betrayal
  
• The collusion between BPMB, Ranjeet, Lim Chee Wee, Datuk Adah & Nik Nor Aini as seen in Suit 510

No honest observer can look at this mountain of primary evidence and still accept the “corrupt loan” fairy tale.

This was economic sabotage of the highest order – committed against a Malaysian success story by the very development bank entrusted to finance it, aided and abetted by court-adjudged perpetrators of corporate misappropriation and their protectors inside the institution.

The Malaysian public has been gaslit, humiliated, and lied to for far too long. Innocent families have been destroyed. Lives have been lost. A national asset has been reduced to scrap.

The full conspiracy to commit economic sabotage – now the subject of ongoing criminal proceedings – must be dragged into open court under the harshest possible scrutiny. Every document, every photograph, every revenue figure, every death must be laid bare.

The architects – Ranjeet, Tan Sri Syed Yusof, Afidah Mohd Ghazali, Tan Sri Rashpal, and the senior leadership of BPMB who enabled them – must answer for what they did.

State power counts on the public forgetting. We will not let them.

The file is open. The evidence is irrefutable. The blood is on their hands.

Accountability is no longer optional. It is overdue.

ICIJ will continue publishing until every layer of this web of lies is torn apart and the truth stands naked before the Malaysian people.