COMMENT | A bailout by any other name - strategic purchase, loan, rescuing mainly bumiputera entrepreneurs, saving the oil and gas industry, etc - is still a bailout, so long as government money, our money, is used to save any private enterprise.

Yes, we are talking about that RM1.1 billion loan by a government-owned company to bankrupt former oil and gas high-flyer listed Sapura Energy Bhd, which started to get into trouble a decade ago and had no relief in sight.

The history is complicated. Sapura Energy was formed as a merger between Mokhzani Mahathir’s (yes, Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s son) Kencana Petroleum and Shahril Shamsuddin’s (son of Mahathir crony Shamsuddin Abdul Kadir) SapuraCrest Petroleum in 2012. 

Shamsuddin made his money in telecommunications during Mahathir’s first tenure as prime minister.

That merger strangely involved a cash payment to the merger shareholders of some RM1.84 billion from bank borrowings, according to reports, which put the merged entity already at very high debt levels.

First, let us put to rest any notion that this is not a bailout and then move on to business prospects which suggest that this loan...