Kamal Ashnawi claims the fisrt trillionaire

Who would have thought that the world’s first ‘trillionaire’ would come from Malaysia, a Malay even? At first glance, his looks screams mediocre businessman yet he is said to be the founder of one of the most influential oil and gas company who managed to extend six arms throughout the world. Despite his extraordinary wealth, he must have stayed low all these while (and I wonder how he managed to do that?!). Even his Facebook fan page has only 281 ‘Likes’. For a trillionaire he must have lived such a low-key life.

Who is Kamal Ashnawi, really? Even Google didn’t provide much information on him.

His name became a household topic in less than a week when he held a press conference and claimed that he is worth 5 trillion euros (equivalent to RM20 trillion). That is well in excess of Carlos Slim Helú, Mexican telco tycoon (touted) the world wealthiest man in 2011 by Forbes Magazine and number 23 in the world’s most powerful people list.

The man even outranks Oprah Winfrey, the richest African American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire.

Anyway, Malaysian Digest had the ‘privilege’ to meet him recently along with few other journalists to seek his story on why he had returned to help the Malays by ‘sharing’ some of his wealth. So, a bit of a background… Kamal was born and raised in Tanjung Malim Perak. He did his schooling at Sekolah Alam Shah (SAS) in Selangor for his secondary education. He later went to Dartmouth College in UK for his Marine Engineering and continued to further his study in Delft TU in the Netherlands.

For almost 20 years he resided in the Netherlands and became a Dutch citizen before he made a decision to return to Malaysia to be a good Samaritan to the people in his homeland. Prior to this, Kamal has been working as a consultant with Royal Shell and other Sierra Petroleum project companies. And, by the way, the man has 16 international passports

My Opinion

It was entertaining to hear a Malaysian trillionaire but it doesnt make sense at all. Always there is question running in the mind, " Why all of the sudden this publicity??". There is only two possible answer - he should be a psycho or trying to turn the world attention to him.

Have a thought, be my guess and leave  a comment about Kamal Ashnawi statement.