Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 31, 2018 - January 6, 2019

CORRUPTION has been a fact of life in this country for a very long time. From policemen who extort duit kopi to fixers who charge a premium to get through the red tape in government agencies so that approvals can be expedited, this disease is so entrenched in our society that it may be almost impossible to wipe out.

Not surprisingly, Malaysians do not have faith in the authorities to act against it. Instead, they believe the police force, judges and the anti-corruption agency have been bought over by corrupt politicians and criminal organisations.

This is why when the Pakatan Harapan coalition ran an election campaign on an anti-corruption platform, many Malaysians threw their support behind it. And when PH won on May 9, Malaysians were “out for blood” — they wanted to see the “fat cats” charged and jailed.

This culminated in Datuk Seri Najib Razak becoming the first former prime minister to be charged with corruption in a court of law. Since facing his first charge in the Sessions Court on July 4, Najib has had a total of 39 read against him involving funds running into billions of ringgit.

However, Najib is not the only member of the former government to be charged with corruption or 1Malaysia Development Bhd the only public fund to have been allegedly mismanaged and plundered by the very people tasked with overseeing it.

On Oct 19, Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi faced a total of 45 charges of criminal breach of trust (CBT), money laundering and abuse of power involving over RM114 million.

This made Zahid the first sitting Umno president to be charged with corruption and abuse of power, which allegedly took place between July 2016 and March 2018 when he was serving as Home Minister.

    Among others, he was charged with:

•    Receiving a total of RM13.5 million in bribes from Mastoro Kenny IT Consultant & Services in return for the company getting projects from MyEG Services Bhd;

•    Accepting RM6 million in bribes from Datasonic Group Bhd director Chew Ben Ben, which allegedly helped the company win a tender directly from the Home Ministry to supply chips for Malaysian passports;

•    Receiving a total of RM2 million in bribes from Profound Radiance Sdn Bhd director Azlan Shah Jaffril, which saw the company being appointed the operator of migrant visa one-stop centres in Pakistan and Nepal; and

•    CBT involving RM20.79 million of funds belonging to Yayasan Akal Budi, a charitable organisation of which he is the founder.

    Zahid pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Another high-profile figure who bit the dust is Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor. The self-styled First Lady of Malaysia led an extravagant lifestyle with a penchant for ultra-luxurious items worth millions of ringgit.

After the Barisan Nasional government fell, the police and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), acting on reports and investigations into her wealth, raided her residences, seizing copious amounts of luxury items.

It was estimated that the haul from the raids of Rosmah’s private collections was worth US$275 million or more than RM1 billion. The items included 567 handbags, 423 watches and about 12,000 pieces of jewellery.

Following the raids, Rosmah was called in for questioning by MACC on Sept 26. She was held at MACC headquarters for about 11 hours. On Oct 3, she was arrested by MACC and spent a night in detention.

On Oct 4, Rosmah was brought before the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur to be charged with 17 offences, including receiving proceeds of illegal activities as well as failure to declare income tax. She was also accused of laundering RM7 million of proceeds from illegal activities.

On Nov 16, she was again brought to court to be charged with allegedly soliciting and accepting bribes on two occasions from Jepak Holdings Sdn Bhd in return for helping the company secure a RM1.25 billion solar hybrid project for rural schools.

The project, which was awarded by the Ministry of Education via direct negotiations in January 2017, was for the installation of solar photovoltaic panels in 369 schools in rural Sarawak as well as for the operation and maintenance of diesel generators in those schools.

In the first of the two charges, Rosmah was accused of soliciting, through her aide Datuk Rizal Mansor, some RM187.5 million from Jepak managing director Saidi Abang Samsudin for assisting the company in obtaining the contract.

The offence was allegedly committed between March and April 2016 at the Sunway Putra Mall. In the second charge, Rosmah was accused of receiving a bribe of RM1.5 million from Saidi on Sept 7, 2017, also for helping Jepak secure the contract.

While the former first couple and Zahid are the usual suspects of corruption due to their positions in the once all-powerful Umno, top civil servants have also been charged with abuse of power.

Former Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Irwan Serigar Abdullah was charged alongside his former boss Najib with six counts of CBT involving over RM6.6 billion of government funds on Oct 25, including RM1.3 billion from the Federal Consolidated Fund.

Apart from federal funds and contracts, logging concessions were a lucrative hunting ground for corrupt politicians and officials, especially in Sabah, Sarawak and Kelantan, which had huge logging industries.

On Nov 5, former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Musa Aman was charged with 35 offences under Section 11(a) of the Anti-Corruption Act 1997 for accepting gratification by agent. The 35 charges were said to have been committed by Musa between December 2004 and November 2008.

Musa was accused of receiving a total of US$63 million (around RM243 million) in Hong Kong and Singapore as an inducement for offering timber concessions in Sabah. Musa pleaded not guilty and claimed that the charges had been cleared by the Attorney-General's Chambers back in 2012.

Other major corruption charges in 2018 involved one CBT case and nine counts of receiving gratification amounting to RM3.09 million against former Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) chairman Tan Sri Isa Samad.

The charges read out at the Sessions Court on Dec 14 pertained to FELDA’s purchase of Merdeka Palace Hotel & Suites in Kuching for RM160 million without the approval of the board of directors. The hotel was valued at RM110 million at the time of the deal.

With rising land costs, especially in Kuala Lumpur, many property developers try to get higher plot ratios for their land in the city so that they can sell more units to maximise profit.

This was the background of a case involving Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, former Federal Territory minister. He was charged in the Sessions Court on Nov 15 with two counts of corruption for receiving RM3 million in bribes to facilitate land deals.

Adnan claimed trial to receiving RM1 million in bribes from property developer Datuk Tan Eng Boon as an inducement to approve an application by Nucleus Properties Sdn Bhd to increase the industrial plot ratio relating to a development in Jalan Semarak.

He is also accused of receiving RM2 million via his company, Tadmansori Holding Sdn Bhd, with no strings attached from Chai Kin Kong via a cheque issued by Aset Kayamas Sdn Bhd despite possessing knowledge that he had official dealings with the company at the time.

Other cases of corruption have been brought to light since Pakatan Harapan won GE14. For example, former education minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid and Baling member of parliament Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim have also been called in by MACC.

 

 

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