PUTRAJAYA – The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) celebrates its 53rd anniversary today and the stiffest challenge facing it now is countering the increasingly ingenious tactics perpetrators of economic crime are using these days.
According to Chief Commissioner Datuk Seri Azam Baki, most of the corruption cases from 2015 till now involved leakages from government procurement and that there were cases of government officers misappropriating funds that led to millions of ringgit in losses.
Without revealing the statistics, he said there were several cases of leakage of government procurement involving government agencies and 50% of the MACC’s investigations involved such cases.
“I can say that, based on the MACC analysis, such wastages are common in the public sector, where they (the top leadership of government agencies) who are in power in deciding a matter (government procurement) are involved in misappropriation and abuse of power.
“When there is a leakage of government procurement, our investigation shows that there is an element of corruption that causes a certain value of government procurement to rise,” he told Bernama.
Widespread corruption, he said, can hike up the government’s procurement costs which will also affect its delivery systems and devastate the nation’s economy.
Last month, Bernama reported that the MACC had arrested two company directors with the title of 'Datuk' suspected of corruption and submitting false claims worth tens of millions of ringgit, in connection with the implementation of 10 road upgrading projects in Sarawak worth RM800 million.
“For now our focus is on corruption issues related to economic crime but this doesn’t mean we will not prioritise other types of corruption cases,” he added.
“More improvements have to be made… previously MACC lacked the expertise but now we have the ability to make a more accurate analysis and evaluation of any case,” he explained.
Asked whether similar cases occurred in the private sector, Azam said MACC had received reports involving the private sector but the number was not as high as in the public sector.
“The MACC's intention is to investigate both parties (public and private ) if it involves government procurement and to bring them to court,” he said.
On the zero corruption vision, Azam admitted that it is not something that is easy to attain, adding that to date no nation in the world can lay claim to having zero corruption.
“If we want to talk about zero corruption, then we’ve to take a look at the frontliners who, in this case, are the enforcement personnel. If they are ‘clean’, then society will perceive the nation as clean too.
“So, in order to attain zero corruption, we have to correct the (behaviour of corrupt) frontliners, particularly those who deal with foreigners,” he said. – Bernama, October 1, 2020
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