Three tests for the four honorary MACC advisers as to whether they will be allowed to play credible and effective roles to combat corruption or they are only used to camouflage the weaponisation of MACC to harass and persecute Opposition leaders

The question that must be asked is whether the appointment of four Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) honorary advisers is to allow them to play credible and effective roles to combat corruption or they are only used to camouflage the weaponisation of MACC to harass and persecute Opposition leaders.

There are three tests for the four honorary MACC advisers as to whether they will be allowed to play credible and effective roles to combat corruption or they are only used to camouflage the weaponisation of MACC to harass and persecute Opposition leaders.

Firstly, whether the four honorary MACC advisers are allowed to discuss and decide on whether the Chief Commissioner of MACC, Tan Sri Dzulkifi Ahmad should resign from the top MACC post as his credibility and effectiveness had been gravely undermined by a scandal which had caused him to suddenly disappear from the public scene, when before the scandal, Dzulkifli’s appearance was almost a daily affair in the public limelight.

Secondly, will the four honorary MACC advisers be empowered to advise the MACC to launch a full-scale investigation into the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal, as it is a great infamy that the investigative and regulatory agencies in various countries have taken action against 1MDB money-laundering and corruption, penalizing by imposing hefty fines or closing down financial institutions or even convicting or imprisoning errant officials, while nothing had been done by the anti-corruption authorities in Malaysia.

Recently, the United States Attorney-General Jeff Sessions described the 1MDB scandal as “kleptocracy at its worst”!

Only two weeks ago, on the 17th January 2018, Malaysia suffered further international ignominy when the 1MDB kleptocratic scandal was one of three cases mentioned by the US Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney-General, Criminal Division, M. Kendall Day in his testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing on “Combating Money-laundering and other forms of illicit finance”, where it was revealed that out the US$3.5 billion worth of “corruption proceeds to date” seized or restrained under the US Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, half or more than US$1.7 billion in assets were associated with the 1MDB sovereign fund in Malaysia.

As Kendall Day testified at the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on January 17:

“The Malaysian government created 1MDB to promote economic development through international partnerships and foreign direct investment, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of the Malaysian people.

“However, corrupt 1MDB officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.

“Between 2009 and 2015, those corrupt officials and their associates took more than $4.5 billion from the development fund in four phases.

“These funds were laundered through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries around the world, including Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg, and the United States.”

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission had been very busy recently, especially on corruption investigations and allegations against Opposition leaders, but the MACC had been singularly and thunderously silent on the 1MDB scandal.

Can the four honorary MACC officials put this grave MACC omission and negligence right after seven long years?

Thirdly, can the four honorary MACC advisers advise the MACC to launch an international campaign to clear and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of been regarded world-wide as a “global kleptocracy” as the result of the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal?