By Shazwan Mustafa Kamal
Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 — The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has insisted it acts against all corrupt officials, be it “ministers, chief ministers, political leaders or even civil servants.”

At the same time, the anti-graft agency hit out at Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers for “sensationalising” issues, attacking to gain political mileage.

Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, the minister in charge of the MACC, revealed that the commission was still investigating 11 individuals under Section 32 of the Corruption Prevention Act 1997/ MACC Act 2009 for offences relating to “owning assets beyond one’s normal income.”

In a written reply to Ipoh Timur MP Lim Kit Siang on October 27, Nazri said that two charges have been made based on that offence from 2009 to September 2010.

“MACC takes action and does not care who the individuals are- they might be “ikan bilis”, “ikan jerung” or even “ikan yu”. Investigations will be done and they will be prosecuted based on evidence and testimonies acquired. YB Ipoh Timur’s claims that the MACC have failed to take action against “big sharks” is incorrect and is merely aimed towards gaining political mileage. Proof of this is that we have prosecuted high-profile individuals before especially in the PKFZ case,” said the written reply.

The reply comes just as Transparency International (TI) released its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) report last Tuesday which showed that Malaysia’s score dipped further this year, from 4.5 to 4.4 out of 10 — with 10 being the least corrupt — after the country experienced its worse ranking ever last year.

The annual TI CPI measures how corrupt a country’s public sector is based on data sourced from 13 different polls and surveys from 10 independent institutions over a period of two years.

The three least corrupt countries in the world were, in order, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore.

Malaysia’s previous worst scores below 5 were 4.8 in 2000, 4.9 in 2002 and 4.5 last year.

The country’s ranking puts it on par with Namibia and Turkey.

In releasing its report, TI had said the Najib administration still lacked the political will to weed out corruption and stressed that steps must be taken to tackle problems with implementation.

Despite government efforts to fight corruption, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency’s (MACC) inability to prosecute “big fish,” lack of progress in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) fiasco, inaction by the Attorney-General’s Chambers in the “Lingam tapes” case, and contracts without open tender have continued to haunt public perception.

Lim rubbished the reply, arguing that it was “illogical” that the MACC probed only 11 persons for all of 2010, when the country was “mired with reports of corruption.”

“Only 11 investigations done till now? Are you saying that there are no more cases of corruption? We read reports of high-powered politicians living way beyond their means, with lavish mansions and big cars, but yet no action is taken against them. That is why we are questioning the efforts (by MACC) to tackle corruption,” said Lim today.