PMX Anwar Ibrahim is working on all fronts to bring back Malaysia’s lost wealth by corrupt politicians in the past. He has also worked hard on attracting investments to Malaysia.
Since 24 November 2022, when he was installed PMX, he travelled to about ten nations, in ten months, to attract investments. Several MOUs have been signed with firm commitments running to almost hundreds of billions.
Honestly, let’s ponder for a moment and ask if any other Prime Minister will be able to bring in more wealth to the nation. Three past national leaders have just plundered the nation’s wealth and court cases are pending. If it’s PAS, its stand is corruption is permissible.
They would have continued to hide their corrupt acts if they continued to lead the nation. The moral question is whether these leaders realise how youngsters will view robbing the nation’s wealth and these mistakes made by leading politicians.
Bringing back former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng is in Malaysia to assist in investigations on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail previously said the government’s priority with Ng’s return was to ensure the return of all assets linked to the case. Now, the Malaysian authorities are working in bringing back Jho Low, known as the mastermind behind 1 MDB losses.
Saifuddin said Ng was allowed to attend trial in the United States, where he had been convicted but had not yet started serving his jail term.
Several other cases are pending on three former Prime Ministers, Muhyiddin Yassin, Najib Razak and Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to recover the alleged wealth running to billions which were siphoned overseas.
Recently, Business Today published Emir Research’s findings in an article: “Malaysia’s RM4.5 Trillion Losses to Corruption & Leakages”.
EMIR Research used publicly reported estimates for the national economic loss due to corruption expressed as a percentage of GDP, specifically in Malaysia by various authorities while trying to reconstruct the long-term trend over 26 years (Table 1, for details, refer to “Malaysian Monetary Loss to Corruption and Leakages – RM4.5 Trillion over 26 years”).
Dr Rais Hussin, president and chief executive of Emir Research said: “Estimating the actual cost of corruption to society is daunting, due to its profound, ubiquitous and systematic impact on various realms of the socioeconomic life of a nation. Nonetheless, even conservative approximations can yield earth-shaking numbers.
“As one way to estimate the monetary loss to corruption, EMIR Research used an approach similar to that in the study by Dreher, Kotsogiannis and McCorriston in 2007.
“Dreher and his colleagues used structural equation modelling to construct a cardinal corruption index for approximately 100 countries and eventually compute a measure of the losses due to corruption as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. First, corruption was treated as a latent (unobservable) variable, and the authors were able to retrieve its measure (cardinal corruption index) by modelling the relationships between this latent variable and its underlying observable causes and indicators (for example, GDP per capita; capital control restrictions; financial development as proxied by private credit as a share of GDP; and consumption of cement to capture projects where the scope for corruption is high),” said Rais in his article published in Emir Research. It is a think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.
Freelance Writer M. Krishnamoorthy (www.imkrishna.net) is a media coach, associate professor and undercover journalist. He has freelanced with Bernama, NST, The Star, and Malaysiakini. He also freelances as a fixer/coordinator for CNN, BBC, German and Australian Television networks and the New York Times. As an undercover journalist, he has highlighted society's concerns going undercover as a beggar, security guard, blind man, disabled salesman and Member of Parliament.
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