Who’s Watching Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Watchdog?
A commission set up to fight graft is allegedly helping a group of businessmen seize control of companies. Questions about its conduct go all the way to the top.
In the country of 1MDB, where billions of dollars were looted from a state fund and spent on a luxury yacht and Hollywood movies, the attempted takeover of a $12 million company sounds like no big deal. But when it’s carried out by a man brandishing a gun, and allegedly backed by the government agency that’s supposed to prevent graft, it shows that corruption persists in Malaysia — often upending people’s lives.
For Tai Boon Wee, who founded the small rubber products maker, things took a dark turn on a June afternoon in 2023. He had just been questioned by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, which was investigating accounting issues at his company, when he got an unexpected message. Andy Lim, a new shareholder, wanted to meet later that day at the Social, a restaurant in a Kuala Lumpur suburb that shows soccer matches on big TVs and serves fried noodles and chicken wings. Sitting at a table in a section in the back, Lim made his demand: He wanted two board seats at Tai’s GIIB Holdings Bhd.