What protections do whistleblowers in Malaysia have? What is the main issue whistleblowers in Malaysia face today? WNN recently interviewed Arief Hamizan, legal researcher at the Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4 Center), to find out more about the current status of whistleblower issues in Malaysia.
C4 Center was founded by human rights activists in 2015 on the heels of the 1MDB scandal. Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd “took shape in 2009” under the former Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to an article in The Washington Post. The fund “was supposed to promote development” but instead turned out to be rife with corruption and fraud: “Of the $8 billion that 1MDB raised via bond sales, the U.S. alleges more than half was siphoned off.” Najib was voted out in 2018, which “ended his party’s 62 years of rule, and four years later he was imprisoned in the first of a series of trials,” the article reports.
Hamizan tells WNN that C4 Center’s main focus areas are whistleblower protection, political financing, and freedom of information: the organization is also looking at new sectors like corruption in the environment, which is a growing issue in Malaysia. C4 Center also examines “links between politicians, business” and individuals within the civil service, Hamizan says.
From Hamizan’s point of view, the ruling coalition that...
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