KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is taking initiatives to fight corruption in commercial activities among organisations, focusing on three aspects — detection, prevention and education.
Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed said the initiatives were taken due to increasing fraud cases in commercial activities especially those involving former government projects which have been passed to private entities.
“Fraud cases happened mainly because of human factor such as mindset culture, whereby there is a perception among the corporate sector that it is part of the sector, as if it is a culture.
“Secondly, they assume it is an acceptable behaviour, a normal practice, when involve in giving and receiving bribes,” he told reporters after the launch of KPMG Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Survey Report 2013 here today.
Abu Kassim also touched on the issue of misunderstanding among the corporate sector, whereby certain companies seemed not to know that giving bribe is a serious offence just like those who received them.
He said to date, there are 300 corporate entities in the public and private sector that had already signed the Corporate Integrity Pledge, which is part of the three steps taken by MACC.
Meanwhile, KPMG Malaysia Managing Partner Johan Idris said the survey conducted by the firm found that 89 per cent of respondents felt that the quantum of fraud has increased over the last three years, of which 94 per cent believed that fraud had become increasingly sophisticated.
“This type of mindset that fraud, including bribery and corruption, are part and parcel of doing business today is rather dangerous as it could result in cultivation of a somewhat lenient and tolerant attitude towards the occurance of fraud, with organisations merely reacting to fraud instead of taking proactive steps to nip it in the bud,” he added.
The fifth edition survey revealed that 83 per cent of respondents indicated that fraud is a major problem for locally-based businesses, and 80 per cent of them believed that bribery and corruption has increased over the last three years.
Some 100 respondents from listed companies on Bursa Malaysia participated in the survey, which was conducted in January 2010 until December 2012. – Bernama