Dear Datuk Seri Najib Razak:

Malaysia has made clear commitments to tackle corruption, including strong national laws and support for international initiatives.

Living up to these commitments is vital if we are to succeed in preventing those who seek to corrupt Malaysia’s government structures and business community.

Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer 2013 indicates that the Malaysian public does not believe the Government is taking enough action, while half of all businesses surveyed in the Bribe Payers Index 2012 said that they had lost deals because they didn’t pay a bribe.

In TI’s recently published Corruption Perception Index 2013, Malaysia has made little improvement.

It is disappointing that your Government’s commitment to tackling corruption has yet to yield serious reforms. While the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) commissioner has compared recent conviction rates with the world’s leading anti-corruption agencies, convictions of high-level politicians involving large sums of money are conspicuously absent.

It is unlikely this is because no such corruption exists. In fact, many high-profile Malaysian corruption scandals have reverberated around the world’s news wires. Notable recent examples have been the allocation of land and forest licences in Sarawak involving Chief Minister Tan Sri Taib Mahmud, or the Port Klang Free Zone land scandal that ended in former transport minister Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik's acquittal on October 25, 2013. The attorney general has decided not to appeal this decision.

Malaysia’s neighbour Indonesia has built a strong, independent anti-corruption agency – Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK) – out of the wreckage of state looting under the Suharto regime.

While corruption is still widespread there, it has demonstrated the political will and built sufficiently independent institutions to confront corruption head-on at the heart of government.

MACC has ample resources to achieve similar results. It has more personnel than KPK and a comparable annual budget, for a population just more than a tenth the size of Indonesia’s.

This suggests that other barriers exist. These must be identified and swept aside, so that those suspected of corruption face the full force of corruption investigations and prosecutions.

We would welcome your assurances that these issues have your utmost attention and would like to hear what additional measures are being considered to deal with the particular challenges of tackling high-level corruption. – December 9, 2013.