AN age gap of 13 years separates prominent banker Tan Sri Nazir Razak from his ex-premier elder brother Datuk Seri Najib Razak but both siblings are seemingly poles apart with regard to their stance on morality.
This comes after the former CIMB Group chairman described corruption in Malaysia as “having long been endemic” and that it is time for the country to wage war on such menace soonest.
“I think we have no choice but we must start with a war on corruption, and at the core of it is for institutional reforms. Corruption is no doubt Malaysia’s most critical systematic issue,” theedgemarkets.com cited the Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Bhd chairman who spoke at the Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (MICPA) 64th anniversary commemorative lecture entitled “Towards a Better Malaysian Political Economy”.
“If corruption was a disease, it is stage four cancer, that’s where we (Malaysia) are.”
Nazir said he is working with parliamentary groups towards proposing legislation on institutional reforms, the key of which is to see the total independence of enforcement agencies from the executive branch of the government.
“We’ve seen government after government use these enforcement agencies for their political gain,” theedgemarkets.com quoted him as saying. “We need to bring trust and credibility back to this whole enforcement process, and that, I think, is a very key pillar to combating corruption in the country.”
Ironically, the 55 year-old banker by profession observed that graft is not the only malaise which plagues Malaysia given that identity politics and the over-centralisation of power are also the root causes of much of the nation’s grievances.
“The three heads to this monster: identity politics, endemic corruption, and over-centralisation of power. If you look at any of our ills, I would argue that they could be traced in one way or another to at least one or two of these heads,” opined the former CIMB Group Holdings Bhd CEO.
“So to me, slaying this monster actually stands between us and a better Malaysia as a whole.”
In his memoir “What’s In A Name”, Nazir has expressed regret for helping Najib cash cheques for the 13th General Election that later turned out to be 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB)-linked. This came about as Najib approached him to help turn four cheques totalling RM25.7 mil into cash for campaigning-related purposes.
In 2016, the Wall Street Journal exposed that those cheques came from an account owned by Najib where misappropriated 1MDB funds had been channelled.
Such distressing revelation then prompted Nazir to take garden leave as the head honcho of CIMB to allow for an internal probe. Although he was found not to have abused his position in disbursing those cheques, Nazir admitted that 1MDB had become a sore point and strained his brotherhood with Najib.
“After a while, 1MDB became almost a taboo subject for us. I couldn’t get through to him, and a couple of times he even quipped that I must be jealous or just have a personal dislike of Jho (Low),” Nazir penned in his memoir.
Likewise, his desire to get to the bottom of the 1MDB fraud has also strained his relationship with his sister-in-law Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor in which he recalled a Ramadan dinner on July 15, 2015 at Najib’s house when Rosmah raised her voice, telling Najib not to speak to him.
“For Rosmah, life was very simple; you were either with them or against them. There was no middle ground. Now at the Ramadan party, she grabbed Najib’s hand and looking straight at me said, loudly: ‘Don’t talk to him! He’s working against you and trying to topple you.” – Oct 4, 2022