Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is expected to remove the nation’s anti-graft chief Azam Baki when his term ends on May 12, following claims that the agency he leads has strong-armed business owners out of their corporate shares and employed mafia-style tactics for its own ends, Bloomberg said. 

The move would follow a Bloomberg report last month that prompted Malaysia’s cabinet to establish a three-member committee of senior officials, led by the attorney general, to investigate Azam’s holdings. Anwar said last week that the committee’s findings would be submitted to the cabinet within days.

The news agency previously reported that Azam held 17.7 million shares in Velocity Capital Partner Bhd., a stake that would have been worth nearly 800,000 ringgit, or about $202,000, at the time of publication. Bloomberg said a 2024 Malaysian government circular, reflecting guidance on rules governing public officials, limits such holdings to either 5 percent of a company’s paid-up capital or 100,000 ringgit in value, whichever is lower.

Azam has headed the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) since 2020, but the organization has long been the subject of controversy, both before and since Azam’s tenure began.

The agency, which has primarily focused on bringing cases against low-level officials, has had two witnesses fall of out windows and die while in MACC custody for questioning, and last year a woman was kidnapped two days after accusing MACC officials of colluding with her husband to settle a messy divorce, Bloomberg reported. 

During the agency’s investigation of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, MACC officials concluded that the $681 million transferred to Najib’s personal account was a donation, but prosecutors later determined that the funds were illicitly sent from the Saudi royal family as part of a scheme to steal money from the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, Bloomberg said. 

With Azam leading the agency, MACC has been accused of operating as a “corporate mafia,” including by colluding with businessmen to target shareholders of companies under investigation. To further the alleged schemes, complicit MACC officials have threatened, detained, or arrested targeted executives, and used the agency’s power to freeze bank accounts or remove individuals from the board of companies, Bloomberg said. 

The aggressive harassment has continued until the targets of the scheme either sell or otherwise lose their shares, which are then taken over by the accomplices, according to the report. 

Read more at Bloomberg