KUALA LUMPUR- The Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based organisation whose illicit financial flows (IFF) report in 2011 painted Malaysia and several countries in a bad light, has admitted only a small portion of the figures it quoted was from corruption.
Attorney General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail said the vast majority of the figures quoted by the GFI was attributed to trade mispricing, while the remaining was uncertain monies from the country's balance of payment.
The attorney general and his team from the high-level special task force to reduce illicit financial flows met officials from GFI in Washington two weeks ago and were told that only a small portion was believed to be from corrupt activities.
Some 80 per cent of the US$285 billion (RM889 billion) cumulative illicit financial outflows from Malaysia between the 2001 and 2010 that the report quoted was attributed to trade mispricing.
"The remaining 20 per cent was from other activities that included companies investing overseas, money repatriated by foreign workers in Malaysia, remittance by money changers, parents sending money overseas to their children and some from corruption.
"However, GFI admitted that the portion from corruption was small," Gani told a media briefing here yesterday, which was also attended by Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief Datuk Seri Abu Kassim Mohamed and the task force head Datuk Zamani Abdul Ghani.
Opposition parties had seized the opportunity to accuse the government of rampant corruption when the GFI report was released.
The report had placed Malaysia fifth in the list of countries having the most illicit flow of funds.
The attorney general said his meeting with the GFI was not to dispute its findings but find out where the money went to.
"The task force is interested to know because we want to collect the money to help increase the government's revenue.
"The task force has further incentive because a percentage of money confiscated will be kept by it to fund its activities," he added.
Gani said although corruption does exist in Malaysia, it is not easy to take money out of the country.
"There is nothing to be worried about the GFI report. There are systems in place to ensure that monies from corruption are not reflected in the outflows," Gani said.
As for the monies from trade mispricing, which formed the bulk of the illicit financial flows, Zamani explained that a misunderstanding may have arisen when the US-based research and advocacy organisation collated its data.
"They may have found disparities when comparing the import figures of Malaysia's trading partner with our export figures to that particular country.
"In the course of trade, goods from Malaysia, before reaching their final destinations, stop at several ports, which may add value to the goods and increase their prices.
"The country that imports the Malaysian goods may register the value of the goods based on their final prices and register them as imports from Malaysia.
"This would mean there will be disparities in their import and our export figures, and as a large trading nation these figures would be huge for Malaysia," added Zamani.
-btimes.com
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