MACC hopes for powers to probe real company owners soon

The MACC looks forward to an amendment to its governing act that will confer powers on the anti-graft body to go beyond proxies and investigate the real owners of companies.

Its chief Latheefa Koya said today that she hoped to see the changes soon.

“This matter has actually been taken up by the government themselves and the prime minister (Dr Mahathir Mohamad) has announced part of the initiative, so we hope that it will be reflected in the government soon.

“But it is beyond us, we are the agencies and public servants to (sic) enforce the law. It really goes back to the policy makers, we will share our views as to why it is needed and we hope they will make the necessary (changes),” she said when met after opening the Regional Workshop on Promoting Beneficial Ownership Transparency in Southeast Asia this morning.

In January this year, Mahathir had expressed Putrajaya’s intention to amend the MACC Act 2009 to compel businesses to be transparent about who their beneficial owners were.

The beneficial owner of a company is the person who ultimately owns the firm and receives profits from it, and on whose behalf transactions are conducted for.

'Too many' proxies

Earlier during the workshop, Latheefa cited corruption cases like 1MDB and SRC International as examples of why MACC was planning to have its own specific provision on beneficial ownership in its act.

“Companies are being used in these cases to cloud the eyes of the enforcement agencies and to legalise their financial gains, or to use their companies to get financial gains without having to reveal their involvement in the companies,” she had said.

Elaborating afterwards, she said that existing laws and bodies like the Companies Commission were only able to register companies, not compel them to reveal their real owners.

“Based on MACC’s experience, we really need this law because too many proxies are being used. That is why we need to take action.

“[...] We have cases where when we actually go for it, we find out the owner of a set of vehicles (is) the driver when the driver actually can’t afford it. These are the kinds of things we are dealing with.

“We need to make sure that the law is enough to support our investigations,” she explained.

The regional workshop in Kuala Lumpur was organised by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in conjunction with the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (Star) - a joint effort between UNODC and the World Bank.

The sessions are set to discuss how countries around the world detect and investigate beneficial owners in order to improve transparency in business.  - Mkini