Mounting police reports against an unnamed mastermind implicated in quota fraud exposed by Malaysiakini last year has prompted the Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) to focus its investigation on the individual's deceptive migrant recruitment activities.
CCID director Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf Ramli confirmed police received four reports alleging the mastermind's involvement in shell companies used by the individual in recruiting migrants.
However, he said the owners of the companies implicated in a scheme to bring in migrant workers through fraudulent means are not under investigation.
Ramli confirmed the identity of the reported mastermind, but Malaysiakini is withholding his name pending formal charges against him.
The portal has also contacted him for comment.
Last November, Malaysiakini’s investigations found that through an alleged syndicate of six companies, hundreds upon hundreds of workers were recruited under quotas obtained using fake documents and loopholes in the system.
However, the mastermind remained anonymous in the companies’ dealings, allegedly hiding behind shell companies or existing companies owned by others and leaving no money trail which could link him to the businesses.
The companies include Star Domain Resources Sdn Bhd, Aecor Innovation Sdn Bhd, Puncak Jupiter Management Services Sdn Bhd, QL-marketing Sdn Bhd, GTM Marketing, and Buloke Holdings Sdn Bhd (Maxim).
Collectively, the six companies had applied for more than 4,000 workers but received a quota approval of 1,625 workers who started arriving last January to find no jobs waiting for them.
Malaysiakini also found workers recruited under the six companies resorting to moving around Malaysia with all their belongings, like vagabonds seeking employment.
Workers face arrest instead
Workers from two of these companies had also filed police reports at the Nilai police headquarters against their employers, alleging having been cheated into coming to Malaysia to take up ready jobs.
One group named the mastermind in their police report alleging having been cheated.
The migrant workers moving around looking for work and those who filed police reports against their employers escaped the fate that befell 171 Bangladeshi workers in Pengerang caught in a similar dilemma of prolonged unemployment, whose attempt to make a police report got them arrested instead.
Malaysiakini’s exposé on lax vetting by the government prompted calls for an external task force of the highest level to investigate migrant management in the country and renewed calls to make the Human Resources Ministry the main agency to manage foreign workers.
The Immigration Department and Labour Department have not responded to Malaysiakini’s queries.
Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail has also remained mum on the scandal despite both ministries’ management of migrants being red-flagged in the Auditor-General’s Report 2022.
However, this may change as Saifuddin, having met with newly appointed Human Resources Minister Steven Sim, was reported to have promised to address queries in a joint statement soon.
Meanwhile, Plantation and Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani has taken the bold move to moot RM30,000 fines per migrant for companies that bring in migrant workers without having jobs ready for them.
Johari did not state if his suggestions were discussed with and embraced by enforcing agencies under the Home Ministry and the Human Resources Ministry. - Mkini
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