Want fewer corruption trials? Make govt records tamper-proof

 

A golf club's computer log was picked apart in court last week because nobody could prove it hadn't been tampered with.

“I cannot.”

With those two words, a golf club security manager laid bare a problem that haunts every courtroom, every tender and every audit in Malaysia.

S Saravanan, group security head of Tropicana Golf & Country Resort, was testifying on Sept 1 in the corruption trial of former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin. The club’s computer records showed Muhyiddin had played golf with businessman Azman Yusoff on July 19, 2020, a date that matters to the case.

Then came the cross-examination. Could he vouch for the accuracy of the information in the system? “I cannot,” he admitted. When defence counsel pressed that “it can be modified”, the best Saravanan could offer was “I am not sure about that”.

And just like that, the record wobbled. Not because anyone proved tampering, but because nobody could prove there was none.

This is not one trial’s problem. On Aug 27, Malaysians witnessed a spectacle no country would envy: three former prime ministers, Najib Razak, Muhyiddin Yassin and Ismail Sabri Yaakob, at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex on the same day for separate proceedings.

Najib faced a US$5.64 billion (RM22.8 billion) civil suit brought by 1MDB; Muhyiddin’s trial over charges of soliciting RM225.3 million in bribes for Bersatu continued, charges he is contesting; and Ismail Sabri pleaded not guilty to failing to declare assets to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). The courts will decide each case on their merits.

But every one of these cases turns on records. Bank statements, procurement papers, approval chains, logbooks. And the first move of any defence is to ask the same devastating question: how do you know this record was not changed?

It is a fair question. Almost every record the Malaysian state relies on, from tender evaluations in ePerolehan, the finance ministry’s e-procurement system, to departmental expenditure files, lives in an ordinary database.

An ordinary database can be edited by whoever holds the administrator password. History, in other words, belongs to whoever controls the server.

Here is where blockchain technology can earn its keep. Not the meme-coin casino that has soured many on the word, but something far more boring and far more useful: a public logbook that nobody, not even the government, can rewrite.

The mechanics are simple. Every time a record is created – a bid submitted, a score entered, an award signed – the system generates its cryptographic hash, a unique digital fingerprint, and publishes that fingerprint to a blockchain. The record itself stays private; only the fingerprint goes public.

If anyone later alters so much as a comma, the fingerprint no longer matches. Tampering does not become impossible. It becomes instantly detectable, by anyone, forever.

Let me be honest about what this cannot do. A blockchain cannot verify that a record was true when it was written; log the wrong 15 names and the wrong 15 names are preserved for eternity. Nor will it stop cash in envelopes or phone calls that never touch a system.

But look at what it kills: backdating, quiet edits, vanishing files, doctored evaluations. The cover-up, in short. In court, it transforms the question from “can this record be trusted?”, which no witness can answer, into “has this record changed since the day it was made?”, which mathematics answers.

This is not theory. Estonia became the first country to run blockchain in live government systems in 2012, and today its land registry, business registry, state gazette and more than a million health records are anchored this way.

The World Economic Forum and the Inter-American Development Bank have trialled a blockchain procurement system for Colombia’s school meals programme, complete with automatic red flags for suspicious bids.

Malaysia does not even need to build the rails. The Malaysia Blockchain Infrastructure, developed by national research agency MIMOS Berhad with MY EG Services and powered by the Zetrix chain, has been operational since April 2025. What is missing is the mandate. Three moves would supply it.

First, anchor procurement. The finance ministry should require ePerolehan to hash every tender milestone, submission, evaluation score and award decision to the national blockchain the moment each occurs.

Azam Baki, in his final days as MACC chief commissioner this May, put procurement and public fund leakages at an estimated RM277 billion over six years, warning: “We cannot afford to slow down. Corruption in this country is still serious and in certain sectors it is systemic.”

Second, wire in the Auditor-General. Give the National Audit Department live, read-only access to anchored expenditure logs, turning audits from post-mortems into continuous monitoring. The Auditor-General’s first report for 2026 flagged 273 new financial and governance issues. Catching them as they happen beats cataloguing them years later.

Third, update the Evidence Act 1950. Section 90A admits computer records on a certificate that were produced in the course of ordinary use, a presumption any sharp lawyer can shake, as Tuesday showed. A cryptographic proof of integrity should stand alongside it, so court time is spent arguing the case, not the logbook.

Malaysia’s score on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index rose to 52 this year, lifting us to 54th place and third in Asean. Enforcement is working. But records that cannot be quietly rewritten would harden the entire system by protecting the innocent and cornering the guilty.

No witness should again be left saying “I cannot” while justice hangs on a database. The technology is proven and the losses are counted. What Putrajaya needs now is the will. - FMT

The writer can be contacted at kathirgugan@protonmail.com.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.