TI-M lauds MACC (Amendment) Bill

PETALING JAYA: Transparency International Malaysia today expressed support for the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (Amendment) Bill.
"With the introduction of the corporate liability provisions, companies can be held accountable for their employees' involvement in corruption if they are found to have failed to take adequate steps to prevent such corrupt acts by their employees," its president, Datuk Akhbar Satar (pix), said of the Bill tabled in Parliament two days ago.
"We note that our earlier released Business Integrity Country Agenda report (BICA) had also recommended to include the corporate liability provisions in the MACC Act 2009.
"As indicated in our Global Corruption Barometer 2017 (Malaysia), 46% of Malaysians think that business executives are involved in corruption.
"With the amendment to include the corporate liability provisions in the act, companies will be held liable (and not just the corrupt individuals) and thus, a strong and clear message must be sent to all levels of a corporation that corruption should not be tolerated and should in fact be prevented at all costs."
BICA is a comprehensive research that analyses the overall business integrity environment in Malaysia based on the efforts of the public and private sectors, and civil society.
The main thrust of the MACC (Amendment) Bill is to introduce a new far-reaching corporate liability provision into the MACC Act. There are key changes and steps that companies, and its directors and officers have to be aware of.
The bill will introduce Section 17A into the MACC Act. This section will state that a commercial organisation commits an offence if any person associated with that commercial organisation commits a corrupt act in order to obtain or retain business or advantage for the organisation.
Penalties for this corporate offence are high whereby the commercial organisation, and the directors, officers and management are liable to a maximum fine of 10 times the sum of gratification involved, or RM1 million, whichever is higher, a maximum jail term of 20 years, or both.