PUTRAJAYA: The Magistrate’s Court here was a hive of activity today following mass remand proceedings, involving 14 individuals including seven civil servants, on charges of accepting and giving bribes to protect massage parlours in Kuala Lumpur.
The seven civil servants were three policemen including a station chief, a fire department officer and three Kuala Lumpur City Hall workers.
The seven individuals together with three civilians, suspected to be the runners, were brought to the court at about 10am in a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) bus.
Four others believed to be the premises owners arrived at the court about an hour earlier in a MACC van.
The remand proceedings against all 14 individuals ended at 1.30pm with Magistrate Ahmad Asyraf Mohammad Kamal allowing the MACC’s application to have the 10 individuals including the seven civil servants remanded until Friday.
As for the four premises owners they have been remanded for five days until Saturday.
According to a MACC source, the 14 were detained between 10am and 5pm yesterday following intelligence carried out by the agency for the past three months.
The source added that the suspects were believed to have been receiving bribes of at least RM1,000 on a monthly basis.
The protection money was to ensure that the massage operations would not be disrupted and it was believed that there were middlemen to collect money monthly from the premises owners.
The 14 individuals aged between 29 and 54 would be investigated under Section 16 and 17 of the MACC Act 2009. — Bernama
