Face up to money-laundering shame and reform financial system, Putrajaya told

KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 — Putrajaya must face up to reality and clean up the country’s financial sector to put an end to criminal outflow of cash, the DAP’s Lim Guan Eng said today in response to a news report linking Malaysia to the world’s largest money-laundering scheme.

Source from (The Sun Daily): http://www.thesundaily.my/news/714581
Published: May 31, 2013

Source from (The Malaysian Insider): http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/face-up-to-money-laundering-shame-and-reform-financial-system-putrajaya-told/
Published: May 31, 2013


Lim said Malaysia is ranked as being among the world leaders in illicit outflows of funds.

Unlicensed money exchangers in Malaysia had aided the operators of a global currency exchange that ran a US$6 billion (RM18.3 billion) money-laundering operation online, a hub for criminals peddling in everything from stolen identities to child pornography, the New York Times reported two days ago.

“The time has come for the BN federal government to stop being in denial by adopting genuine financial reform to clean up and stop such criminal activities of illicit outflow of ‘black money’ and money-laundering,” the DAP secretary-general said in a statement.

He also pointed out that the latest report by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) had ranked Malaysia as being among the world leaders in illicit outflows of funds valued at US$291 billion, apparently due to widespread corruption.

“However in per capita basis China lost out to world champion Malaysia at RM6,400 per person per year compared to RM32,000 for Malaysia,” said Lim, who is also Bagan MP. China was listed as the world leader in illicit funds outflow at US$2.8 trillion.

Following the GFI report, Bank Negara had defended its financial system, saying unrecorded transactions out of the country did not necessarily mean the same thing as “illicit financial flows” but did not clarify the matter.

The opposition leader blamed the Barisan Nasional (BN) federal government — which was re-elected in the May 5 polls — and Malaysia’s central bank for propagating what he described as a “culture of corruption” and a lack of financial transparency and accountability, giving rise to the country’s deteriorating reputation.

“On money laundering, Malaysia’s international reputation is now worse than Thailand or Indonesia and on par with countries like Nigeria and Russia,” he said.

He urged the government to work on being more transparent and accountable with the country’s financial system.