PUTRAJAYA, July 21 — The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) will investigate without discrimination and this includes going after the “big fish”, the anti-graft agency’s chief Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed said.

He described claims that the MACC does not go after high-level graft suspects and allegedly only investigates small-time offenders as attempts to “pull down” the commission.

“Can you tell me which big fish we did not investigate? Is there any big fish that we don’t investigate?” Abu Kassim asked in a recent interview with The Malay Mail Online and Guang Ming Daily.

“In reality, since our establishment way back in 1967, we’ve been investigating a lot of big fish,” he said listing former chief ministers of states such as Sabah, Perak and Selangor as examples.

He said that in recent years after the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACA) was structurally changed and renamed the MACC, Putrajaya has been hauling many people to court over graft offences.

Abu Kassim then cited charges against former Selangor Mentri Besar Dr Mohamed Khir Toyo, the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) and the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) scandals as examples.

“People wanted us to charge big fish at that time, Khir Toyo. We charged Khir Toyo. PKFZ, people say why don’t charge, PKFZ has been charged,” said the MACC chief who has 30 years of experience in fighting graft.

But later in the interview, Abu Kassim also pointed out that the MACC’s role is merely to investigate, and not to prosecute.

“Please don’t misunderstand. Don’t ask us to charge or not to charge, our job is to investigate,” he said.

“If you want to see we investigate big fish or not, you look at the cases we have investigated, all big fish we have investigated without fear or favour,” he added.

When asked if the MACC should be given powers to prosecute, he pointed out that Malaysia practises separation of powers and gives the powers of investigation, prosecution and adjudication to different parties.

While saying there were attempts to interfere in the MACC’s work, Abu Kassim said such moves would be firmly rebutted before adding that those being probed should wait for the commission to finish its investigations.

“It’s an offence for people to obstruct us from investigation,” he said.

“If we don’t complete the investigation, it’s an offence on us. So it’s our job to complete the investigation,” he later added, having said that no probes had ever been stopped during his time due to attempted interference.

Abu Kassim also said there are five committees to help ensure the MACC’s independence, with one — the Operations Review Panel (ORP) — given the power to review cases before they are closed.

He said the ORP has since 2009 gone through hundreds of cases and asked the MACC to review about 33 cases, which resulted in five cases being brought to court.

“I don’t have to tell the prime minister or ministers, ‘Can we investigate this one?’ No,” he added, stressing the commission’s independence and ability to investigate based on the merit of a case.

The other four independent oversight bodies are the Anti-Corruption Advisory Board (ACAB), Special Committee on Corruption (SCC), Complaints Committee (CC) and the Consultation and Corruption Prevention Panel (CCPP).

Khir Toyo was convicted by the Shah Alam High Court in 2011 for abusing his powers to purchase a luxury property, but his one-year jail term has been suspended pending his appeal at the Federal Court. He failed to overturn his conviction for graft at the Court of Appeal this May 30, and filed his appeal at the apex court a day later.

Six individuals have been charged over the PKFZ scandal since December 2009, with former transport minister Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik’s cheating trial at the Kuala Lumpur High Court in its final stages, while his successor Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy’s cheating trial is set to begin on August 19.

The NFC case, which involved a RM250 million soft loan for cattle farming, has seen National Feedlot Corporation (NFCorp) executive chairman Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Salleh Ismail being slapped with two charges of criminal breach of trust for the partial finance of two units of condominiums.

Earlier this month, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) president Akhbar Satar suggested that the government’s failure to prosecute “big fish” in high-profile cases had contributed to the decline in the people’s confidence in Putrajaya’s anti-graft fight.

“Maybe, lately, there have been big cases that have been investigated but those involved were not charged,” he was quoted saying by news portal Malaysiakini on July 9.

Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) results for 2013 said less than one in three Malaysian respondents felt the government was successfully combating graft, down from 48 per cent in the same survey in 2011.