KUALA LUMPUR, July 5  — Two senior managers from national oil giant Petronas were charged today with taking bribes and laundering monies worth nearly RM1 million, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has said.

Petronas, whose sole shareholder is the government, confirmed that the MACC had arrested and charged two staff members from its group of companies on suspicion that they were involved in corruption.

“Petronas has and will continue to extend its fullest cooperation to the MACC in discharging its duty, in line with the company’s zero-tolerance policy towards any form of corruption and misconduct among its employees,” the company said in a statement today.

MACC today named Idris M Shuhud and Ishak Hashim, both aged 47, as the Petronas employees that were charged in the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court.

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MACC said Idris, Petronas Carigali’s pipeline replacement project manager, was charged with five counts under Section 17(a) of the Malaysian Anti-Commission Act 2009 for allegedly taking a bribe of RM 403,000.

He had allegedly received the bribes through cheques and direct transfers to his personal accounts from 2007 to 2012, MACC said, adding that it was believed that the money was payment from vendor Penaga Orbit Sdn Bhd for the approval of official Petronas documents.

Idris was also charged with money-laundering when he allegedly used RM385,000 obtained from bribes to buy and renovate a house in Cheras. 

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He was charged with four counts under Section 4(1)(a) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001. 

Idris, who was unrepresented, claimed trial for all the charges levelled against him.

The other Petronas employee, Ishak - now a senior manager of the customer risk management department - was charged with three counts under Section 11(a) of the Anti-Corruption Act 1997 for allegedly taking bribes of RM22,800 on two occasions.

Ishak, who was then the Operations Coordinator of Petronas Trading Corporation Sdn Bhd’s Crude Oil Group, had alleged agreed to take RM11,800 and RM11,000 from the director of Erision Chem Sdn Bhd in the dates running from August 19 to 29 in 2008.

The bribes were purportedly given as payment for the supply of 70 lorries’ worth of Natural Gas Liquid to Erision.