KUALA LUMPUR, July 2 ― Malaysia’s steady decline in a key measure on tracking corruption cannot  be addressed until Putrajaya is serious on tackling graft, DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang said

Other than fanciful statements, the government has done little to combat corruption, he added.

Last week Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief commissioner Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed told The Edge Weekly that he hopes Malaysia can make the top ten in Transparency International‘s Corruption Perception Index.

In 2013, Malaysia ranked 53rd out of 177 countries, one notch up from 54th  in 2012.

Lim said Malaysia’s anti corruption agency has not been able to snare “a single big fish” in order to address “grand corruption”.

He added that the anti-corruption unit has not even managed to resolve the questionable deaths of Teoh Beng Hock, the former aide of Selangor executive councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah, and former Selangor Customs assistant director Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamed.

Teoh fell to his death from Selangor MACC’s former headquarters in Shah Alam hours after being taken into custody for questioning about allegations of corruption in 2009.

Ahmad Sarbaini, was found dead in a badminton court on the first floor of MACC’s headquarter in Kuala Lumpur in 2011 while being investigated for being part of a syndicate involved in tax evasion, money laundering and illegal money outflows worth RM108 billion.

“It boggles the imagination that Abu Kassim could even consider Malaysia to be ranked in top 10 or 12 in TI CPI as compared to proactive anti-corruption campaigns in France, China, Indonesia and Philippines in their recent actions against grand corruption,” said Lim.

Around the region, high profile sackings have taken place recently as countries fight corruption.

On Monday, China’s Communist Party expelled and is prosecuting former General Xu Caihou, the highest military leader on suspicion of taking bribes and sacked Wan Qingliang ― the party chief in Guangzhou ― after announcing a corruption investigation against him three days earlier.

On the same day, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced former Constitutional Court chief justice Akil Mochtar, 53, to life imprisonment, after being found guilty of taking bribes of up to Rp 57 billion (RM372.5 million) from a number of regional heads to influence decisions on election disputes during his tenure at the court.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was suspended from Congress as Pampanga representative yesterday for 90 days pending her trial for graft over the award of US$329 million (RM1.05 billion) construction contract to Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE in the National Broadband Network (NBN) controversy when she was president in 2007.

Similarly, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was detained and interrogated for over 15 hours over allegations that he tried to use his influence to thwart an investigation of his 2007 successful election campaign.

Lim said the MACC cannot hope to lift Malaysia’s ranking until the Najib administration “gets serious in waging an all-out war against grand corruption” and nab high-ranking officials in the likes of “Sarkozy, Arroyo, Akil Mochtar and Xu Caihou are brought to the courts of justice”.