KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — New and radical laws are needed to stop people from sabotaging the country’s economy, Tan Sri Abu Kassim said today.
The director-general of the National Centre for Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption said strict laws were needed to ensure policy makers and those tasked to implement best practices on integrity toe the line.
“We need radical change to the laws. It must be done as we cannot do the same thing and expect different results.
“A major change is that we need to identify corruption practices such as bribery, misappropriation of funds, breach of trust, monopoly, proxies arrangement, Alibaba practises, lopsided trade agreement among others as economic sabotage,” the former chief of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) told some 300 participants at the Congress on the Future of Bumiputera and the Nation held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre here
Abu Kassim further explained the definition of economic sabotage is applied to practices that derail the real objective of a national economic policy that are intend to raise the socio-economics of the nation and that aim to close the wealth gap among the races.
“At the moment we don’t have a law to that we can use against those who have sabotaged our economy,” he said.
The change in the laws would ensure that the effects from a national economic policy would reach its intended recipients, he added.
“Among the positive effects we hope to see is that the objective of a policy properly achieved, nation’s the socio economic status is protected and the parity among the races is achieved,” he said.
Abu Kassim also said among the other challenges of integrity in the Bumiputera economy is a culture of complacency and lobbying.
