THE oversight panels of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) should be urging chief commissioner Azam Baki to respond to questions about his ownership of corporate shares, instead of targeting those raising the issue, former panel member Edmund Terence Gomez said.

“Shouldn’t the attention be on Azam Baki? Why target the messenger. The focus should be on Azam Baki and he needs to respond to these allegations.

“Azam has been keeping quiet since the issue was brought up. As the MACC chief, he should be responding to this immediately,” Gomez said to The Malaysian Insight.

The political economist and Universiti Malaya academic was today in a public dispute with MACC Anti-Corruption Advisory Board chairman Abu Zahar Ujang.

This follows Gomez’s release of email correspondence between him and Abu Zahar and also with the Borhan Dolah, the chair of the Consultation and Corruption Prevention Panel from which Gomez had resigned.

His resignation was to protest the lack of action taken by Abu Zahar and Borhan over allegations that Azam owned a large number of corporate shares in a company in 2015 and 2016, and may not have declared them.

The correspondence with Borhan and Abu Zahar that Gomez released to the press showed he had been sending them emails urging for a meeting to discuss Azam’s case for a month, since November 10.

He said he had also furnished Borhan and Abu Zahar with several attachments to his emails containing information on Azam, who has served the MACC for more than 30 years.

Gomez said the information on Azam was provided to him by a person who worked with an anti-graft organisation.

Borhan has refuted Gomez’s claims, saying his emails never mentioned Azam’s wrongdoings. 

Gomez said this was “disingenuous” of Borhan, as although Azam’s name was not in the cover email, it was mentioned along with details of the alleged conflict of interest in the attachments.

The issue of the anti-graft chief commissioner’s shares ownership was also raised in Parliament on December 14 by Sungai Buloh MP R. Sivarasa, who called for an independent investigation. – December 30, 2021.