BANK Negara Malaysia (BNM) should launch a full investigation into the Pandora Papers, which raises the question of illicit financial flows out of Malaysia at estimated losses of up to US$33.7 billion (RM140.2 billion), Lim Guan Eng said.  

The DAP secretary-general wants the Finance Ministry to direct BNM to investigate the matter, to show the government has nothing to hide. 

“It is unfortunate that Dewan Rakyat Speaker Azhar Azizan Harun continues to deny attempts by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to debate this important issue in Parliament,” he said in a statement today.

On October 6, Anwar filed for a motion to allow for the Pandora Papers to be debated in the Dewan Rakyat, but it was rejected by Azhar on grounds it is not urgent. 

The Pandora Papers are an anonymous dump of 2.94 terabytes of confidential financial files to the Investigative Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 

Among those named in the Pandora Papers as having offshore accounts are Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, former deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, former finance minister Daim Zainuddin and Selayang MP William Leong. 

Lim said that to prove that there is nothing to hide, such an investigation should punish those involved in illicit financial flows.  

“This is also recommend stringent measures to prevent illicit outflows from Malaysia, and how to improve transparency, accountability and good governance.” 

The Pandora Papers is part of an illicit financial flows scandal, which the Global Financial Integrity Report (GFI) defines as funds that are illegally earned, transferred, and/or utilszed across an international border. The funds are sourced from criminal and corrupt activities. 

Money laundering remains a serious problem and GFI estimates that the annual value of trade-related illicit flows in and out of developing countries have amounted to, on average, about20 % of the value of their total trade with advanced economies.  

According to the latest 10-year report by GFI titled Illicit Financial Flows to and from 148 Developing Countries: 2006-2015, Malaysia lost between US$22.9 billion and US$33.7 billion in illicit outflows from 2006 until 2015. 

Lim said that previously the Panama Papers had disclosed that more than 2,000 Malaysian citizens and companies had secret accounts in Panama, presumably to hide their ill-gotten gains.  

“Unlike other countries, no one was prosecuted for money laundering and the illicit outflows, presumably because they were part of the ruling establishment.” – October 13, 2021.