FANCY purchasing the super yacht Equanimity, or amassing luxury assets in Beverly Hills? Want to roll in riches like the key people allegedly at the centre of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal?

If you have not had enough of 1MDB in the news, there is now Kleptopoly, a board game inspired by the popular game Monopoly, which allows you to have a sense of what it feels like to be a tycoon at the centre of the scandal that has dominated Malaysian headlines for the past couple of years.

Produced by the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4), the board game is based on the US Department of Justice civil forfeiture suit, and even features 1MDB-related properties and assets.

The main purpose of the game is to give Malaysians a better understanding of corruption, asset declaration and 1MDB’s frenzied timeline, said C4 open government initiative officer Ho Yi Jian.

“1MDB is an evident case of people in power stealing money.

“The game was inspired by what happened with 1MDB, plus all the financial scandals in Malaysia…it is to make 1MDB more understandable.”

Ho said the game teaches players about matters like asset declaration, good governance and money laundering.

The aim of the game is simple: to become the wealthiest and least corrupt player through buying, renting and selling properties.

While the game is almost fully based on Monopoly, there are a few added rules and tweaks.

For example, in Monopoly, players are able to collect 200 “dollars” after each round, but in Kleptopoly, players are given a whopping RM20 million by a figure who says “boss kasi gaji” (payout from boss).

In Kleptopoly, when players purchase a property, they have to draw another card from the “Ong” pile to determine if their property is from clean or corrupt sources.

There are four asset-declaration slots on the board, where players need to declare their assets. If players are found to be corrupt, they go to the “Anti-Corruption Agency”, Kleptopoly’s version of the “Jail” tile.

The “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards in the original Monopoly are replaced by the “Raja Bomoh” card, based on the self-proclaimed “King of Bomoh” who came into the spotlight when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing.

The cards in the “Raja Bomoh” pile include whistle-blower (player has immunity), mysterious donor (cash injection from an outside source) and funny ones like profits from Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which was allegedly financed with money stolen from 1MDB.

Properties

As for the properties in Kleptopoly, most are based on real-life ones featured in the DoJ’s 1MDB suit. These include New York’s Park Lane Hotel and Park Laurel Codominium, mansions in Beverly Hills and Fleet Street townhouses.

The assets featured are private jets, pink diamond rings, the infamous Equanimity yacht, which was recently seized by Indonesian authorities, and “Red Granny Pictures” – a parody of Red Granite Pictures, the production house involved in the 1MDB saga that is headed by Prime Minister Najib Razak’s stepson, Riza Aziz.

Another interesting addition to the game are Cayman Islands properties. The game intends to teach players about the functions of a tax haven, which firms and individuals use to start shell companies, dodge taxes and hide assets.

Characters

The player characters in Kleptopoly replace the traditional car, dog, thimble and wheelbarrow tokens in Monopoly.

The characters are Mr Klepto, resembling a fair-skinned, overweight, baby-faced man, MO1 (a balding, middle-aged man with a moustache and spectacles, carrying a briefcase containing cash), Shopping Mama (a woman with a bouffant hairstyle carrying shopping bags) and Arab Donor (a character dressed in an Arabian outfit).

C4 consulted local game designers when creating Kleptopoly, and even roped in Hardknock Creatives to hand-cast the characters.

Kleptopoly was launched in October last year, in conjunction with Pakatan Harapan’s anti-kleptocracy rally, and so far, 400 copies of the game have been sold.

The game, which is available for order via the C4 website, is priced at RM105 for the premium edition, which has the hand-cast characters, and RM45 for the standard edition.

Ho said C4 is barely making a profit from the game, but intends for Kleptopoly to be an educational tool for Malaysians to learn more about the 1MDB scandal.

“We are not making a lot of money, the margins are relatively thin,” he said, adding that playing sessions for the public have been organised over the past couple of months.

C4 director Cynthia Gabriel said the organisation thought about coming up with the board game to renew Malaysians’ interest in 1MDB after the topic died down in the country.

“There was a lull in the 1MDB situation. All the local cases were closed, and the mainstream media was not reporting on it.

“There was also the language barrier. How much information was actually reaching Malaysians? After a while, for the average person, the financial flow got too complicated. It got over everybody’s head,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

With the 14th general election looming, Cynthia said she hopes that Kleptopoly will gain enough traction so that Malaysians are informed about the 1MDB scandal and its impact on the country.

“We hope that in the run-up to the general election, we can sell as much as we can. Will it be the game of the elections? Yes!” – March 11, 2018.