The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's (MACC) stunning revelation last month of "people within enforcement agencies" — suspected of protecting an international scam syndicate — is shocking but not surprising.
MACC, with the Immigration Department's assistance, had crippled an international investment scam syndicate operated by foreigners, aided and abetted by rogue elements of a certain enforcement agency.
It's no wonder that the scammers, who cheated victims from as far as Australia and the United Kingdom to the tune of RM200 million, could operate with impunity since 2019.
Here's an educated guesswork on how this scam operation flourished: Scammers were rounded up but "allowed" to proceed for as long as there was a handsome cut.
Scammers, using well-connected insiders, "invited" the rogue elements into a lucrative "joint venture" where the returns were so seductive that it's worth betraying the sacred oath of service. And so it goes, the infamy of the inside job, a narrative as old as organised crime, burnished in legacies of literature and pop culture, especially in the movies.
In Malaysia, graft in the ranks of that particular law enforcement is notoriously embedded. Like politicians docked for graft, instant gratification is a pre-condition, driven by the lust for flashy cars, leafy properties and luxury accessories, or the need to service the kids' higher education.
This disrepute is woven in apt metaphors: "wolf in sheep's clothing" and the ageless Malay adage, "musuh dalam selimut", literally translated into "enemy inside the blanket", sum it all.
We cannot be naive about why graft persists. For the moment, this bent construct is curbed by diligent monitoring, detecting, detaining and indicting. But to kill the scourge, our socio-education system may need a monumental overhaul.
Certain annual international ranking cites nations as "corruption-free". We can only be sure that corruptibility is in minor percentages and not in absolutes.
Corruption is resilient in even the most celebrated, least-corrupt nations, so it is postulated that the "corruptly clean" take great, creative and innovative pains to mask their illicit money trail.
It's highly presumptuous to proclaim that scams are "less common" in neighbouring nations due to their "high integrity", a noted anti-corruption maven has declared. But here's the barefaced insight: reprobates avoid suspicion by desisting temptations to flaunt ill-gotten gains, living moderately according to their means while carefully sidestepping discernible exposure.
Their transactions are complex, camouflaged under layers of shell companies and bureaucracy. Since direct cash bribes are glaringly self-incriminatory, payoffs are delegated discreetly to trusted proxies or to offshore accounts handled by furtive law firms, or lately, in the hazy world of crypto-currency.
Thankfully, Malaysian offenders are almost always over-confident or idiotic enough to expose themselves — on social media while excreting a damning money trail.
Trust them to succumb to self-incrimination as they luxuriate over the latest big money purchase they could never afford in a lifetime of honest work.