How is Malaysian corporate/white-collar crime situation different from most countries?
Akhbar Satar: I think corruption is the same everywhere. We learned from the British who created the system and the whole ‘I scratch your back you scratch mine back’. For businesses in Malaysia, fraud remains one of the most problematic issues in economic crime. 48% of Malaysian companies have been subject to economic crime during the past two years. MD: Has any particular type of white-collar/corporate crime significantly been on the rise in recent times? AS: Computer crimes are on the rise. There’s an African syndicate that has set up a hub, actually, a bank here (in Malaysia). What they do is they will email to people outside Malaysia telling them that they can get a loan of maximum US$2,000 and to get it they are required to pay an advanced for the application fee for ‘processing‘ which is US$100 or US$100. Of course, they’ll see no sign of the loan once they pay the fee. Imagine how many millions of people in the world could get conned by them. Most of the people involved (in this
