Criminal charge against civil servants should include politicians

13th June – Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) supports the move by the Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Centre (GIACC) to introduce a new law that will impose criminal charges against civil servants who cause substantial financial losses to the government.

 

The proposed Act would help to check cases when the government  incurred losses due to negligence, non-compliance with requirements or procedures in government departments and agencies.

 

The act will also be an alternative to the other existing laws to prosecute civil servants for misconduct and hold them responsible for the losses to public coffers they might have caused.

 

However, TI-M feels  any effort or laws to address misconduct which results in financial losses of tax payers’ money  should not only apply to civil servants but need to  include  against politicians or persons in elected positions in cases where orders or instructions comes.

 

Any proposed law should apply fairly to everyone involved in the decision making process and that includes politicians.

 

Very often the civil servants are actually pawns in a game being played by the bigger fish. In those cases such persons should also be brought to book especially if they are the mastermind in the whole corrupt transaction.

 

Therefore, the Act should be widened to include more provisions covering the politicians. It should also ratify and overcome weaknesses of this kind of law.

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Datuk Akhbar Satar, President, Transparency International Malaysia