Bumiputra Malaysia Finance Limited (BMF) was a financial institution set up in Hong Kong at the end of 1977. Its parent bank was the Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Berhad (BBMB) which was established in 1965 with public funds to promote Bumiputera participation in the economy. In the 1980s, during Mahathir Mohamad’s administration, BMF lost M$2.5 billion, allegedly due to fraud and corruption, which could not be accounted for until today. After about 35 years, another similar colossal financial scandal was alleged to have taken place through 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). 1MDB is a development company set up by the Malaysian government in 2009, during Najib Razak’s administration, with a focus on the long-term economic development of the country. However, within about eight years, it has run up more than RM42 billion in debts and key figures are tainted by allegations of abuse of power and corruption. It is therefore timely to revisit the BMF case, to discuss and compare it with the present interest in the 1MDB case. This book will highlight the alleged fraud and corruption that took place in both cases – tracing the money trail, the problematic structure of both organisations, the political and social structure and environment in Malaysia during the occurrence of both scandals, and finally compare both cases, to provide an analysis of the social and political progress of Malaysia in the last three decades.

Thomas B. Pepinsky examines how coalitions and capital mobility in Indonesia and Malaysia shape the links between financial crises and regime change.

This is a study of Malaysia’s new political economy, with a focus on ownership and control of the corporate sector. It offers a pioneering assessment of government-linked investment companies (GLICs), a type of state-owned institution that has long prevailed in the corporate sector but has not been analysed. Malaysia’s history of government-business ties is unique, while the nature of the nexuses between the state and the corporate sector has undergone major transitions. Corporate power has shifted from the hands of foreign firms to the state to the ruling party, and well-connected businessmen, and back to the state. Corporate wealth is now heavily situated in the leading publicly-listed government-linked companies (GLCs), controlled through block shareholdings by a mere seven GLICs under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Finance. To indicate why these GLICs are important actors in Corporate Malaysia, this study provides a deep assessment of their ownership and control of Bursa Malaysia’s top 100 publicly-listed enterprises.

Lim Kit Siang has been fighting on the forefront of Malaysian politics since the late 1960s. Uncompromising in his mission to pull the country away from systemic race-based politics and all the ills that stem from the sustainment of these over five decades, he was jailed twice without trial. His persistence saw him and his followers well placed to participate in the surprising resurgence of political opposition over the last 15 years. Since 2008, his Democratic Action Party has grown greatly in strength, and together with its allies, has been able to seriously challenge the ruling coalition. This book captures the spirit of Lim’s life, and describes the grim yet gratifying journey that his refusal to compromise on his political convictions forced him to take. It is the tale of a man who felt he had no choice, and consequently, whose impact on his country’s history is great. In that sense, his story is also a narrative about a country that has yet to fulfil the great promise that it holds