Malaysia has reasonable indicators on nearly all components of the IPI, in particular administrative burden and trade openness, but is dragged down by the absence of serious public oversight due to poor freedom of press and civil society having low access to information. The abundance of resources for corruption in the form of development money showed and might show again the limits of the country’s capacity to control corruption in the absence of significant social accountability.
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See Malaysia on Index of Public Integrity
Selected trends from the Public Integrity Index
Trends in Judicial Independence, Administrative Burden, Freedom of the Press over the past 13 years
Currently, with a very unstable government with a razor thin majority in the parliament after law makers crossed over the political divide betraying the electorate, control of corruption in the eyes of the citizens of Malaysia seems to be worsening. Prosecution against corrupt officers (especially high ranking ones) appears to fit to the political agenda of the executive. The anti-corruption law, modelled on the ICAC, has some effective clauses removed before being passed in parliament in 2009. This has greatly reduced the capacity for the anti-corruption agency to act independently and effectively investigate and prosecute anyone who lives beyond his means.