Saturday August 9, 2008 MYT 3:45:06 PM

ACA receives 10,000 tip-offs this year

By STEPHEN THEN

MIRI: The ACA has already received tip-offs and complaints from more than 10,000 informants so far this year, the majority of them concerning cases in the Klang Valley with many of these complaints directed against those in the private sector.

ACA Director-General Datuk Seri Panglima Ahmad Said Hamdan on Saturday said the number of tip-offs and complaints had surged tremendously.

"The 10,000 cases of information and complaints we have received so far this year was the total number we received for the whole of last year.

"Most of these involved cases in the Klang Valley, with increasing complaints of corruption directed against those in the private sectors over matters like contracts and business deals.

"There are a lot of development projects going on in the Klang Valley now and that is why we are getting increasing reports," he told a press conference here after opening the state level ACA-Education Department anti-corruption debate here.

Ahmad Said said the ACA had also received a lot of non-ACA cases, such as complaints regarding land issues, housing matters and even trivial matters like those involving work rivalries.

He said the ACA will try to investigate all, and will forward to the relevant agencies to carry out detailed probe if the cases did not fall under the ACA jurisdiction.

"Previous experience showed that only about 30% can be investigated based on solid evidence or information given by informants who come in person and based on probes carried out by our ACA investigators.

"The rest are in the form of poison-pen letters, SMS and verbal calls and many do not have enough details. We also have to dispel false allegations," he said.

The ACA, he added, welcomes whistle-blowers, but they must give accurate details, and not merely make personal attacks or else the ACA would be wasting time probing cases that lead nowhere.

Asked on the situation in Sarawak, Ahmad Said said the ACA is currently probing some "big cases".

One of those that had already been completed is the RM90mil Kuching Prison project that had been abandoned due to bad workmanship, he said.

For the whole state, the Sarawak ACA had received more than 800 reports this year, and 45 people had already been arrested so far, he added.