Contract award to Azam Baki’s brother casts doubt on Malaysia’s procurement regime

On 20 July, the Edge Malaysia reported that Integriti Padu Sdn Bhd secured a RM178m contract with the Ministry of Transport on 26 May.

Nasir Baki, the brother of former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief commissioner Azam Baki, is the executive chairman of Integriti Padu, owning 34% of its shares.

The Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4 Center) raises concern at these revelations, which call into question the governance and transparency of the government’s procurement practices.

The six-year contract secured by Integriti Padu was for the development and operation of the road charge and vehicle entry permit (RC/VEP) system at the Malaysia-Singapore border.

It was also reported that in January, Integriti Padu had secured a RM41m contract from the Ministry of Communications to operate the streaming service RTMKlik 3.0 through open tender. Nasir’s daughter, Mardhiah Nasir, serves as executive director of Integriti Padu as well.

Since The Edge’s report on this matter, Azam has responded defensively, questioning if all his family members would be scrutinised merely by their relation to him, sarcastically adding, “Whoever wants to be safe, please don’t get close to me.”

Transport Minister Anthony Loke has also denied any involvement in the awarding of the contract to Integriti Padu, stating it was an open tender subject to tender board approval. Crucially he added, “We do not know who they are related to,” in reference to the companies who are awarded tenders.

The responses by both Azam and Loke represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation from a governance perspective, and all the more shocking from a former anti-corruption chief.

Azam’s implicit assertion that family members of public servants are unfairly persecuted for engaging in business is a mischaracterisation of the public’s concern on this issue.

Public servants, especially those who are high-ranking, are placed under a greater degree of scrutiny because of the risk that their position could be abused for the benefit of themselves and their family. This scrutiny is necessary in ensuring that personal interests do not trump the public interest.

It is embarrassing that Azam does not recognise the inherent importance of this. Then again, the allegations regarding his own corruption scandals, both in a personal capacity and regarding the MACC’s “corporate mafia” during his tenure remain unsatisfactorily addressed.

Besides that, Loke’s comments open the door for further questions. While it is somewhat positive to clarify that the decision was made by a procurement board, his statement about not knowing who the companies under consideration are related to begs the question as to whether this ignorance extends to the procurement boards themselves.

Was Integriti Padu’s connection to Azam sufficiently disclosed to the Ministry of Transport’s procurement boards when they placed a bid for the tender?

Two considerations emerge.

• If the answer is no, it demonstrates that the processes involved in government tender bidding are not sufficiently substantiated to protect against corruption risks. The lack of official disclosure results in the withholding of information that would have allowed the procurement boards to make an informed and qualified decision, as this denotes a piece of information that would have substantially altered the decision were it disclosed.
• If the answer is yes, it calls into question the justification of how the tender was awarded in spite of this information, and the ways in which the procurement board was satisfied or assured that sufficient due diligence would be undertaken to ensure that corruption risks are minimised. It is also in the public’s interest to understand how these decisions were made, especially because the revelation of tender decisions is bound to cause increased scrutiny, as it already has.

All of this also speaks to the lack of an adequate and well-articulated government procurement legislation to which all ministries are bound by.

While the Government Procurement Act 2025 was hastily passed in Parliament in September 2025, and has been published in the Federal Gazette as of 25 May 2026, it remains unenforced.

Furthermore, even if it was in force, the glaring flaws of the Act that were highlighted by civil society and MPs make the application of the act completely inadequate in terms of ensuring that corruption risks in government procurement processes are minimised and protected against.

C4 Center has long maintained that the practices of government procurement in Malaysia are in dire need of reform, owing not just to the processes themselves, but the ever-encroaching interest of the elite and powerful in narrowing the gap between business and politics.

Therefore, we demand that:

• The government must table amendments to the Government Procurement Act. The concerns raised by civil society with regard to the weaknesses of the act – namely, its granting of wide discretionary powers to the finance minister, the weaknesses of the appeals mechanism, and the lack of transparency obligations – must be addressed in these future amendments.

• The government must disclose and publish the grounds for the contract award to Integriti Padu, specifically addressing the issue of whether the company’s relationship to Azam was disclosed or not. – C4 Center

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