The widow of Malaysian tycoon and former politician Daim Zainuddin has hit back at the country’s anti-corruption agency, accusing it of being “vindictive” by continuing to seize assets from his estate in both Malaysia and the United Kingdom despite no criminal conviction.
On Thursday, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) took control of Daim’s 58-storey Ilham Tower in Kuala Lumpur, alleging that it was tied to offences under the anti-money-laundering law.
This is despite the commission having already taken the same action in 2023, a move that the family’s lawyers said amounted to “harassment”.
“This is vindictive, unlawful and a blatant abuse of power by MACC. This is contrary to the rule of law; it is the law of the jungle,” lawyers Rajesh Nagarajan and Sachpreetraj Singh Sohanpal said in a statement on the day of the seizure.
A day before, a Malaysian court authorised the MACC to start proceedings in the UK to recover assets worth £132 million (US$179 million), including two commercial buildings, three luxury homes, two residential units and a bank account held by the Daim family-linked Ilham Foundation.
Daim, who was a two-time finance minister, died in November aged 86. He was a close confidant of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and a key architect of Malaysia’s economic boom in the 1980s – a period often criticised for its entrenched cronyism and elite enrichment.
