(Bloomberg) -- Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency said Mahathir Mohamad’s two eldest sons declared their assets on time in a monthslong probe targeting the 99-year-old former premier, and it’s now seeking more information from them.
“The investigation on the asset declaration is still ongoing,” Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief Azam Baki said at a briefing on Wednesday. “We are still engaging with them, to get more information.”
Back in January, the anti-graft agency ordered Mokhzani Mahathir and his elder brother Mirzan to declare their assets dating back to 1981, the year Mahathir became prime minister. The sons said in an interview with Bloomberg News in March that the agency ordered them to assist in an investigation into their father, revealing for the first time that the probe was into Mahathir.
The brothers received a series of extensions of the original February deadlines to comply with the orders, with the final deadline set for the middle of September.
The development comes after Daim Zainuddin, one of Mahathir’s closest allies, and his wife were charged for failing to declare their assets under a similar order. Daim said in January that his prosecution was a vendetta by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, which the Malaysian leader and the MACC deny.
Anwar, who finally became prime minister in 2022 after falling short of the top job for decades, is a former protege of Mahathir but later fell out with him. Mahathir dismissed Anwar from all government posts in 1998 and Anwar was later imprisoned on corruption and sodomy charges, which he denied.
After he was removed from Mahathir’s government, Anwar became a prominent opposition figure who pushed for democratic reforms and was courted by the West. But since taking power, his government has faced criticism from opposition parties for using a colonial-era sedition law to stifle dissent and after the attorney general withdrew criminal charges against a key coalition ally, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
Anwar has repeatedly denied interfering in Zahid’s case or in the MACC’s investigations.
Mahathir, who led Malaysia for nearly a quarter century in two different stints, said at a press briefing in January — conducted before Mokhzani was ordered to declare his assets — that the probe involving his son Mirzan was politically motivated. He has denied wrongdoing.
(Updates with details of probes by Malaysia’s anti-graft agency from third paragraph.)
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