Seven bank officers in Sabah arrested for graft

KOTA KINABALU: Graftbusters have swooped in to arrest seven Bank Rakyat officers who demanded kickbacks and used falsified documents to enable a civil servant to get a loan from the financial institution.

Sabah Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Datuk Shaharom Nizam Abd Manap said in a statement on Thursday that the seven officers were arrested together with a self employed man on Sept 6 and 7.

He said the suspects had demanded RM7,000 for the 33-year-old civil servant’s RM50,000 personal loan to be approved.

Shaharom said two bank officers and the self-employed man were detained at a cafe outside a shopping mall here on Tuesday.

Following the arrests, three MACC teams raided the Bank Rakyat branches at Harbour City and Likas as well as the house of one of the bank’s staff.

The MACC raiding teams seized a laptop computer, a personal computer, six handphones, rubber stamps suspected to be fake and Bank Rakyat personal loan documents.

He said following the raids and seizures, five more bank officers were arrested on Wednesday.

All the suspects have been remanded for a week.