Estimates put the number of undocumented foreign workers here upwards of 3.5 million. Our porous entry and exit points facilitate other crimes, with drug syndicates rampant at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
Customs have seized more than a tonne of narcotics in recent operations, including large consignments of methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine concealed in cargo destined for Australia, Bangladesh and elsewhere.
Wildlife traffickers move endangered species through the same terminal, with thousands of animals seized in cases valued in the millions of ringgit.
Human trafficking and migrant smuggling overlap with these flows; “counter-setting” practices at immigration desks, where officers allegedly facilitate entry in exchange for bribes, have repeatedly drawn investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
Arrests of immigration officers, seizures of cash from their homes and the reassignment of dozens of personnel have become a recurring theme.
The creation of the Malaysian Border Control and Protection Agency (AKPS) in 2024 was meant to change that. By consolidating immigration, customs, quarantine and related functions under one body, the government showed it was serious in tackling a system that was broken.
Yet barely two years on, the agency’s director-general, Comm Datuk Seri Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain, was charged on Wednesday at the Sepang Magistrates’ Court with two counts of voluntarily causing hurt to police officers at KLIA on Sept 28.
The charges stem from a confrontation captured on CCTV that went viral; Comm Shuhaily pleaded not guilty and has framed the episode as the personal cost of trying to tighten security.
Whether the incident reflects overzealous reform or something less noble, it has raised more questions than it has answered about the agency’s internal discipline and external credibility.
The irony is hard to miss. Political elites, across administrations, have often shielded or looked past the very officers and systems tasked with securing the nation’s main gateway. Syndicates adapt – shifting routes to secondary airports or exploiting land borders when pressure mounts at KLIA – because the incentives remain intact.
Corruption is not a peripheral problem here; it is deeply rooted and has exposed national vulnerability. Banking veteran Tan Sri Azman Hashim recently captured the deeper cultural rot.
Speaking of people who flaunt lifestyles far beyond their apparent means without embarrassment, he observed that the country has lost its sense of shame.
“There is no longer any sense of shame here,” he said.
The old slogan “Malaysia boleh” has mutated, in his view, into “Malaysia, everything also boleh”, because graft makes the impossible possible. He described corruption as endemic, no longer confined to isolated cases but normalised across public and corporate life.
His call for integrity education to begin in schools is a recognition that the moral foundations have eroded.
But not everyone has accepted this normalisation. Universiti Malaya student leader Ummi Umairah Bakhit went viral after she bluntly questioned political figures at a Higher Education Ministry-backed dialogue about public donations to former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who remains linked to the 1MDB scandal and related convictions.
She described such donations as “the stupidest thing” she had seen, tying the gesture to broader failures of accountability, and pressed the panel on how future leaders should confront corruption and feudal mindsets. The backlash was swift – online harassment, threats and attempts to shame her – but she has refused to apologise, insisting that corruption must remain part of the national conversation.
Her stance, alongside Azman’s, shows that at least some Malaysians, from student activists to established business figures, are still willing to name the problem plainly.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has now pledged that a special multi-agency committee, chaired by the Attorney General, will investigate allegations of a “corporate mafia” involving collusion between businessmen and anti-graft officials and that its findings will be released publicly within three months.
He has insisted that no one will be protected. Whether this commitment produces genuine accountability or becomes another procedural gesture will be tested soon enough.
Malaysia cannot secure its borders while the institutions and culture that underpin them remain compromised. The cancer of corruption has already metastasised into the systems meant to keep people, narcotics and contraband out.
From the estimated millions of undocumented workers to the ongoing drug and wildlife traffic, the symptoms are visible. The question is whether the country still possesses the political will – and the restored sense of shame – to treat the disease before the damage becomes irreversible.
