Corruption: political aide resigns amid suspicion of corruption

The Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission has been heavily criticised for what many have seen as a lack of progress against high profile targets - and in other cases.

In fact, the MACC, totally overhauled a little over a year ago, has been undertaking more investigations and its conduct of investigations has led to court applications designed to slow down the MACC, for example that interviews should take place only during office hours.

Local media report that the MACC has confirmed that it has arrested a senior minister after a raid that produced an as yet unquantified amount in cash, all bundled into different denominations of notes.

But Hasbie Satar is not a minister, so his resignation cannot be connected to the arrest. But some commentators are pointing out that the resignation came on a Sunday, an official day off in Government, and also on the first day of Chinese New Year - a public holiday for which today has been substituted: the commentators wonder why such action would take place when the government would normally have been closed for a long weekend.

One newspaper says that "a political secretary has been told to resign after being caught with MYR2 million in cash in Penang last Thursday." An arrest was made then, amid allegations that the person concerned had taken payments for acting as a "middleman in deals for approvals" of construction projects.

The confusion in reporting is common in Malaysia where newspapers self-censor and even when charges are brought, defendants are often not named in the media until after conviction. Therefore tying up the ends of stories is frequently a frustrating task.