18th International Anti-Corruption Conference

Over the past few years the Prime Ministers of Malaysia and Cambodia became immensely rich from looting their countries’ wealth, and proactively sacrificed their democracies in their efforts to protect their power and to avoid being held to account.

Following a surprise loss in recent elections former PM Najib Razak, wife and others were charged with stealing millions of dollars from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MdB, and laundering this money to buy high end real estate, yachts, works of art and funding the hit movie Wolf of Wall Street. When the story broke Najib tried to close down the investigations into him by sacking the Attorney General and presiding over attacks on and closure of media outlets and NGOs – a war on civil society.

Following the UN’s biggest peacekeeping intervention, the results of the first ever UN organised elections, which helped bring an end to Cambodia’s long-running civil war, were ignored by the loser, incumbent and former Khmer Rouge cadre Hun Sen. He has maintained power ever since via a coup in 1997 and rigged elections;  his  family have a stranglehold over all economic sectors in Cambodia. In the last two years Hun Sen dissolved the main opposition party and closed down virtually all independent media outlets and activist NGOs. Meanwhile prominent politicians and government critics and have been imprisoned and gunned down. Cambodia is now a dictatorship.

The panel will discuss the threat that corruption poses to democracy, lessons learned and what to do about it.