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Muhyiddin Yassin faces charges of corruption over Covid spending
The former prime minister of Malaysia, Muhyiddin Yassin who served during the height of the pandemic, has been accused of corruption, escalating already sour political tensions.
Only a few months after losing an election to PM Anwar Ibrahim in November, Muhyiddin Yassin, 75, was detained.
With his government’s Covid expenditure fund, the former prime minister has been charged with bribery and money laundering.
His followers claim that the accusations are politically motivated, but he denies them.
Before to important state elections in July, the leader of the conservative opposition alliance is the target of a criminal investigation.
After Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption related to the state’s 1MDB investment firm, Mr. Muhyiddin is now the second former Malaysian prime minister to face corruption allegations.
Mr. Muhyiddin, who is currently the head of a Malay-ethnic, Muslim alliance, ruled the nation from 2020 to 2021 for 17 months.
With the current PM Anwar, he has a protracted rivalry. The two have a long-standing animosity because of past political betrayals.
The former leader was accused of numerous counts of bribery and money laundering on Friday in a Kuala Lumpur court.
He is suspected by prosecutors of obtaining $51 million (£42 million) in bribes from businesses that desired to profit from an emergency government expenditure initiative.
Additionally, they claim that the fund was used in two cases of money laundering.
He may spend 20 years in prison if found guilty. On Friday, Mr. Muhyiddin pleaded not guilty in court and was granted bail; nevertheless, his passport was withheld.
Just one day after attending an investigation into the claims by an anti-corruption watchdog, the opposition leader was indicted.
His party’s bank accounts were frozen when the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission opened the investigation in February. Also, two former party leaders have been detained on suspicion of corruption.
The event intensifies political tensions in Malaysia.
The country’s predominantly Malay electorate favored Mr. Muhyiddin’s conservative ethnic-Malay, Muslim alliance in the November election.
But after allying with the previously supreme but now defunct United Malays National Organisation party (UMNO), which has been tarnished by corruption, PM Anwar Ibrahim finally won the day with a progressive, multi-ethnic coalition. The current UMNO leader, Anwar’s deputy, is accused of corruption.
The support for the incumbent prime minister will likely be put to the test in the state elections in July.
Many of Mr. Muhyiddin’s supporters now have a stronger conviction that his indictment is political as a result of this.
Many Malaysians are seeing the case through the lens of bitter rivalries that have shook the nation’s politics ever since the once-unstoppable UMNO was historically defeated five years ago.
The nation has had five different prime ministers in as many years; hence, a trial of a high-ranking official is unavoidably seen as a political event, according to observers.
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