Kuala Lumpur, 25th August 2020 – Dato’ Sri Akhbar, former immediate Past President of Transparency Malaysia and Founder/ President of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE)- Malaysian Chapter has been appointed Chief Integrity Officer for HELP University (HU).
In his thank you speech, given during the celebratory tea, Dato’ Akhbar said there has been a sharp increase in the number of appointments for Chief Integrity Officers in public and private organisations since June 2020 when the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) began to enforce 17A of the MACC Act 2009 (amendment 2018).
Dato’ Akhbar further added under the provision of 17A, commercial organizations are liable and can be punished if their employees or associates are involved in corruption.
With these latest governance initiatives, the government encourages investors and Boards of Directors to improve their corporate governance. By so doing, this improves the risk management of their business and long term sustainability. This also protects their strategic assets, in particular the valuable reputation of the corporation, Board of Directors and Management.
Datuk Professor Dr Paul Chan, Vice-Chancellor and President of HU said the appointment of Dato’ Akhbar showed the HELP’s commitment towards good governance. He emphasized that there is no better qualified professional than Dato Akhbar to assume this critical role as Chief Integrity Officer. During the last few months Dato Akbar led a team of experts to train more than 600 HELP staff in corporate governance and the enforcement of 17 A. HE also developed a manual of references for this purpose.
Datuk Chan also added that in the professional fraternity Dato’ Akhbar is a recognized criminologist and crime analyst and currently holds a professorial chair and serves as Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Crime & Criminology, HELP University. His expertise is recognized world-wide.
Among other positions, Dato’ Akhbar was appointed by the government as a member of the National Consultative Committee on Political Funding and in 2019 on the Investigative Committee for Governance, Procurement and Governance Finance as a committee member. This committee is chaired by Tan Sri Ambrin Buang, Malaysia’s former Auditor-General.
More recently, in 2020, Seri Paduka Baginda Yang di-Pertuan Agong appointed Dato’ Akhbar as a board member in the Anti-Corruption Advisory Board and MACC.Dato’ Akhbar is also invited to many forums to speak on fraud, corruption, ethics, integrity and detection of deception in seminars and conferences held both locally and internationally. Dato Akhbar will be speaking in a webinar series of good governance and corruption during September.
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