“It is apparent that Mahathir isn’t going to allow Najib, et al. to get off the hook.”

Moving with the deadly swiftness of their national creature – the Malayan tiger – out hunting in the forest in the dead of night, Malaysian anti-corruption authorities last week pounced on former Prime Minister Najib Razak for alleged graft involving billions.

Without much ado, they arraigned Najib on wide-ranging criminal charges in connection with the failed state investment fund 1 Malaysia Development Bhd. (Ltd.) which he supposedly treated as his private piggy bank. He reportedly faces up to 20 years in jail.

Najib pleaded not guilty on all counts, so bail was set at $250,000.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (similar to Duterte’s Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission currently under Dante Jimenez of the VACC) claimed Najib had embezzled some $2.6 billion in 1MDB funds when he still held power, with $700 million somehow ending up in his personal bank account.

The 1MDB scandal broke out in 2015 when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) accused Najib of laundering at least $4.5 billion of the fund’s assets through American financial institutions.

The DoJ said much of it was used in “staggering acquisitions” like a yacht worth around P230 million, various works of art in New York City and an investment in director Martin Scorcese’s film Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

“It is obvious he has stolen money,” Mahathir told The New York Times. “We have enough evidence.”

1MDB was the brainchild of Najib, designed to underwrite ambitious projects in Kuala Lumpur to transform it into a financial services hub rivaling neighboring Singapore.

Najib’s headaches started a mere two-and-a-half months ago when he was ousted in the parliamentary elections by another former Malaysian PM, the 92-year-old reformist Mahathir Mohamad, who had espoused clean governance and vowed to clean up his predecessor’s decade-long rule.

In his campaign pitch, Mahathir – who had previously led Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 — said Najib had deceived the Malaysian people and Parliament over the nation’s finances and 1MDB.

And dogged by such corruption allegations, uncontrolled consumer costs and imposition of a new and onerous consumption tax (much like Duterte’s wildly unpopular TRAIN), Najib’s Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which had ruled Malaysia since its independence in 1957, fell victim to Mahathir’s juggernaut.

Within three short days of his shock defeat, Najib, who US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said personified “kleptocracy at its worst,” and his high-spending wife Rosmah were banned from leaving the country due to reports they were planning to flee to avoid criminal prosecution.

True to his word, Mahathir, who ironically was Najib’s mentor, wasted no time in unleashing the full force of the state against the former leader to make him pay for his alleged shortcomings which angered the voters and ultimately resulted in the toppling of his administration.

“PCGG’s witnesses failed to definitively establish that respondents engaged in schemes and devices to acquire ill-gotten monies.”

Two weeks after his election debacle, Malaysian police were reported to have conducted raids on several of Najib’s known residences, condos and high-end apartments allegedly yielding as much as $273 million in cash, expensive watches, assorted jewelry, as well as other luxury goods, including 567 designer handbags of the pricey Hermes variety, 2,200 rings and 14 tiaras.

It is apparent that Mahathir isn’t going to allow Najib, et al. to get off the hook as easily as Cory Aquino did to the Marcoses, courtesy of the feckless PCGG, which is why Malaysia’s anti-corruption commission is stepping on the gas to preserve the evidence needed to prosecute him to the hilt.

(Mr. Najib has consistently denied the corruption raps, pointing out he had already been cleared by authorities. But this was during his time.)

The earth-shaking political developments in Malaysia, greenlighted by Mahathir, who is widely credited for his nation’s booming economy, are truly a sight to behold.

This is in stark contrast to recent events here which left a great many Filipinos writhing in disdain, not knowing what the hell hit them.

I am referring to the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision in stopping the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) dead in its tracks, in connection with efforts to recover the alleged ill-gotten wealth of Ferdinand Marcos and his family acquired through behest loans during his time in Malacañang.

To refresh, the High Tribunal had sided with the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan’s finding that there were grounds to junk the PCGG’s suit against the Marcoses for insufficiency of evidence.

The anti-graft body said the testimonies of the PCGG’s witnesses failed to definitively establish that respondents engaged in schemes and devices to acquire said ill-gotten monies.

Further, the SC said the PCGG did not establish that the Marcoses, by themselves or in concert with others, accumulated the ill-gotten wealth insofar as the specific allegations in the subject complaint are concerned.

What is particularly revolting, especially to thousands of martial law victims who were hoping for some amount of justice from the SC, is that the original case was filed in July 1987, or some 31 years ago, by the PCGG under former Senate President Jovito Salonga.

The PCGG, if you will remember, was the very first agency created by Cory Aquino to track down and recover the funds allegedly stolen from the public coffers during Mr. Marcos’ one-man rule.

It is just too bad that the PCGG turned out to be a dismal failure, totally unlike the present crop of graft busters assembled by Mahathir to run after Najib and his cohorts who are now nibbling like piranhas at their coattails.

During the heady days of the post-Edsa 1 people power uprising, when the world was literally at the feet of Mrs. Aquino and her Yellow horde of advisers, the PCGG could have easily resorted to aggressive arm-twisting tactics to ferret out the needed files and information from various government agencies and personalities identified with the previous regime so as to bolster its case in court. And no one would’ve cared; in fact, they would have applauded it.

But it didn’t. Which is why we are where we are today – which is nowhere. Zilch. Nada.

The PCGG’s indecision and lack of guts are what gave the Marcoses, per another broadsheet’s editorial, the breathing space they needed to “destroy the documents or spirit them away to parts unknown.”