KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 30): The cabinet has ordered a study to draft a Charities Bill for the regulation of public fundraising.
In statement on Facebook on Thursday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the study will draft policy and set governance direction.
"This move is vital to ensure funds held in trust are administered transparently and responsibly," he said after chairing a meeting of the Special Cabinet Committee on National Governance.
Anwar also said that the cabinet will also be presented with the Statutory Bodies and Controlled Entities (Financial Governance) Bill, which aims to strengthen discipline and financial management of government-linked bodies.
He said these efforts are part of the government's efforts to clamp down on leakages of public funds and stressed that the enforcement of laws must be accompanied by a culture of integrity at all levels of government and society.
The move to regulate charities comes after several high-profile cases of such organisations implicated in fraud.
In 2023, the Malaysian Corruption Commission froze 41 accounts containing more than RM15 million linked to Aman Palestin, an organisation that raised public funds to be sent to Palestin.
In 2024, three individuals, including the then-executive chairman and chief executive officer of Aman Palestin, were charged with 164 counts of criminal breach of trust, cheating, and money laundering involving tens of millions of ringgit.
There is no single law in Malaysia that regulates the raising of funds from the public. Currently, most charitable organisations are set up under the Societies Act 1966 or Companies Act 2016, but these laws only regulate how these bodies are administered and contain limited guardrails for fund raised from the public.
In a bid to help the public identify legitimate charities, the Securities Commission Malaysia this year set up the Impakrintas social exchange.
Organisations seeking listing are assessed on the viability of their projects and whether they have a record of using funds as intended before they can seek donations from corporations and individuals
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Building trust in the SC’s Social Exchange platform
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