Written Answer by Minister for Foreign Affairs and Law, Mr K Shanmugam, to Parliamentary Question on the Iskandar Development Region corruption scandal

Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied GRC) 

Question: 

To ask the Minister for Law whether the Malaysian authorities have requested for information from our law enforcement agencies with regard to any Singaporean implicated in the corruption scandal at the Iskandar Development Region. 

Answer:        

Requests for mutual legal assistance in criminal matters are made pursuant to the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. Under section 19(2)(c)(vii) of the Act, a request for legal assistance must be accompanied by a statement from the requesting country setting out the wishes of that country concerning the confidentiality of the request and the reasons for those wishes. Many countries express the wish that their requests for legal assistance, including the fact that a request has been made, be kept confidential. Confidentiality is required, amongst other reasons, so as not to compromise intelligence-gathering efforts and investigations. 

In order to effectively respect these wishes for confidentiality, our general policy is not to reveal whether or not a request for mutual legal assistance has been made. We are therefore unable to disclose whether we have received any request from the Malaysian authorities relating to the corruption scandal at the Iskandar Development Region.