Someone asked you for a bribe. Not reporting it is itself a crime.

An enforcement officer meets a businessman at a hotel in Puchong and demands RM110,000 a month to leave his employer alone. The businessman doesn't pay. He also doesn't report it.

Three years later he's in the Shah Alam Sessions Court, fined the maximum RM10,000 with four months' jail in default — not for corruption, but for failing to report that someone tried to bribe him.

That's the part most Malaysians don't know. Under section 25 of the MACC Act 2009, staying quiet about a bribe is itself an offence. Being the person who refused to pay doesn't save you if you never told anyone.

1. Two different duties, two very different penalties

This trips people up constantly, so get it straight.

Section 25(1) — the heavier one. It applies to you as the person to whom gratification was given, promised or offered. If someone offers you a bribe, or gives you one, you must report it to a MACC officer or a police officer.

Penalty under section 25(2): fine up to RM100,000, imprisonment up to 10 years, or both.

Section 25(3) — the lighter one. It applies where you know about someone soliciting or obtaining a bribe and fail to report it.

Penalty under section 25(4): fine up to RM10,000, imprisonment up to two years, or both.

Note what section 25(1) does not require: that you accepted anything. The duty is triggered by the offer. The businessman in Puchong refused a RM110,000 monthly demand and was still convicted — under section 25(3), for not reporting a solicitation.

"Without reasonable excuse" is the qualifier in the provision. What counts as reasonable is fact-specific and not something to gamble on.

2. What the courts actually do

Real Malaysian sentences, which are more informative than the maximums:

• Immigration officer, KL, 2021 — failed to report RM21,000 received while processing travel documents at KLIA. Fined RM35,000, three months' jail in default. Charged under s.25(1).
• Immigration officer, Kuching, 2021 — initially faced 22 charges under Penal Code s.165 over RM109,600 in bribes; pleaded guilty to two alternative s.25(1) charges covering RM8,200. Fined RM30,000, ten months' jail in default.
• Businessman, Shah Alam, 2022 — accepted RM30,000 as an inducement, breached s.25(1). Fined RM20,000, six months in default.
• "Datuk Addy Kana", Shah Alam, 2022 — didn't report an enforcement officer's RM110,000 monthly demand. Maximum RM10,000 fine under s.25(3), four months in default.
• Ministry enforcement assistant, Johor, 2022 — RM700 bribe, failed to report. Charged under s.25(1) as an alternative charge after pleading not guilty to the original. Fined RM2,000.
• Oil and gas senior buyer, KL, 2021 — RM4,000 for leaking competitors' tender prices. Two alternative s.25(1) charges. Fined RM7,000 total.
• Two ex-bank officers, Shah Alam, November 2025 — took payments from law firms for referring housing loan documentation work. Originally charged under s.16(a)(A); pleaded guilty to alternative charges of failing to report. Fined RM25,000 and RM6,000, with 30 months and six months in default respectively.

Two patterns that matter more than the numbers.

Section 25 is frequently the landing spot for a corruption case. Look at how often "originally charged under section 16, pleaded guilty to an alternative section 25 charge" appears. Prosecutors use it as a route to a conviction where the full corruption charge is harder to prove, and defendants take it because the outcome is better. That's a real dynamic worth understanding.

Fines land far below the maximum, but default jail terms are serious. RM25,000 with 30 months in default is a heavy consequence if you can't pay.

3. If you're offered a bribe

The clean scenario. Someone offers you money to do — or not do — something.

What to do:

1. Don't accept it. Obvious but worth saying: accepting turns a reporting duty into a corruption offence.
2. Report it to MACC or the police. MACC's hotline is 1-800-88-6000, and reports can be made at any MACC office or through sprm.gov.my. A police report also satisfies the duty.
3. Do it promptly. Delay is what turns a clean report into a section 25 problem — the Puchong case sat for three years.
4. Preserve evidence — messages, call logs, times, places, who was present.
5. Write down what happened while it's fresh, including exact words if you can recall them.

What MACC has said about this in practice: when an MP publicly claimed she'd been offered RM10 million and a post to defect from her party, MACC responded by advising her to lodge a report, citing section 25 explicitly and stating it was ready to investigate. That's the pattern — a public allegation isn't a report, and MACC will say so.

4. If you already paid

Harder, and here the honest answer isn't comfortable.

Reporting does not erase the offence. Giving gratification is an offence under section 16 and related provisions, with penalties reaching up to 20 years' imprisonment and a fine of not less than five times the value of the gratification or RM10,000, whichever is higher.

What reporting does do:

• It's a mitigating factor. Cooperation with the authorities in investigations or prosecutions is treated as mitigating by the courts.
• It may bring whistleblower protection — but read the next section carefully, because that protection has limits precisely where you'd want it most.
• It stops the section 25 exposure from compounding, and stops you being the last person to speak when someone else reports first.

This is a get-a-lawyer situation, before you talk to anyone. The difference between how you present a self-report and how it's received can shape whether you're treated as a witness or a defendant, and that's not a conversation to walk into unadvised.

5. Whistleblower protection: what it does and doesn't cover

The Whistleblower Protection Act 2010 is the main protection, alongside section 65 of the MACC Act.

What it provides:

• Confidentiality — protection against disclosure of information that could identify you
• Protection from detrimental action against you and people related to or associated with you (section 7(1) WPA)
• Immunity from civil or criminal liability for the disclosure itself

MACC states that whistleblower confidentiality is maintained and information isn't disclosed. MACC has also operated a reward scheme, introduced in 2011, offering payments tied to the value of the bribe or graft involved.

The limits, stated honestly:

Immunity attaches to the act of disclosing — not to the underlying conduct you're disclosing. If you participated in the corruption, the WPA doesn't wipe that.

And the law here is actively changing. The Whistleblower Protection (Amendment) Bill 2025 was passed by the Senate on 10 September 2025. Among other things, it removes a proviso under which whistleblowers lost protection if their disclosure was prohibited by another written law — such as the Official Secrets Act. That proviso was long criticised as a hole in the protection, particularly for public servants.

Also on the horizon: Parliament was expected to table amendments to the MACC Act around mid-2026 to introduce deferred prosecution agreements, allowing recovery of misappropriated funds without protracted litigation, subject to conditions.

Check the current position before relying on any of this — this area has moved twice in under a year.

6. For businesses: section 17A

If you run a company, there's a provision you cannot afford not to know.

Section 17A creates corporate criminal liability: a commercial organisation is liable if a person associated with it gives, agrees to give, or offers gratification to obtain or retain business or a business advantage.

It reaches companies incorporated in Malaysia carrying on business anywhere, and companies incorporated anywhere carrying on business or part of a business in Malaysia. It covers directors, employees, and external parties performing services on the organisation's behalf.

The only statutory defence is proving the organisation had "adequate procedures" in place to prevent the conduct. The Guidelines on Adequate Procedures issued under section 17A(5) set out five TRUST principles, and implementing them is what makes the defence available.

Practical translation for an SME: an anti-bribery policy that exists on paper but was never risk-assessed, trained on, or reviewed is unlikely to get you there.

What to actually do

If someone offers or demands a bribe:

• Refuse.
• Report promptly — MACC hotline 1-800-88-6000, any MACC office, sprm.gov.my, or a police report.
• Preserve messages, note dates, times, places and witnesses.
• Write your own account while it's fresh.

If you know someone else is soliciting or taking bribes:

• Section 25(3) applies to you. Report it.
• Whistleblower confidentiality and protection from detrimental action apply.

If you already paid or accepted:

• Get a criminal lawyer before you speak to anyone. Reporting is often the right move, but how and when matters enormously.
• Don't destroy anything. That's a separate and worse problem.

If you run a business:

• Section 17A means your company can be liable for what an employee or agent does.
• Adequate procedures are the only defence — build them properly, not as a document.