BNM Governor Muhammad Ibrahim said so far the central bank had not found anyone violating the banking rules.
“If we come across anyone who has breached the rules and regulations, we will not hesitate to start investigations, but we have yet to discover any such case.”
He was speaking at a press conference, his first since being appointed BNM Governor.
Muhammad was asked if Bank Negara would investigate the 2,000-plus Malaysians named in the Panama Papers.
He said Malaysia had liberal rules for residents to open foreign currency accounts.
“There is no restriction for a resident to remit funds into foreign currency accounts for education or employment abroad.”
But he said residents must get Bank Negara’s approval if their external borrowing is above RM100 million and if their investments abroad is more than RM50 million for corporates and RM1 million for individuals.
The Panama Papers are leaked documents that detail financial and attorney-client information of over 214,000 offshore entities.
The documents were created by Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm and among the notable individuals who were named in the documents include Russian President Vladimir Putin, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and footballer Lionel Messi.