Commenting on Mahathir’s claim, which was made in a blog post yesterday, Salleh said he couldn’t find any recent report stating as such.
He cited several reports listing the most corrupt countries in the world, and none listed Malaysia in the top 10.
“On Jan 24, 2017, CNBC came out with a report mentioning the 10 most corrupt countries in the world as follows: Somalia, South Sudan, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Guinea-Bissau and Venezuela.
“The New York Times also came out with its report on Dec 9, 2016, more or less saying the same thing, as did the Independent UK on Jan 25, 2017 and Fortune.com on the same day.
“Even more interesting is the fact that ranker.com came out with the most corrupt countries list based on Transparency International’s report, and Malaysia was not even in the top 100 list,” said Salleh in his blog today.
Mahathir, now the chairman of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, made the claim as part of his arguments on why the world no longer respected Malaysia.
He said there was much that was wrong under the current administration, and one of it was the level of corruption in the country.
The world, Mahathir said, had labelled Malaysia as one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world.
“Where did Mahathir get his facts from?
“Has someone been feeding him fake news?” Salleh asked.