CAP president Mohideen Abdul Kader said the RCI was much needed as billions were lost despite having many laws, institutions and authorities which could have prevented them.

It referred to a report by US-based think tank Global Financial Integrity, which placed Malaysia in the third position among 147 countries for illicit financial outflows.

According to the survey, Malaysia lost between US$22.9 billion (RM94.22 billion) and US$33.7 billion (RM138.66 billion) in illicit outflows from 2006 to 2015.

In a statement, Mohideen said the issue was rife, with Johor police recently cracking down on a Macau scam syndicate which cheated individuals of RM336 million and later transferred the funds to mule bank accounts.

He claimed that RM25 million of the scam money has been used to finance the building of 100 condominium and commercial units in George Town, with police looking for a suspect alleged to be part of the syndicate.

Mohideen said CAP had received complaints in 2016 from individuals claiming they had been cheated after being offered “money game” schemes as investments with excellent returns.

He said the authorities had failed to act swiftly and some involved in the scam were convicted only two years later.

“There must be something fundamentally wrong in our criminal justice system to allow people to be cheated without any quick effective action by the authorities to stop it,” he said.

He said an RCI can investigate why the authorities had failed to curb illegal money flows, identify weaknesses and make recommendations to end the problem.

Several years ago, the Panama Papers revealed that more than 2,000 Malaysian citizens and companies had secret accounts in Panama, presumably to hide their ill-gotten gains.