According to a source, the employee had allegedly accepted a bribe offered by a Kuala Lumpur-based tech firm in exchange for a contract to manage the replacement of faulty Takata airbags.

The source also claimed that the tech firm was engaged as it had access to data held by a government agency courtesy of insiders.

The tech firm may have been recruited to avoid the recall exercise being conducted via official channels, likely in a bid to spare the brand any potential embarrassment, the source claimed.

The source said car makers are obliged to notify the road transport department (JPJ) before publicly announcing a recall of affected vehicles.

“There are concerns that personal data may have been misused (to bypass an official recall), raising serious concerns about data protection,” the source told FMT.

FMT has reached out to the car maker for comments.

Over the past year, several car brands have had to recall various models to replace the faulty Takata airbags.

In September, Reuters reported that more than 100 million vehicles fitted with Takata airbag inflators were recalled worldwide over the past decade, including 67 million in the US.

One month earlier, the US’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that, since 2009, 28 fatalities in the country were linked to defective Takata airbag inflators.