RoS director-general Zulfikar Ahmad said Ikhlas, which had listed former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as its patron, was deregistered on Nov 24, 2022 under the Societies Act 1966 for failing to submit annual financial statements, Scoop reported.

According to the portal, the NGO was led by Ridzuan Abdullah, who is also a secretariat of NGO Gabungan Ikhlas Malaysia.

Gabungan Ikhlas Malaysia was reported to have issued statements in early January on the addendum linked to Najib Razak, the country’s sixth prime minister.

Ridzuan however declined to comment or confirm the deregistration of Ikhlas when contacted by Scoop.

Two years ago, it was reported that Ridzuan had been charged with 12 counts of filing fraudulent claims with the Social Security Organisation to obtain incentives from the Penjana Kerjaya 2.0 Programme, totalling RM378,000.

He was alleged to have submitted documents with inaccurate salary information, indicating that the employees listed had not actually been paid those amounts. The charges were framed under Section 18 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009.