Ismail Sabri Yaakob stood in the dock of a Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court on the morning of Thursday 27 August, three weeks after heart surgery and 11 months after the same judge signed an order handing the money at the centre of his case to the Malaysian government. He arrived at about 8.35am with his wife and children, wore a black suit, and told judge Suzana Hussin that he understood the charge and would stand trial. He is 66, the member of parliament for Bera, and Malaysia's ninth prime minister.
The charge is one count under section 36(2) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009. It says that on 7 February 2025, at the commission's headquarters in Putrajaya, he gave a written statement that did not comply with a notice requiring him to declare his assets. The notice was dated 7 January 2025 and served on 10 January. Conviction carries up to five years in prison and a fine of RM100,000, about US$24,800.
The assets on the charge sheet are RM14,772,150, AED34,750,000, €12,164,150, SG$6,132,350, ¥363,000,000, CHF3,000,000, US$1,461,400, AU$352,850, UK£50,250 and NZ$44,600, with five one-kilogram Suisse fine gold bars, a five-gram gold coin and a 100-gram fine silver bar. The cash comes to roughly RM169 million, about US$42 million. Those 10 currency figures match, to the ringgit, the ones Suzana ordered forfeited to the state on 1 October 2025 under section 41(1) of the same act, a provision that applies to property where a prosecution for an offence has not been instituted. Nobody appeared at that hearing to argue against the order.
Amer Hamzah Arshad, appearing for Ismail Sabri, put the charge's "propriety and legality" in issue in open court and said prosecutors had indicated during the forfeiture proceedings that they would not pursue charges. "The fact that there is suddenly a change of heart by the prosecution is something that we have to look into," he told reporters afterwards. "That is why we say it is unprecedented. This situation has never arisen before." He called the circumstances "very peculiar" and the charge "baseless and unfounded", and said the defence "will definitely take the necessary action to challenge the validity and propriety of the charge". Asked whether prosecutors had made an agreement not to charge his client, he declined to answer.
RM300,000 and a passport
Deputy public prosecutor Farah Ezlin Yusop Khan asked for bail of RM500,000 and the surrender of the passport, citing the office Ismail Sabri had held and financial means she called substantial. Amer Hamzah said the two sides had settled on RM100,000 before the hearing, called the new figure "manifestly excessive" and said taking the passport would be punitive. "There is no necessity for his passport to be surrendered," he told reporters. "He has proven himself not to be a flight risk, and there is no evidence to show that he is a flight risk. He is here to clear his name."
Suzana set bail at RM300,000 with one surety and refused the passport application, finding no evidence he would flee. His son paid at the counter, accompanied by the lawyer Rajan Navaratnam. Khairy Jamaluddin, a former Umno Youth chief, sat in the gallery with the former Pahang menteri besar Adnan Yaakob and the former Dewan Rakyat speaker Azhar Azizan Harun. Supporters from Bera, which Ismail Sabri has held since 2004, waited more than two hours outside. Najib Razak and Muhyiddin Yassin were in the same court complex that day for hearings of their own.
The February raids
Anti-corruption officers arrested four of Ismail Sabri's senior aides in February 2025 and searched homes and offices they described as safe houses. From 20 February they took about RM177 million: roughly RM170 million in banknotes, 16 kilograms of gold bullion worth some RM7 million, and a quantity of luxury watches and jewellery. Investigators stacked the notes across tables and photographed them in March.
Mohammad Anuar Mohd Yunus, Ismail Sabri's former political secretary, was holding the cash when officers reached it. The forfeiture application recorded that the money belonged to Ismail Sabri and was linked to an offence under the anti-corruption act.
Amer Hamzah told the Sessions Court on 8 September 2025, by way of a letter dated 28 August, that neither man would contest. Deputy public prosecutor Mahadi Abdul Jumaat asked for the application to be gazetted under section 41(2) so that any third party could claim the money, and told Suzana that if nobody came forward the government would take it. The gazette went out on 22 September 2025. Nobody came forward. Suzana granted the order on 1 October. No criminal charge was mentioned in court on any of those dates.
Bernama's account of the 1 October order lists the 10 currency sums and no metal. The Edge Malaysia reported at the end of 2025 that the 16 kilograms of gold went to the government in the same order. Five gold bars, a coin and a silver bar are now on a charge sheet, and the cash has been government property since October.
A fall and a pacemaker
The charge was first set down for 7 August 2026. Ismail Sabri spent that day at the National Heart Institute. He had fallen the previous week, a Holter study picked up an arrhythmia, and Amer Hamzah said his client's "heart stopped for at least two seconds". Doctors implanted a leadless pacemaker that afternoon. The episode surfaced on 6 August while anti-corruption officers were taking a statement from him.
Amer Hamzah told the court it was not practical to read a charge at the hospital. The deputy public prosecutor said the postponement was fair on humanitarian grounds, since his client was on commission bail and posed no flight risk. Suzana moved the reading to 27 August, and by then the defence said he was recovering well with follow-up appointments booked.
RM700 million
Anwar Ibrahim told the Dewan Rakyat on 7 November 2023 that RM700 million, about US$174 million, had gone on promotion and publicity work between 2020 and 2022. More than RM500 million of it fell under Muhyiddin, the rest under Ismail Sabri, much of the latter attached to the Keluarga Malaysia branding that ran through his premiership. The commission opened an investigation into the spending.
Officers questioned Ismail Sabri at least nine times. He filed his asset declaration on 2 March 2025 and was named a suspect the following day. He has never been charged over the spending.
Investigators closed the file in June 2025, sent the papers to the Attorney-General's Chambers and said they would seek forfeiture of the cash. Attorney-general Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar said on 16 October 2025 that the report was voluminous, that the review "may take some time" and that further investigation might be needed. The Edge Malaysia ran a year-end piece under the headline "The curious case of Ismail Sabri", saying RM177 million had been taken and given to the state with nobody prosecuted for taking it. What arrived 10 months later carries a maximum fine of RM100,000 and makes no allegation about where the money came from.
Section 36 at the Federal Court
Naimah Khalid, widow of the former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, is challenging the constitutionality of the subsection Ismail Sabri now faces. High Court judge Mohd Arief Emran Arifin approved her referral on 4 March 2026 and the Federal Court will hear it on 8 October, nine days after Ismail Sabri's next mention. Her lawyers argue that sections 30(5) and 36(2) compel a person to incriminate himself and cut across the right to silence, the presumption of innocence and the fair-trial guarantees in articles 5 and 8 of the Federal Constitution.
Daim was charged under section 36(2) on 29 January 2024 over a notice served on 8 November 2023 covering 38 companies, 19 plots of land, six properties and seven vehicles, in an investigation that followed the 2021 Pandora Papers disclosures about the family's offshore holdings. He died on 13 November 2024 at 86, prosecutors withdrew the charge and the court acquitted him on 20 November. Naimah and her family have called the case against them frivolous, malicious and politically motivated. His daughter Asnida Daim pleaded not guilty to a section 36(2) charge at the same court complex on 7 April 2026, as investigators widened the Op Godfather inquiry into offshore companies and assets tied to the family and its business associates.
Corruption offences under the same act carry up to 20 years and a fine of at least five times the value of the gratification, or RM10,000, whichever is higher. Section 36(2) carries five years and RM100,000 and requires no proof that the money was obtained corruptly.
Three prime ministers
Najib Razak is serving six years at Kajang prison after the Pardons Board halved his 12-year sentence for misappropriating RM42 million from SRC International. The Kuala Lumpur High Court convicted him on 26 December 2025 on four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering in the main 1MDB trial, over RM2.3 billion in funds, and gave him a further 15 years with fines totalling RM13.5 billion, about US$3.35 billion. His lawyer Mohamed Shafee Abdullah said the judge had made many blunders and that they would appeal. Najib filed the appeal on 29 December.
His bid to serve the sentence at home rested on a royal addendum he said accompanied the reduction. A court rejected it on 22 December 2025, he appealed a week later, then withdrew at the Court of Appeal on 2 April 2026 without giving reasons.
Muhyiddin Yassin, 79, is on trial at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on four counts of using his position to obtain RM225.3 million and three counts of receiving RM200 million in proceeds of unlawful activity into the accounts of Bersatu, his party, all of it tied to the Jana Wibawa contractor programme. Judge Muhammad Jamil Hussin struck out the four abuse-of-position counts on 15 August 2023, finding they disclosed no offence under section 23(1) of the anti-corruption act. Prosecutors appealed and won them back. The trial opened on 9 March 2026 with about 30 witnesses listed across 29 hearing days, and on 27 August the contractor Azman Yusoff agreed under cross-examination that he had testified to save himself from prosecution. He said the money he collected from contractors was contributions. The hearing resumes on 1 September.
Who is not charged
Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the deputy prime minister and Umno president, was discharged not amounting to an acquittal in September 2023 on 47 counts of criminal breach of trust, corruption and money laundering over Yayasan Akalbudi funds. The Attorney-General's Chambers closed the file on 8 January 2026. Mohd Dusuki told the opening of the legal year four days later that prosecutors had weighed six representations from Zahid's lawyers and that the decision was not arbitrary. "The discharge is absolute because we exercised our powers under Clause 145 of the Federal Constitution," he said.
M Saravanan, deputy president of the MIC and a frequent critic of the Anwar government, pleaded not guilty on 28 August to accepting RM1,097,000 for approving foreign worker quotas in 2022. MalaysiaNow reported that Pakatan Harapan supporters were celebrating both court appearances on social media, and named the former Baling MP Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim and the former treasury secretary-general Irwan Serigar Abdullah as expected to face charges.
Azam Baki ran the commission through the seizure, the forfeiture and the referral, and left office on 12 May 2026 with two investigation papers into his own conduct outstanding. About 200 people marched through Kuala Lumpur in April demanding his removal over a share ownership scandal and allegations that officers had worked with what protesters called a corporate mafia. Azam and the commission denied wrongdoing and called the reporting malicious. Police took his statement on two cases and the papers went to the Attorney-General's Chambers. Abdul Halim Aman, a retired High Court judge, was named to replace him on 25 April 2026 and started on 13 May.
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Malaysia ratified the UN Convention against Corruption on 24 September 2008. Article 20 asks states to consider criminalising illicit enrichment, which the convention defines as a large increase in a public official's assets that he cannot reasonably explain against his lawful income. Malaysia never created the offence. Section 36 reaches the answer a person gives about his assets rather than the assets themselves.
Ismail Sabri took office in August 2021 without a general election, as the consensus candidate after Muhyiddin lost his majority, and held it for 15 months until November 2022, the shortest term of any Malaysian prime minister. He said in February 2026 that he remained active in Umno and was not finished with politics, and in April left the decision on whether he would defend Bera at the next general election to Zahid. His case is next mentioned on 29 September, when prosecutors are due to give the defence further particulars of the charge.
