The Malaysian Integrity Commission (EAIC) has just announced the results of an investigation related to the process of granting citizenship to 7 naturalized players, thereby discovering a series of violations in the process of appraisal and approval of dossiers.
EAIC is an independent agency responsible to the Malaysian Parliament, assigned to investigate issues related to integrity and compliance with procedures of law enforcement agencies.
According to the report, the Malaysian Federal Constitution empowers the Minister of Interior to consider applications for naturalization under Article 19 of the Constitution. However, EAIC said that the process of reviewing the dossiers of the 7 players was carried out in a very short time and did not fully comply with the necessary procedures.
The investigation results pointed out four main groups of violations. First, the process of issuing Immigration Permits and the security verification and screening of the Malaysian Immigration Department (JIM) for 7 players were not carried out in accordance with regulations.
Second, EAIC discovered shortcomings in the security screening control stage of JIM as well as the organization of Malay language proficiency testing by the Malaysian National Registration Bureau (JPN) before nationality approval.
Third, the report clearly states that there is non-compliance in verifying the procedure for renouncing the original nationality of the 7 players with the competent authority in the country where they previously held the nationality.
Finally, EAIC determined that the process of requesting and receiving the original national passport of the players to hand over to JIM was also not carried out in accordance with regulations.
Based on the investigation results, EAIC proposed that JPN and the Ministry of Home Affairs of Malaysia (KDN) conduct a review of the entire process as well as the applications for naturalization according to the naturalization status of the 7 players to have appropriate handling measures.
The investigation report has been transferred to the Malaysian Ministry of Interior, the Malaysian Immigration Department and the National Registration Department to implement the next steps according to their authority.
The incident is the latest development in the scandal related to 7 naturalized Malaysian players. Previously, FIFA had sanctioned the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) and related players for violating regulations on registration dossiers for playing status, and requested an investigation to clarify the responsibilities of relevant parties. EAIC has also established a special task force to comprehensively investigate the dossier processing process of state agencies in this case.
