By Lucien Morell
 
JAKARTA, Indonesia: Malaysia’s political memory is long enough to remember how quickly reformist promise can curdle into scandal when power becomes entangled with unaccountable influence.
 
That is why former economy minister Rafizi Ramli’s warning to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, that his former political aide Farhash Wafa Salvador could become another “Jho Low”, has struck such a raw nerve.
 
It is not merely a personal accusation, but a caution rooted in lived experience and recent history.
 
Rafizi’s reference to Jho Low is not casual rhetoric. It recalls a period when the highest office in the land insisted that an une demonstrating significant wealth accumulation and influence was “not involved,” only for the nation to later discover that invisible hands had been guiding decisions at the very core of government.
 
That episode did not just bring down a prime minister; it shattered public trust, crippled institutions and left Malaysians paying the price for years.
 
The danger Rafizi highlights is not about any single individual, but about a familiar mechanism of power. When governance systems are weak, influence does not need to be formal to be decisive.
 
Unelected figures with perceived access to decision-makers can become magnets for business interests seeking lucrative state contracts. The process often looks legal on paper: shares are sold, companies restructured, stakes transferred.
 
Yet the outcome is a new corporate player with no track record suddenly positioned to benefit from billion-ringgit tenders. Legality becomes camouflage, not proof of integrity.
 
Farhash’s rise since Anwar became prime minister has therefore drawn intense scrutiny. Once a political secretary, he has since surfaced in senior roles across diverse sectors, from retail and finance to fintech, and emerged as a major shareholder in companies intersecting with government-linked projects. 
 
The most prominent case was his 15.91 percent stake in HeiTech Padu Bhd, acquired through Rosetta Partners, just as the company was shortlisted for the RM1 billion National Integrated Immigration System project.
 
The timing raised eyebrows, especially as the purchase came one day after MyEG acquired a significant stake and HeiTech Padu received a lucrative contract extension to maintain the existing immigration system.
 
Concerns deepened following reports by Bloomberg that Prime Minister Anwar had allegedly instructed the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission not to investigate Farhash over the HeiTech Padu share acquisition, a claim denied by the government but never fully dispelled in the court of public opinion.
 
The issue resurfaced more forcefully with MalaysiaNow’s exposé on Bumi Suria Sdn Bhd, a company controlled by Farhash and another individual, which was granted exclusive rights to explore for coal over 70,000 hectares in Sabah’s forest reserves, an area reportedly three times the size of Kuala Lumpur.
 
Audio recordings released alongside the report appeared to suggest political support at the state level for the licence, even as questions were raised internally about the scale of the concession.
 
Both Farhash and Sabah Mineral Management denied wrongdoing, and Farhash has since launched multiple defamation suits against media outlets and critics, including Rafizi himself. 
 
Yet the substance of the allegations has not gone away. Instead, they have become entangled with the wider Sabah corruption scandal, in which whistleblowers have faced prosecution and intimidation while senior figures remain politically insulated.
 
What troubles many observers is the pattern rather than any single transaction. Anwar and his allies have repeatedly argued that Farhash is no longer active in politics, as though formal disengagement alone dissolves influence.
 
Rafizi rejects this logic, noting that Najib Razak once offered similar assurances about Jho Low. Power, he reminds us, does not require an official title; it requires access, credibility and silence from those who should be asking hard questions.
 
This moment matters because Anwar’s government came to power on the promise of reform.
 
The Madani administration positioned itself as a break from the politics of patronage and impunity. Yet public discontent is growing, fuelled by perceptions of selective prosecution, a lack of MACC independence and a tendency to focus on how information is leaked rather than what it reveals.
 
Student protests in Sabah, met with harassment rather than accountability, have only sharpened the sense that old habits are reasserting themselves under new branding.
 
Rafizi’s warning, then, is not an act of disloyalty but a test of sincerity. Malaysia has already paid dearly for ignoring early signs of undue influence.
 
To dismiss consistent concerns as political noise is to repeat the very mistakes that reformist leaders once condemned. If the allegations surrounding Farhash are unfounded, transparent and independent investigations would clear the air. If they are not, failure to act will exact a far heavier price.
 
Malaysia has seen this movie before. The tragedy would be not that the warning was sounded, but that it was ignored.
 
*Lucien Morell is a Southeast Asia based geopolitical observer and analyst.*