MACC has successfully recovered RM21.43 million worth of money involved in graft offences until September 2017, a 400 percent hike compared with last year, its chief commissioner Dzulkifli Ahmad said.

"By virtue of our domestic cooperation with Bank Negara Malaysia and the compliance units of financial institutions, we managed to crack many high profile and public interest cases, which involved predicated offences of corruption.

"The amount of corrupt monies seized and recovered has been staggering," Dzulkifli said in his keynote address at the International Conference on Financial Crime and Terrorism Financing today.

According to him, RM3.94 million was seized in 2015, followed by RM4.95 million in 2016.

"Up to Sept 2017, an amount of RM21.432 million has been successfully seized. This present amount reflects a successful increase of almost 400 percent," he added.

Dzulkifli said the success of the enforcement effort was "evidence of the crucial role and effectiveness of compliance".

"However, compliance should not get to our heads, and we cannot afford to slow down our enforcement efforts," he noted, adding that there were still financial and legal pitfalls that could lead to money laundering and the movement of illicit monies polluting the financial system.

Dzulkifli declined to take questions from the media. 

Meanwhile, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang questioned why Dzulkifli had begun shunning the media.

"Is Dzulkifli emulating the Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in refusing to have any media conference because he is afraid like the prime minister that his boasts and bombasts may be pricked by journalists’ sharp questioning?" he said.

Lim said amongst the prickly questions that the MACC had yet to address was why it refused to reopen the investigations into the 1MDB scandal and whether a RM5 million allocation for MACC announced by the prime minister would impact its credibility.