JOHOR BARU: Six people including a district engineer and two assistant engineers of a central agency in Johor have been detained by anti-graft enforcers for allegedly accepting bribes from contractors.

       According to a source, the district engineer together with the two assistants, aged between 31 and 44, were detained during an operation carried out around the state on Sunday by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

       The MACC also detained three contractors to help with the investigation as they purportedly bribed the three suspects to obtain projects being offered by the central agency at a district in Johor since 2018.

       It is learnt that the contractors control 11 companies registered under their names and proxies to get all the projects being offered from the agency within the district.

       It is estimated that the projects that were monopolised are worth millions of ringgit between 2018 and this year.

       The source added that various forms of bribery were given to the engineer and assistant engineers including vacation packages, cash and a boat.

       All six suspects were brought to the Magistrate’s Court here yesterday, where five of them were remanded for seven days until Aug 1 while another suspect is under remand until July 30 to assist with investigations under Section 17(a) of the MACC Act.