"Almost all the scandals involved the government directly, or senior officials and businessmen closely connected to UMNO. In some cases, impropriety - whether illegal or merely ill-advised - was officially authorized or condoned for an allegedly higher purpose. Public funds were stolen in various ways, or simply poured into a big black hole in the name of ventures that bordered on the reckless, improbable, or criminal.
The extent of the losses - and in some cases the way the money disappeared - was never fully documented. Dr Mahathir's administration generally did not hold Malaysians accountable for the financial disasters, and often laid the blame on others. By the early 1990s, cynics remarked that it had been a good decade for bad behaviour, or a bad decade for good behaviour."
[Source: MALAYSIAN MAVERICK: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain]
