The government is studying whether to introduce a guideline to prevent individuals from collecting money for sponsoring of political activities, said Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Idris Jala.

Idris, who is also the chief executive officer of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu), said all collections of funds in future could only be made by political parties and not by individuals in their personal capacities.

"We don't want recurrence of cases where individuals collected money for funding of political activities, but misappropriated the money into their own pockets instead," he said after delivering his speech on 'Public-Private Sector Partnership in Fighting Corruption' in Kuala Lumpur today.

He said the effort to check corrupt practices in the country would take a long time as some people had accepted corruption as a culture.

Meanwhile, Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) assistant commissioner Muhammad Salim Sundar Abdullah said that in 2010, 488 members of the public and 229 civil servants had been nabbed by MACC for corruption.

"This is an increase over the 287 members of the public and 190 civil servants arrested for the offence in 2009," he said as a panel speaker at the seminar on the 'Effectiveness of the Public and Private Sectors in Combating Corruption' organised by Transparency International Malaysia.

- Bernama