The biggest success by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commmission (MACC) following the seizure of RM114.5 million in a case of abuse of power in Sabah yesterday received a round of applause from netizens who took to the social media to express their appreciation.

Dubbed as the biggest ever haul in MACC history, the case of abuse of power which involved infrastructure projects valued at RM3.3 billion associated with two civil servants in Sabah had caused abuzz in social media as netizens shared their congratulatory messages on Twitter and Facebook.

A check on Twitter indicated that MACC was trending while hundreds sharing the news of their amazing feat since the news broke out yesterday.

A netizen known as @azrijohans put up a sarcastic posting as he likened the suspects of the kickback case with the Colombian drug king, Pablo Escobar, who was also one of the world's wealthiest men following the staggering amount of money that the MACC had confiscated.

"This is Malaysian Pablo Escobar. MACC seize RM3 million from the office of Jabatan Bekalan Air Sabah director," he said as his posting garnered 1,755 retweets and 409 likes.

Another netizen identified as Ng Chun Hown in his Twitter account also complimented MACC: "No matter what is the picture behind, congratulations to MACC for catching a medium fish in Sabah. Hope more to come. Especially real big ones," he said.

Sazali Mohamad Taib took his Facebook account to praise MACC and further commented that this kind of news is what the people wanted to hear.

"Part of the problem is doing the crime but the other part which is equally important is the criminals knowing they will be caught and suffer consequences! Imagine if this year we can catch 30 more people how much public's money can be recovered," he said.

Mohd Zulfan Irfan on his Facebook account was full of praise for the MACC chief commissioner Dzulkifli Ahmad's bold and firm action in combating those involved in graft since the latter's appointment on Aug 1.

Emergency physician, Alzamani Mohammad Idrose described the case as the one that could tarnish the reputation of the civil servants and break the public's trust on them.

"Every civil servant is given trust to be preserved. The word 'servant' is self-explanatory. Our job is to take careful care of this trust. A functioning MACC is the only thing that helps us to restore the trust, although the work is far from over," he said on his Facebook account.

Yesterday, the MACC seized a huge amount of cash following the arrest of the civil servants, a director and a deputy director of a government agency on Tuesday.

- Bernama