Is eFishery an Expensive Lesson for KWAP?

 

Indonesian aquaculture company eFishery’s co-founder Gibran Huzaifah was handed a nine-year prison sentence last Wednesday for embezzlement and money laundering. The start-up, which deployed feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, incurred several hundred million dollars in losses between 2018 and 2024. The business began unravelling after a board investigation revealed the company may have inflated its revenue and profit over several years. The scandal triggered widespread scrutiny over regulatory oversight and due diligence standards in South-east Asia’s venture capital markets.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

 This is a high-profile US$300 million scandal that not only crushed what was one of Southeast Asia’s most celebrated unicorns but also serves as a lesson for several high-profile investors. And that includes Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd. The lesson is perhaps more reputational for the wealthier funds. 

For Kumpulan Wang Persaraan Diperbadankan (KWAP), which invested US$47.7 million or about 24% of eFishery’s US$200 million Series D funding round in July 2023, the RM200 million eFishery lesson is expensive even though it is only 0.1% of its fund size and about 1.1% of its hitherto highest annual investment income of RM18 billion in 2024. 

The RM200 million would have been enough to give about RM9 each to 22 million adult Malaysians and is about 6% of Putrajaya’s monthly retirement charges burden of RM3.83 billion (RM40.06 billion annually) in 2024. 

That RM200 million is almost five times the much-criticised high-profile RM43.9 million investment loss at FashionValet Sdn Bhd suffered by Khazanah Nasional Bhd and Permodalan Nasional Bhd, which invested RM27 million and RM20 million respectively but exited with only RM3.1 million collectively. Some observers note that FashionValet was at least founded by Malaysians while eFishery’s founders were Indonesian. 

Yet, with KWAP’s fund size of RM200 billion not being able to grow fast enough to carry Malaysia’s public pension burden for the foreseeable future without sizeable cash injections, every ringgit should count. With a fuel subsidy bill running at RM7 billion a month, Putrajaya on April 29 instructed all its ministries, departments and agencies to review spending and propose operating expenditure cuts by May 15. 

KWAP had yet to replace Datuk Nik Amlizan Mohamed, who served as CEO from November 2020 to end-March 2026. The efishery episode serves as an expensive lesson, not just for the fund’s incoming CEO, but for every steward of public money. 

There are always risks in lending or investing. But when it is a public institution like KWAP, it needs more rigour and care of its funds. It should revise its investment manual and focus on local investments and that too in less risk-prone sectors. But a RM200 million tuition fee is too high for the CEO, the management and the Board. An independent body should produce a forensic report and revamp this institution. 

References:

Frankly Speaking: eFishery an Expensive Lesion for KWAP, GLICs, The Edge Malaysia, 4 May 2026 

eFishery Founder Gets 9-year Jail Term in $383 Million Indonesian Fraud Case, The Straits Times, 29 April 2026