ANWAR IBRAHIM has been Malaysia's prime minister in waiting for decades, only to repeatedly have the rug pulled out from under him. Twice since 1998, the government has jailed him on sodomy charges (trumped up by rivals, Anwar says); in all, he spent 10 years in prison.
It was other people's financial crimes that helped bring him to power. Anwar and Malaysia's longtime leader Mahathir Mohamad reconciled a few years ago in order to clean house after the notorious 1MDB scandal, in which investigations revealed that Malaysia's leaders had been looting a major sovereign wealth fund for personal gain. Last year, Anwar-who ran on an anticorruption platform-finally became prime minister after a snap election that gave no party a majority.
Foreign investment is high on his agenda. Malaysia is no stranger to high-tech manufacturing: The country was home to Intel's first overseas plant, back in 1972. But the 1MDB controversy and what Anwar recently decried as "a lack of competitiveness" had kept other companies away. The prime minister is now wooing multinationals with promises of ethical government and less bureaucracy. He's already won multibillion-dollar commitments from companies including German chipmaker Infineon and Chinese giants Rongsheng Petrochemical and automaker Geely.
Anwar's most famous new partner? Elon Musk. Tesla and Starlink, the SpaceX-owned satellite internet provider, both began operating in Malaysia in July. To attract them, Anwar exempted the companies from rules that require foreign ventures to include ownership by Malaysia's bumiputera, primarily the country's Malay majority. (Critics, including Anwar, say these rules benefit well-connected Malays while doing little to ease inequality.) Tesla is now selling cars directly in Malaysia, without a domestic partner, and SpaceX is keeping full control of Starlink in the country.
This story is from the October - November 2023 edition of Fortune US.
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This story is from the October - November 2023 edition of Fortune US.
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