MY COMMENTS: This is old news (a few days old). But it is not stale yet.
This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on May 4, 2026 - May 10, 2026
Indonesian aquaculture company eFishery’s co-founder Gibran Huzaifah was handed a nine-year prison sentence last Wednesday for embezzlement and money laundering, concluding 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, including 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.
That RM200 million is also easily four 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.
