Organisation name: Center to Combat Corruption & Cronyism (C4)
Name of organisation’s representative: Cynthia GABRIEL
Website: www.c4center.org
Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required
Country: Malaysia
Which seat are you nominating for? East Asia, Central Asia and Pacific Regional Seat

Organisation Profile

C4 Center is the leading governance and anti-corruption group in Malaysia.

It serves as a whistleblower organisation as well as an investigative policy think tank that seeks to influence the framework of creating public policy and laws that deal with governance in this country.

We actively engage with various stakeholders including government, the corporates as well as communities and resident association in our mission to fight corruption and build the nation and its institutions independent and strong.

Please see our 2018 annual report to have a better take of the organisation.

Organisation Experience

We participated in the second review cycle and led the civil society team in meeting the review panel. UNCAC is reflected in most of our statements and reports as a guiding framework.

Top Three Priorities to Achieve for the Coalition

1. Region: Make the good and important work of the UNCAC coalition more visible in the Asian and Southeast Asian region.
2. Nation: Enable this new government in democratic transition to place the UNCAC at the center of our National Anti-Corruption Plan
3. Global: Play a bigger global role in articulating and contributing the new threats of corruption, like cross border and grand corruption.

Representative Profile

Cynthia Gabriel is easily recognized as a key advocate of human rights and good governance in Malaysia. She has spent most of her professional life in the field of advancing democratic freedoms, reforms and policy change in the country and region.

Cynthia was recently conferred the prestigious democracy award by the National Endowment for Democracy for her brave activism and untiring contributions, at the United States Congress by Speaker Paul Ryan.

With the monumental change that took place in GE14, May 2018, Cynthia has been appointed into the powerful 1MDB special committee by the Eminent Council of persons, as well as the council to develop a national anti-corruption plan that will report directly to the Prime Minister.

Academically well rounded, she has degrees in both the science and legal fraternities.

She has spent brief stints in the private sector, worked as a contractual lecturer in Monash University, and served and collaborated with several United Nations initiatives on research work in the field of democracy & human rights (OHCHR), governance, organized crime and anti-corruption, (UNODC).

She served on the international board as Vice President of the global human rights advocacy group, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), co-founded the Asia Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM ASIA) human rights network, and is currently an elected board member of the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) coalition, comprising about 400 organisations worldwide.

Cynthia has extensive networks with the local and global media, and has been featured on prime time news and documentaries in the CNN, BBC World, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Al Jazeera, NY Times, Washington Post, to name a few, as a leading human rights advocate and whistleblower on corruption scandals involving Malaysia’s political leadership.

She has together with senior civil society advocates founded a now leading policy advocacy centre since 2014 known as the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism (C4) and is now its Executive Director.

Cynthia was also appointed as City Councilor, under the professional/ NGO categories from 2008- 2015. In the council she has led important committees on sustainable development, traffic and infrastructure and green city development, thus giving her tremendous experience in planning, land and local government policy and administration.

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