The Elephant in the Room in the FAM Heritage Player Fraud Scandal

OPINION | The Elephant in the Room in the FAM Heritage Player Fraud Scandal


23 Nov 2025 • 8:00 AM MYT


TheRealNehruism
An award-winning Newswav creator, Bebas News columnist & ex-FMT columnist

Image credit: Says


There is an elephant in the room in the matter of the FAM heritage player fraud scandal.


How do I know there is an elephant in the room?


I know because all of us know.


All of us can see the elephant. All of us understand that to resolve this scandal, we have to get the elephant out of the room. And to get the elephant out of the room, we first have to acknowledge that the elephant exists.


But somehow, no one wants to be the first to say it out loud.


Instead, when compelled to speak, everyone is talking about the carpet, lighting, ventilation and the colour of the curtains — but no one it seems, dares to acknowledge the presence of the giant elephant standing right in the middle of the room.


And it’s not just us ordinary citizens doing mental gymnastics. Even ministers and lawmakers, are suddenly practicing Olympic-level silence.


Parliament — a place where people argue until the microphones beg for mercy — has collectively decided that the FAM fraud scandal is a topic too hot to touch. This, despite the scandal going international and shredding Malaysia’s credibility not just in football, but in institutional integrity and our reputation as a law-abiding country.


What else explains why our parliamentarians, who can argue endlessly about the most trivial matters, like the one about the size of the nose on the statues at tugu negara, are suddenly speechless about something so serious?


Not only are government MPs conspicuously silent, the opposition MPs are equally silent. They may fear not fear each other— the don't even fear good sense or good manners - but somehow when it comes to the FAM heritage player fraud scandal, all of them seem to fear somebody.


It is as if everyone knows what the elephant is.


Everyone knows where the elephant is sitting.


But no one wants to say the elephant’s name.


If parliament was a Harry Potter movie, it feels like everybody is afraid of Lord Voldemort's spectre, because no one wants to say the name.

The Fraud Was Not Even Sophisticated

Let’s be honest — the issue is not even difficult to resolve.


It’s not like the fraud was crafted with such genius subtlety that you need a PhD in cryptology to detect it.


No.


You can literally see that these players were not Malaysians — nor had any Malaysian heritage — simply by looking at them.


The fraud was done in a way so blatant, clumsy, and amateurish that it’s almost insulting to our intelligence.


The foreign players caught in the naturalisation scandal have already admitted that they do not speak a single word of Malay, have never lived in Malaysia for 10 years, and signed documents they didn’t read, relying purely on “family hearsay”.


Despite this, somehow all of them “passed” their Malay proficiency tests.


Then we discovered why: the documents were forged so badly that even FIFA didn’t need experts to detect them.


In João Vítor Brandão’s case, the forged birth certificate listed his Malaysian “grandmother” as male.


In Jon Irazabal’s case, “Kuching” was spelled as “Luching”.


That’s not a typo.


That’s a cry for help.


FIFA didn’t need intelligence analysts.


They didn’t need forensic linguists.


They didn’t even need glasses.


The forgeries were so bad that they practically confessed by themselves.

Even FAM Has Admitted — Without Admitting

FAM itself has in a roundabout way admitted everything by saying the issue involved “administrative errors”.


No one has any idea how an “administrative error” results in seven players getting express citizenship despite having no link to Malaysia whatsoever. But somehow, that’s the official explanation.


Then you have the Home Minister, Saifuddin Nasution, openly saying he used his constitutional discretion to “waive the residency requirement” for the seven footballers.


You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to figure out how this entire thing started; you only need to ask Saifuddin to explain why he applied his consitutional discretion, and we could all probably bring this shameful matter to a close.


And if you want the full picture, you can simply look at the paper trail — because this fiasco ran through multiple agencies, from NRD officers to FAM administrators. All Parliament needs to do is call those officers whose name is at the bottom of the document, and ask them who ordered what.


But that would require confronting the elephant.


And that’s the part no one wants to do.

Dragging It Out Because We Won’t See What’s Right in Front of Us

So here we are.


Despite the scandal being enormous and embarrassingly obvious, the whole thing is still dragging on endlessly because we are collectively fascinated by how far our leaders will go to NOT see what is right in front of them.


Instead of taking the simple, direct path, we are trying every complicated, convoluted method imaginable: appealing to FIFA, appealing to CAS, spinning stories, issuing vague statements, and hoping the problem somehow solves itself.


It brings to mind what Clausewitz once said:


“War is simple, but the simplest things are hard to do in war.”


And although no one says it aloud, things in our governance must truly be like a state of war — because something so simple is turning into a multi-year circus.

But This Time, We Can't Hide the Elephant Under the Carpet

If this scandal were confined only to Malaysia, perhaps we could pretend not to see the obvious and sweep it all under the carpet.


But FIFA has now escalated the matter into a full-blown international criminal investigation.


They have formally launched an internal probe into FAM.


They are identifying individuals responsible for the forgeries.


They are assessing governance failures.


They are recommending disciplinary action.


And most importantly:


They have officially notified the police and criminal authorities in Malaysia, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and the Netherlands.


Document forgery is a crime in all these jurisdictions.


So no — we can’t just wait this out.


At some point, Malaysia must either:

Acknowledge the elephant in the room,

OR

Keep throwing more people under the bus to protect the elephant.

Right now, the jury is still out on which path we will choose.


But one thing is certain:


This spectacle is far from over.


Prepare yourself for more cringe, more international embarrassment, and more creative attempts to pretend the elephant is a piece of furniture — because the cookies will continue to crumble.


And crumble.


And crumble.

***

In the end, the author himself, Nehru matey, dares not name the elephant too, wakakaka