In February this year, a 72-year-old retired Chinese Malaysian man in Sibu was cleaning his home when he found a photocopy of a bank deposit slip tucked inside a book, and he almost set it aside before looking more carefully at the figures. Two fixed deposit accounts, each holding RM500,000, deposited on August 25, 2006, at a bank in Sibu town centre, both with a 24-month lock-in period and both in his name.
He had not thought about the deposits in two decades. The money was in the bank and it would stay in the bank until he wanted it. When he went to retrieve it, the bank told him there was no record that it had ever existed.
A search that went from branch to ministry
As reported by Sin Chew Daily, the man made his first enquiry at the bank’s Sibu branch in February 2026 and the bank’s response was unequivocal: the system showed no records of either deposit. He did not accept that and pushed further, visiting the National Accounts Department Sibu branch and receiving the same answer, then travelling to Peninsular Malaysia to put the question directly to Bank Negara Malaysia, who told him the same thing.
On June 10 at 10.23am, he lodged a formal police report. In September, he returned to the bank once more, this time with police officers accompanying him and the assistance of Lu Limin, assistant to Bukit Assek councillor Qian Jinyi, and the bank’s position remained unchanged.
“I brought my documents to the bank, the National Accounts Department and Bank Negara, but not a single institution has been able to tell me where this RM1 million went. This is a frightening thing,” he told Sin Chew Daily.
What the police believe happened
After accompanying him to the bank in September, police officers offered the most plausible explanation available: when fixed deposits are left unclaimed for an extended period, the funds are eventually transferred to the Accountant General’s Department under the Treasury and classified as unclaimed moneys, meaning the money does not disappear but sits in a government account waiting for the rightful owner to come forward.
How Malaysia’s unclaimed moneys process works
Under the Unclaimed Moneys Act 1965, financial institutions in Malaysia are required to transfer any account that has been dormant for more than seven years to the Registrar of Unclaimed Moneys, which operates under the Accountant General’s Department, and fixed deposits that have matured and gone unclaimed fall under this provision. Once transferred, the funds are held by the government indefinitely and can be claimed by the rightful owner or their legal heirs by submitting a formal application through the Registrar, accompanied by supporting documents such as account statements, identification and proof of ownership. The government’s mySimpan portal allows Malaysians to check whether any unclaimed money exists under their MyKad number.
In practice, however, the process of retrieving funds that have been transferred, especially when the original bank records are unavailable or unverifiable, can be long and uncertain, and the burden of proof falls on the claimant.
Still no answers
For the 72-year-old man in Sibu, the photocopy of a deposit slip from 2006 is currently the only documentation he has, and he has presented it to every institution he has visited without any of them being willing or able to confirm that the accounts it refers to ever existed in their systems. Lu Limin has said she will do what she can to assist him in pressing the matter further, and he has made clear that he is not prepared to stop asking.
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Read also: ‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman – In Real Life
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‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman
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