Immigration clears Network School foreigners as founder Balaji halts new investment, seeks PM talks.
PETALING JAYA: The controversy surrounding Network School’s operations at Forest City, Johor, has drawn a formal response from the Immigration Department after checks on 266 foreigners tied to the community, even as its founder, Balaji Srinivasan, announced he was pausing all new investment plans in Malaysia pending government assurances.
Immigration director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban reportedly said 256 of the 266 foreigners inspected were found to be using Social Visit Passes, while the remaining 10 held Professional Visit Passes (PLIK) under the Nomad category. The PLIK Nomad holders comprised four Americans, three Russians, two Australians and one Indian national.
Zakaria said the checks also involved two Malaysian citizens, and that of the total number inspected, 179 were men and 87 were women.
The inspection followed viral claims that Israeli nationals were participating in the Network School programme at Forest City, Iskandar Puteri. The allegations prompted Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi to order an investigation into claims that Israeli citizens — who are barred from entering Malaysia — had joined the Network School community, reportedly using second-country passports.
The Immigration Department subsequently inspected 266 foreigners from 40 countries and found that all of them held valid immigration documents based on current records. As of (Thursday) July 16, the department said it had not yet found evidence confirming the presence of Israeli nationals at the Network School, with investigations across several enforcement agencies still ongoing.
In a social media post on X, Balaji said Network School had invested more than RM100 million to develop a startup-friendly campus at Forest City without receiving Malaysian government funding, creating jobs locally, supporting Malaysian startups and local businesses, and helping revive development at Forest City.
“Our executives and staff in Malaysia should be given the benefit of the doubt ahead of claims made by an anonymous social media account,“ he said.
He said he had requested a meeting with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to discuss a possible Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Network School and the government, aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring the global tech community’s confidence in Malaysia as an investment destination.
“We will openly commit to continuing to comply with all Malaysian laws, as we do now, and to respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty, something we have never questioned,“ he said, adding that in return, the government would get to know the community better and understand why it chose Malaysia as a hub bringing together engineers, Western investors and local entrepreneurs.
“We are not asking for any funding. All we want is a meeting to help restore confidence that Malaysia remains a trusted investment destination,“ he said. “If Malaysia no longer wants our investment or that of our partners from billion-dollar funds and trillion-dollar companies, we will respect that decision and move our capital elsewhere.”
New investments suspended
Balaji later announced that all new Network School investment plans in Malaysia would be paused pending assurances, following the uproar sparked by an anonymous account that accused the company of harbouring undocumented migrants — a claim he called baseless. He said several investor partners and executives he had brought to Forest City were taking the same approach.
He traced the controversy to the day before the Johor state election, when an anonymous Instagram account made the accusation, triggering an uproar that led authorities to visit the campus on July 14. After checking hundreds of physical passports from individuals across 40 countries, including dual citizens, authorities confirmed on July 15 that all travel documents were valid.
“You can see photos of men, women and children at Network School smiling while holding their passports in broad daylight. Our faces are visible and our identities are publicly known. We have nothing to hide,“ Balaji said, arguing that the investigation itself had already damaged investor confidence even though the allegations were unproven.
He likened the episode to “swatting” — a false emergency report that forces police to waste time investigating a non-existent threat, diverting attention from real duties.
