In a small office near Jalan Makbar Darat, Kuantan, Nazlan Mokhtar, 57, sits in his chair as usual.

The secretary of Koperasi Kijang Mas Negeri Pahang Berhad has spent years managing the affairs of the cooperative’s thousands of members. However, for the past few months, that chair has felt much heavier to sit in.

This is no ordinary tale of a village cooperative. This is the story of how a quota of 1,125 migrant workers, allegedly worth millions of ringgit on the black market of labour trading, was approved under the name of an Orang Asli cooperative - without the full knowledge of those who were supposed to sign off on it, through questionable methods, and with the possibility that the quota was misused.