The United States has moved to confiscate luxury properties across affluent areas of NY and California as part of an investigation into Malaysian state-run fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) “misappropriate” finances, according to a court filing Wednesday by the Department of Justice. Its filing alleges that between 2009 and 2015 more than $3.5 billion belonging to the firm may have been pinched by “high-level officials of 1MDB and their associates”.
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Malaysia’s attorney-general said on Thursday there has been no evidence from any global probe that show funds were misappropriated from 1MDB and no criminal charges have been made against any individuals.
As far as we are concerned, in Malaysia, we have been handling the 1MDB issue quite well. The DOJ said that more than $3.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB in alleged fraud committed over a four-year time frame.
The 1MDB fund denies wrongdoing and is co-operating with these investigations.
Singapore prosecutors have also seized $177m (£134m) in assets linked to 1MDB, half of which belong to a Malaysian financier facing numerous fraud allegations.
The Department of Justice’s findings show that money that was meant to help the Malaysian people was instead used for the personal enrichment of (allegedly) Prime Minister Najib Razak, his stepson Riza Aziz, Jho Low and other cronies around the world.
Malaysian social media users hammered Najib on Thursday as a kleptocrat and a liar, and #MalaysianOfficial1 became the country’s top-trending Twitter hashtag.
Prosecutors are seeking to seize film royalties from a production company owned by Najib’s stepson, Red Granite, including those generated by The Wolf of Wall Street.
The DOJ lawsuit presents a potentially thorny issue for the United States and Malaysia, as both countries have grown closer during the administration of President Barack Obama, who has visited the South-east Asian nation twice in the past two years. “I think, who is, you can decide from the description of “Malaysian Official 1″ found in the report by the Justice Department in America”.
The Justice Department is also seizing other assets, including a painting by a Vincent van Goh, and various other assets.
Contrary to Najib’s defence, the funds that flowed into his private accounts were not from any Arab donors or philanthropists but money allegedly derived from 1MDB but re-entered the country through his private accounts from some offshore accounts.
The lapses at the other three banks were in specific processes and by individual officers, and not “pervasive control weaknesses” nor staff misconduct as was the case with BSI, the MAS said. She is the chief prosecutor in central California. It is also unclear what happened to the $61 million he kept, although advisers have said he needed money for parliamentary elections that year.
Goldman Sachs has not been accused of any wrongdoing. For the simple reason that the money defrauded from Malaysian taxpayers was used by certain individuals with well-placed connections in Malaysia to invest and buy properties in the USA for their personal and family benefits. “We had no visibility into whether some of those funds may have been subsequently diverted to other purposes”, a Goldman Sachs spokesman said.
Paramount Pictures, actor and producer Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese could not immediately be reached for comment. It added that the company is confident that “Riza Aziz and Red Granite did nothing wrong”.
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The lawsuits also named Jho Low and Abu Dhabi government officials Khadem Abdulla Al-Qubaisi and Mohammed Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny.
