1MDB was created by the government of Malaysia to promote economic development in Malaysia through global partnerships and foreign direct investment, and its funds were meant to be used for improving the well-being of the Malaysian people.
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The US Justice Department filed lawsuits on Wednesday to seize assets including luxury real estate in Beverly Hills, New York and London, artworks by Monet and Van Gogh, and a Bombardier executive jet, saying they were purchased with money stolen from 1MDB.
No one has yet been charged, but the U.S. government has announced its…
The funds allegedly embezzled and laundered into the USA were purportedly used to buy luxury properties in New York, Los Angeles and London, paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, a US$35 million jet, as well as to pay for gambling debts in Las Vegas.
“The simple answer is we do not have any control over Justice Department actions”, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told Reuters on Wednesday during a visit to Myanmar.
Singapore authorities said in a statement on Thursday they had seized S$240 million ($177 million) of assets in an investigation of 1MDB-related fund flows for possible money laundering.
Asked if he was shocked that an estimated US$3.5bil (RM14.07bil) had been missing from the fund, he said “we have to establish that it is a civil, and not a criminal, action”.
1MDB, which was founded by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 shortly after he came to office, is being investigated for money-laundering in at least six countries including the United States, Singapore and Switzerland.
They also are trying to seize proceeds from the 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
But the Justice Department described Riza in the complaint as a relative of an unnamed “Malaysian Official 1” – a high-ranking Malaysian government official with authority to approve all appointments and removals from 1MDB’s board of directors and whose approval was needed for the fund’s financial commitments. Najib has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
“As the Prime Minister has always maintained, if any wrongdoing is proven, the law will be enforced without exception”, Tengku Sariffudin Tengku Ahmad said in a statement. “I don’t see this latest in the 1MDB saga having too much of an effect on the overall strategic partnership with the U.S.”, he said.
“I believe the Malaysian people want Najib to go on leave as prime minister so as not to create the perception of abuse of power … or to hinder a full and transparent investigation on this very serious issue”, opposition leader Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, wife of jailed political figure Anwar Ibrahim, said.
The U.S. lawsuits seek to seize assets “involved in and traceable to an global conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1MDB” over a four-year period.
In its preliminary censure of DBS, StanChart and UBS, MAS said there were instances of control failings and, in some cases, weaknesses in processes for accepting clients and monitoring transactions.
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The statement is the latest twist in an evolving scandal centered on a fund set up in 2009 to bolster the Malaysian economy, and comes two months after MAS revoked BSI Bank Ltd.’s license for breaching money-laundering rules. She is the chief prosecutor in central California.
