Traffic passes a 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) billboard at the Tun Razak Exchange development in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Photo: https://www.reuters.com/) Hanoi (VNA) – Singapore has recently returned to Malaysia about 16.3 million USD linked to a multibillion-dollar scandal at the state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission said on November 19.
In its statement, the commission said Malaysia has recovered about 4.9 billion USD in 1MDB assets so far.
Greater efforts are ongoing to recover more from other countries and territories, including Switzerland, Kuwait, Mauritius, Cyprus, and Hong Kong (China), the commission added.
US authorities said at least 4.5 billion USD was siphoned from the 1MDB fund between 2009 and 2014, in a globe-spanning corruption scandal that has implicated high-ranking officials and financial institutions in many countries.
The 1MDB was set up by former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009, supposedly to serve Malaysia’s development through global partnerships and foreign direct investment.
The fund was the centre of the scandalous loss of billions of US dollar believed to be corrupt money transferred to other countries for laundering, leading to a series of investigations in Malaysia and some countries like the US, Switzerland and Singapore. The scandal was also one of the causes of Najib Razak’s failure in the 2018 election./.
