US returns over 460 million USD retrieved from 1MDB funds to Malaysia

Malaysian and US investigators say at least 6 billion was stolen from sovereign fund 1MDB between 2009 and 2014 (Photo: Reuters)

Hanoi (VNA) – Malaysia on May 12 said the US Department of Justice has returned 1.9 MYR (460.22 million USD) retrieved of funds recovered from assets related to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund.

Malaysian and US investigators said at least 4.5 billion USD was stolen from 1MDB between 2009 and 2014, in a wide-ranging scandal that has implicated high-level officials, banks and financial institutions around the world.

The US has been returning funds it has recovered from seized assets that were allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB money.

In a statement, the Finance Ministry of Malaysia said the country has so far received 16.05 billion MYR of seized and repatriated 1MDB funds.

It plans to use the recovered funds to repay liabilities of 1MDB and its former unit SRC.

The Malaysian government has so far repaid 12.4 billion MYR of 1MDB's debt and 3.1 billion MYR of SRC's debt, the finance ministry said.

However, the fund still has 39.8 billion MYR in outstanding debt, while the unit SRC has 2.57 billion MYR of remaining debt, the ministry said.

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.

This fund was the centre of the scandalous loss of 3.7 billion USD 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 is also one of the causes of Najib Razak’s failure in the 2018 election./.