Category Archives: 1MDB

Ex-Malaysian PM’s lawyer pressures Netflix to take down documentary

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Defence counsel for Najib Razak, jailed over fraud scandal, says Man on the Run is ‘sub judice and contemptuous’

A lawyer acting for the disgraced former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has called for the takedown of a Netflix documentary about a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that occurred under his administration.

Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead defence counsel for Najib, who is serving a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, said Man on the Run was “sub judice and contemptuous”, according to local media reports.

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New Natwest boss worked for oil firm under investigation in ‘world’s biggest financial scandal’

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Exclusive: Rick Haythornthwaite was paid £200,000 a year by Saudi company, PetroSaudi, involved in 1MDB scandal

Read more: The NatWest boss, the missing Malaysian millions and the damning email

The new chairman of NatWest is facing scrutiny over his former role with international oil group PetroSaudi, which is embroiled in one of the world’s biggest financial scandals.

City veteran and former MasterCard boss Rick Haythornthwaite worked for PetroSaudi International (UK) Ltd, the oil group’s British arm, for eight years, earning £200,000 a year.

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Ex-Goldman banker given 10 years in prison for role in 1MDB fraud scandal

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Roger Ng, 50, found guilty by Brooklyn jury in massive embezzlement linked to Malaysian state investment fund

Roger Ng, the former Goldman Sachs banker at the center of the multibillion 1MDB embezzlement scandal, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday, placing a capstone on one of the largest and most bizarre financial frauds of the past decade.

A jury in Brooklyn, New York, found Ng, 50, from Malaysia, guilty of violating US anti-bribery laws, money laundering and illegally skirting Goldman’s accounting controls, after a seven-week trial.

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FBI grilled Leonardo DiCaprio over ties to Malaysian fugitive financier – report

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Files show actor had relationship with Jho Low, on the run over links to 1MDB scandal, and Kim Kardashian was also interviewed

New details have emerged of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s ties to Jho Low, the Malaysian financier turned fugitive currently wanted by international authorities over his links to one of the world’s largest corruption scandals.

On Thursday, Bloomberg revealed previously undisclosed details from FBI documents in which authorities interviewed DiCaprio in 2018 about his relationship with Low, who is accused of involvement in a money-laundering scheme of over $4.5bn being siphoned from the Malaysian state investment fund, also known as 1MDB.

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Wife of Malaysia’s jailed ex-PM handed 10 years in prison for bribery

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Rosmah Mansor convicted of receiving over £1m to help a firm get a schools business contract

The wife of the former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for soliciting and receiving bribes in exchange for government contracts, one week after her husband was sent to prison for corruption linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal.

Rosmah Mansor, 70, had pleaded not guilty to three charges of soliciting bribes and receiving 6.5m ringgit (£1.3m) in exchange for helping a company secure a contract to provide solar power to schools.

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Malaysia’s ex–PM Najib sent to prison as final 1MDB appeal lost

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Federal court upholds conviction and 12-year sentence linked to fraud, saying appeal ‘devoid of any merits’

Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak has been ordered to begin a 12-year prison sentence after he lost his final appeal against a conviction linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal, one of the world’s biggest financial frauds.

A five-member federal court panel said it unanimously found that Najib’s appeal was “devoid of any merits”, seemingly sealing the stunning downfall of the 69-year-old, who has become Malaysia’s first former PM to be jailed.

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Ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng found guilty in billion-dollar 1MDB scandal

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Ng, 49, found guilty of helping to embezzle money earmarked for development in one of biggest frauds in financial history

The former Goldman Sachs executive Roger Ng has been found guilty of helping to steal billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund after a lengthy trial brought by US prosecutors, who described the fraud as one the largest financial scandals in history and who hoped to show that individuals are always at the center of corporate wrongdoing.

A New York jury found Ng, 49, once Goldman’s top investment banker in Malaysia, guilty of helping his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money intended for development to benefit Malaysia’s poor from a fund connected to Malaysia’s then prime minister, Najib Razak, and then to launder the proceeds while bribing officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.

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The New York trial that has it all: Hollywood, megayachts, giant sums of money

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The 1MDB swindle is one of the most remarkable cases to hit New York’s justice system in years – but the trial poses a number of unanswered questions

It started, at least in terms of the public’s recognition, with a giant spending spree that reads like a Christmas wishlist for a billionaire.

Picasso’s Women of Algiers for $179m; $100m to fund the production budget of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and a $600,000 Oscar statuette given to Marlon Brando for best actor in On the Waterfront – a gift for the movie’s star Leonardo DiCaprio. But it did not stop there: there was also a custom-built megayacht; a Beverly Hills hotel; a $415m stake in EMI music publishing; and a transparent grand piano.

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1MDB scandal: bribery and bigamy loom large in ex-Goldman Sachs banker’s trial

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Roger Ng pleads not guilty to helping launder millions of dollars looted from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund

On the first day of a trial over the multibillion-dollar looting of a Malaysian government fund, US prosecutors on Monday accused a former Goldman Sachs banker of taking $35m in kickbacks as his defense team slammed the prosecution’s star witness as a bigamist who used their client as a fall guy.

Roger Ng, Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, is charged with conspiring to launder money and violating anti-bribery law in his dealings with Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

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Goldman Sachs reaches $2.9bn deal to settle US-led 1MDB inquiry

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Bank’s Malaysia division agrees to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $2.9bn (£2.2bn) to settle a US-led investigation into its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The settlement is expected to draw a line under a years-long saga that has cast a shadow over one of the most recognisable names on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs’ Malaysia division also agreed to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws linked to the alleged looting of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.

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1MDB scandal: former Trump fundraiser charged with allegedly lobbying US to drop inquiry

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Elliott Broidy allegedly asked the US president to play golf with now disgraced Malaysian PM Najib Razak as part of effort to end investigation

A former leading fundraiser for president Donald Trump has been indicted on a charge that he illegally lobbied the US government to drop its probe into the Malaysia 1MDB corruption scandal and to deport an exiled Chinese billionaire.

Elliott Broidy was charged in Washington federal court with one count of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent after allegedly agreeing to take millions of dollars to lobby the Trump administration.

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1MDB scandal: Najib Razak found guilty in first trial linked to vast fraud

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Former PM denied criminal breach of trust, money laundering and abuse of power over money transfers

1MDB scandal explained: a tale of Malaysia’s missing billions

Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak has been found guilty of all seven charges in his first trial linked to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal - a landmark conviction that could lead to decades in jail.

Najib has denied any wrongdoing in relation to what is one of the world’s biggest financial frauds, in which billions of dollars were allegedly looted from a state fund set up to promote development. The scandal shook Malaysian politics, led to the ousting of Najib’s Umno party after 61 years in power, and prompted a series of investigations in countries around the world.

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Has Malaysia’s new PM inherited a poisoned chalice?

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Muhyiddin Yassin faces big challenges – and some say he may be bad news for minorities

When Malaysia’s government plunged into chaos last month, some believed the country’s veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad was likely to emerge an even more powerful political force. Instead, it was Muhyiddin Yassin, a much quieter figure, who was eventually appointed prime minister.

Muhyiddin, a conservative Malay nationalist, is a low-profile and cautious politician, say analysts.

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Malaysia rejects Goldman Sachs offer of $2bn damages over 1MDB scandal

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Mahathir Mohamad says amount is insufficient but a better offer might lead Malaysia to drop its demand for US$7.5bn

Malaysia has rejected an offer from Goldman Sachs of less than US$2bn in compensation over the 1MDB scandal, in contrast to the country’s publicly stated demand of US$7.5bn.

Malaysia has charged Goldman and 17 current and former directors of its units for allegedly misleading investors over bond sales totalling US$6.5bn that the US bank helped raise for the sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

“Goldman Sachs has offered something like less than $2bn,” the Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, told the Financial Times on Friday. “We are not satisfied with that amount so we are still talking to them … If they respond reasonably we might not insist on getting that $7.5bn.”

Related: US strikes deal with fugitive Jho Low to recoup almost $1bn stolen from 1MDB

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Superyacht linked to Jho Low and 1MDB scandal for sale again, for an extra $74m

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The Tranquility, seized by authorities and sold for a ‘bargain’ $126m in April, is back on market after stint as celebrity hangout

A superyacht once owned by Jho Low, a fugitive at the centre of Malaysia’s 1MDB financial scandal, has been put back on the market after a few months as a celebrity party venue.

The vessel, now named Tranquility, is being sold for US$200m, an increase of more than $70m on its previous price tag. It is currently owned by the Genting Group, a Malaysian conglomerate with business interests in real estate, hospitality, plantations and energy supply.

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1MDB: Malaysia files charges against 17 current and ex-Goldman Sachs bosses

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Bank has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings

Malaysia has filed criminal charges against 17 current and former directors at subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs Group in a multibillion-dollar corruption investigation at state fund 1MDB, the attorney general said on Friday.

Goldman Sachs has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings for 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), the subject of corruption and money-laundering investigations in at least six countries.

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$800,000 spent at jeweller in one day on Najib Razak’s credit cards, court hears

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Platinum cards of former Malaysian prime minister used for spree at jeweller in Italy, say prosecutors

Credit cards belonging to the disgraced former prime minister of Malaysia were used to spend more than $800,000 at a jeweller in Italy in a single day, a court in Kuala Lumpur has heard during his corruption trial.

The spending spree took place at De Grisogono, a Swiss luxury jeweller, in Italy on 8 August 2014 where items worth 3.3m Malaysian Ringgit ($803,000 or £645,000) were purchased on Najib Razak’s Visa and Mastercard platinum credit cards, the court was told.

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1MDB: Wolf of Wall Street producer charged with embezzling millions

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Riza Aziz, stepson of former Malaysian PM Najib Razak, accused of receiving $248m into Swiss bank accounts

The Wolf of Wall Street producer Riza Aziz, who is the stepson of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, has been charged with embezzling millions of dollars from the Malaysian government.

Riza, who ran a Hollywood production company Red Granite Pictures, appeared in a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday morning charged with five counts of money laundering, accused of receiving $248 million into Swiss bank accounts from the Malaysian state fund 1MDB, which was controlled by Najib. Each charge carries a five-year jail sentence.

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Malaysia sells luxury superyacht seized in 1MDB scandal for £95m

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Government agrees to sell 300ft yacht to casino operator Genting Malaysia

Malaysia has sold a luxury superyacht allegedly bought with funds stolen from the nation’s 1M sovereign wealth fund for $126m (£95.5m).

The 300ft (91.5-metre) yacht Equanimity was seized from the fugitive financier Jho Low off the coast of Bali last year as part of a global investigation into the 1MDB scandal.

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1MDB corruption trial of ex-Malaysian PM postponed, says lawyer

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Najib Razak faces charges related to multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund

The corruption trial of the former Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, over charges related to a multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB has been postponed, his lawyer said, citing a court ruling.

The trial was originally set to begin on Tuesday.

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