Malaysian and US investigators say at least 6 billion was stolen from sovereign fund 1MDB between 2009 and 2014 (Photo: Reuters)Hanoi (VNA) – Malaysiaon May 12 said the US Department of Justice has returned 1.9 MYR (460.22million USD) retrieved of funds recovered from assets related to the 1MalaysiaDevelopment Berhad (1MDB) fund.
Malaysian and USinvestigators said at least 4.5 billion USD was stolen from 1MDB between 2009and 2014, in a wide-ranging scandal that has implicated high-level officials,banks and financial institutions around the world.
The US has beenreturning funds it has recovered from seized assets that were allegedly boughtwith stolen 1MDB money.
In a statement, theFinance Ministry of Malaysia said the country has so far received 16.05 billionMYR of seized and repatriated 1MDB funds.
It plans to use therecovered funds to repay liabilities of 1MDB and its former unit SRC.
The Malaysiangovernment has so far repaid 12.4 billion MYR of 1MDB's debt and 3.1 billion MYRof SRC's debt, the finance ministry said.
However, the fund stillhas 39.8 billion MYR in outstanding debt, while the unit SRC has 2.57 billion MYRof remaining debt, the ministry said.
The 1MDB was set up byformer Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009, supposedly to serveMalaysia’s development through global partnerships and foreign directinvestment.
This fund was thecentre of the scandalous loss of 3.7 billion USD believed to be corrupt moneytransferred to other countries for laundering, leading to a series ofinvestigations in Malaysia and some countries like the US, Switzerland andSingapore. The scandal is also one of the causes of Najib Razak’s failure inthe 2018 election./.
