Thursday, July 21, 2016

Malaysia’s prime minister Najib finally in danger?

For the first time since he began a 20-year livelihood of theft of vast amounts of Malaysian government funds that began at least in 1999 when he was named defense minister, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s kleptocratic career may finally be in danger.

It is rare, if ever, that a foreign head of state and an ally of the United States government has been hit with charges as devastating as those released on July 20 by US Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch against suspects in what she called an “an international conspiracy to launder funds misappropriated from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.”

Although he is identified only as “Malaysian Public Official No. 1,” it is clear that Najib is the target of what Lynch called “the largest single action ever brought” under the US’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.

The US Justice Department investigation is a damning indictment of the entire structure surrounding 1MDB. It found that from 2009 through 2015, more than US$3.5 billion in funds belonging to 1MDB were misappropriated from an entity ostensibly created by the Malaysian government to promote economic development in Malaysia through global partnerships and foreign direct investment, and intended to be used for improving the well-being of the Malaysian people.

“Instead, as detailed in the complaints, 1MDB officials and their associates allegedly misappropriated more than $3 billion,” Lynch said. Full story...

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