Superior Court Judge Nazlan Mohammed Ghazali found Najib guilty of all charges brought against him (abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust) in the current trial, which concerns $ 10 million of funds. that were deposited into your personal accounts from a former 1MDB unit.
Najib has consistently argued his innocence, welcoming the trial, which he fought tooth and nail before being deposed as prime minister, as an opportunity to clear his name.
Najib faces prison terms of up to 15 to 20 years for each charge, as well as heavy fines. The sentence will be announced at a later date. Najib’s lawyers have said they will appeal.
Other lawsuits against Najib related to the 1MDB scandal are still ongoing.
Billions embezzled
The 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund was created shortly after Najib took office in 2009, injecting billions of public money into it, with the stated purpose of leading “market-driven initiatives to help the government push Malaysia to become in a developed nation that is highly competitive, sustainable and inclusive. ”
“(These funds) were intended to grow the Malaysian economy and support the Malaysian people. Instead, they were stolen, laundered through US financial institutions, and used to enrich some officials and their associates,” said the attorney general for the US Loretta Lynch in 2016, after the United States Department of Justice launched a case against 1MDB in an attempt to recover more than $ 1 billion related to the conspiracy that was allegedly laundered across the States United.
The case drew international attention thanks to the scale of the graft and the audacity of why Low used some of the allegedly stolen funds. According to United States prosecutors, Low laundered money from 1MDB through Red Granite, which used it to finance Hollywood movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Dumb and Dumber To” and “Daddy’s Home.”
However, he is still wanted for crimes in Malaysia, and has been an international fugitive for years, and some believe he is hiding in China.
International scandal
In early 2015, Clare Rewcastle-Brown, a British journalist and founder of the Sarawak Report website reporting corruption in Southeast Asia, received around 227,000 leaked documents related to 1MDB.
After months of investigation, Rewcastle-Brown published a story alleging that more than $ 700 million had been transferred from the fund to Prime Minister Najib’s personal bank accounts. The Wall Street Journal also published several groundbreaking reports on the scandal, based in part on the same leaked documents.
Following the reports, Malaysian officials raided the 1MDB offices in Kuala Lumpur and investigations were also launched in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. Najib told reporters that the criminals would be brought to justice.
However, the Najib government constantly blocked probes that appeared to threaten him, including the removal of the Attorney General who was investigating him and the replacement of the prosecutor with an ally who later eliminated Najib.
In July 2018, three years after the first 1MDB stories emerged, Najib was charged with four corruption charges. The charge sheet was later expanded to cover dozens of other alleged crimes.
His wife, Rosmah Mansour, whose wasteful spending on allegedly embezzled 1MDB funds had helped fuel public outrage, was arrested months later.
End of Najib?
This had led to some speculation that the government could withdraw the cases against Najib, and observers had long warned that if the cases dragged on too long, the former “Teflon prime minister” could return to power and forgive himself. .
However, a conviction could benefit Muhyiddin as much as Najib’s other political rivals.
“If Najib is convicted, he will begin an appeal process that will likely leave him out of the question for the next general election and weaken his control over UMNO, having to rely on representatives to gain power,” he added.
CNN’s Sandi Sidhu contributed reporting.
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