The US attorney-general described a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal involving a Malaysian state fund as the worst form of kleptocracy, and said the US Department of Justice (DOJ) was working to provide justice to the victims.
The department in June filed several lawsuits to seize more than US$1.7 billion in assets believed to have been stolen from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a sovereign fund set up by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions on Monday said the 1MDB-linked assets accounted for nearly half of about US$3.5 billion in total proceeds seized or restrained by the DOJ, tied to money laundering offences.
“This is kleptocracy at its worst,” Sessions said at a global forum on asset recovery in Washington according to a transcript of his speech posted on the department’s Web site, referring to the Malaysian case.
“Today, the US Department of Justice is working to provide justice to the victims of this alleged scheme,” he said.
Sessions said “allegedly corrupt officials” in 1MDB had reportedly spent US$200 million on real estate in southern California and New York, US$130 million on artwork, invested US$100 million in a US music label and US$265 million on a yacht.
“In total, 1MDB officials allegedly laundered more thanUS$4.5 billion in funds through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries ranging from Switzerland and Singapore to Luxembourg and the United States,” Sessions said.
He did not identify any of the officials he thought were corrupt.
Officials at 1MDB did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sessions said the DOJ’s anti-kleptocracy initiative had returned at least US$254 million in corruption proceeds to the people of Italy, Khazakhstan and Peru, and millions more to the people of Taiwan, Nicaragua and South Korea since 2004.
1MDB was once a pet project of Najib, who chaired its advisory board until last year.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
RSS