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.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS