{"id":20703,"date":"2018-11-01T19:23:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T19:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20703"},"modified":"2018-11-01T19:23:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T19:23:26","slug":"us-charges-malaysian-financier-goldman-sachs-bankers-over-1mdb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=20703","title":{"rendered":"US charges Malaysian financier, Goldman Sachs bankers over 1MDB"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Prosecutors in the United States<\/a> have unveiled criminal charges against a Malaysian financier and two former Goldman Sachs bankers\u00a0<\/span>tied to the billion-dollar\u00a01MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal.<\/p>\n

The three-count indictment on Thursday charges Low Taek Jho of misappropriating money from the state-owned fund and using it to bribe foreign officials and to pay for luxury real estate, art and jewellery in the US and to fund Hollywood films, including “The Wolf of Wall Street.”<\/p>\n

Low, also known as Jho Low, remains at large.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Also charged by the US Department of Justice was a Goldman Sachs banker, Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and to conspiring to violate foreign bribery laws. Another bank official, Ng Chong Hwa, 51, also known as Roger Ng, was arrested earlier on Thursday in Malaysia, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Goldman has not yet responded to the indictments.<\/p>\n

The investment bank, which generated about $600m in fees for its work with 1MDB, has in the past repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said it was cooperating with authorities.<\/p>\n

US prosecutors previously filed\u00a0civil asset forfeiture suits<\/a>\u00a0for assets allegedly bought with some of the stolen funds.<\/p>\n

Epic scandal<\/span><\/h2>\n

The 1MDB scandal refers to a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund set up in 2009 by former Prime Minister Najib Razak.<\/span>to promote economic development in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The epic corruption scandal has roiled politics in Malaysia, leading to\u00a0criminal charges\u00a0against Najib<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

An estimated $4.5bn was misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, by high-level officials of the fund and their associates, the US justice department alleged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roughly $681m of that money is alleged to have ended up in private bank accounts belonging to Najib, who is fa<\/span>cing 38 charges of corruption in an ongoing investigation into the 1MDB scandal.<\/p>\n

The former prime minister has admitted “there are things that went wrong in 1MDB” during an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera’s 101 East<\/a>, though he maintains he was unaware of malfeasance and his “conscience is clear”.<\/p>\n

Najib’s wife,\u00a0Rosmah Mansor, also appeared in court last month<\/a> to face 17 charges of money laundering and unpaid taxes.<\/p>\n

Amid the scandal, former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohammad<\/span>\u00a0came out of retirement and the opposition united behind him in May’s national elections, leading to Najib’s removal and him becoming prime minister.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prosecutors in the United States have unveiled criminal charges against a Malaysian financier and two former Goldman Sachs bankers\u00a0tied to the billion-dollar\u00a01MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal. The three-count indictment on Thursday charges Low Taek Jho of misappropriating money from the state-owned fund and using it to bribe foreign officials and to pay for luxury real…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}