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The massive multibillion-dollar 1MDB corruption scandal saw its most significant development yet on Friday, as jailed former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was found guilty of abuse of power. The verdict underlines claims by Malaysian and US investigators that a staggering $4.5 billion was stolen from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, the state fund Najib helped establish in 2009, with allegations that over $1 billion of these illicit funds were connected to accounts belonging to Razak, despite his consistent pleas of innocence.
Najib has been charged with four counts of corruption and 21 counts of money laundering for receiving illegal transfers of more than 2.3 billion ringgit ($569.45 million) from 1MDB.
“The contention by the accused that the charges against him were a witch hunt and politically motivated were debunked by the cold, hard and incontrovertible evidence against him that pointed towards the accused having abused his own powerful position in 1MDB, coupled with the extensive powers conferred upon him,” Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah said in an ongoing reading of the verdict.
Najib, 72, has been in prison since August 2022, when Malaysia’s top court upheld a verdict convicting him of corruption for illegally receiving funds from a 1MDB unit. His 12-year jail sentence in that case was halved last year by a pardons board.
Najib last year apologized for mishandling the scandal while in office but had consistently denied wrongdoing, saying repeatedly that he was misled by 1MDB officials and the fugitive financier, Jho Low, about the source of the funds.
Judge Sequerah in reading the verdict had earlier said evidence had revealed Najib had an “unmistakable bond and connection” with Low, who acted as the then prime minister’s “proxy and intermediary” in 1MDB affairs.
Low, who has been charged in the United States for his central role in the case, denies all wrongdoing and his whereabouts are unknown.
The verdict came just days after another court denied a bid by Najib to serve his jail sentence under house arrest - a decision that reignited tensions within current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration.
