The Search Continues For The Lost 1MDB Loot
Look no farther than Rosmah’s jewelry box
The wheels of justice grind slowly against the rich and powerful in Malaysia. Eight years after the failure of 1Malaysia Development Bhd with an estimated US$5.4 billion believed siphoned off by senior officials and their associates, investigators are still hunting through the tangle in as many as 40 international jurisdictions, trying to establish a paper trail to prove in court that money allegedly stolen by former Prime Minister Najib Razak, his wife Rosmah Mansor, the fugitive financial architect Low Taek Jho and others came from the government-backed sovereign investment fund, and to recover the missing billions in assets.
Without the paper trail, the courts don’t have enough evidence to charge wrongdoers, said the source. “Considering that the transactions took place in as many as 40 different jurisdictions, you can imagine what a nightmare it is to work through the documents,” the source said. A task force comprising as many as 200 lawyers, accountants, and investigators from the Attorney General’s Chambers and other enforcement agencies led by the private firm of Lim Chee Wee Law of Kuala Lumpur are involved in combing through the mountains of files, bank statement, emails, and other evidence. The probe was delayed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic for several months, and by the delaying tactics of the defendants’ lawyers.
The latest shot at recovering some of the astonishing amount of stash stolen by Jho Low, who is still on the run somewhere in China, and the Najibs came on June 4 when Lim Chee Wee Law, representing the 1MDB cadaver, filed a civil action against Rosmah and her Singaporean agent and companion, Shabnam Naraindas Daswani, aka Natasha Mirpuri, seeking the return of an astonishing US$346 million in jewelry, bags and watches allegedly paid for with funds stolen from 1MDB. That may not be all, the source said. The task force is searching for even more.
On September 1, 2022, just a week after Najib reported to Kajang Prison to begin serving a 12-year sentence on corruption charges connected to the1MDB scandal, the 72-year-old Rosmah was found guilty of three charges of corruption, sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined RM970 million (US206.2 million) in a separate case having nothing to do with the failed investment concern. Although 22 months have passed since her conviction, she remains free on appeal. Additional cases against Najib, who has already had his sentence cut in half by the parole board, remain to be brought, six years after he was originally arrested. Given the politics of Malaysia at the moment, with Najib’s United Malays National Organization a crucial component propping up Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition government, there are concerns about whether the additional cases will ever be brought.
However, the magnitude of the theft, and the spending on luxury items, is breathtaking and might even dwarf the purchases of Rosmah’s Asian sister-in-crime Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, who has also managed to beat the rap. It has been the subject of wide-ranging investigations by both local law enforcement agencies and foreign governmental and law enforcement authorities including those in the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore. In the 242-page civil filing in the commercial division of the High Court in Kuala Lumpur, 1MDB and its ancillary firms, represented by the Lim Chee Wee firm, described a “large-scale, multi-jurisdictional fraud” in which eight different agents registered in offshore jurisdictions made 320 payments totaling US$346,010,489 to 48 different vendors of luxury goods based at least 14 jurisdictions.
In 2018, when Najib was arrested, police seized the equivalent of US$273 million worth of loot from his property that filled five trucks with cash in 26 currencies totaling US$28.6 million, 457 handbags worth US$12 million, 423 watches valued at US$19 million, and 234 pairs of sunglasses worth US$93,000. Also included were 1,400 necklaces, 2,200 rings, 2,100 bangles, 2,800 pairs of earrings, 1,600 brooches, and 14 tiaras. In 2022 all of those items were returned to Rosmah when the High Court ruled the Public Prosecutor had failed to establish that offenses had been committed, and thus failed to show that the seized assets had been obtained in relation to the commission of a crime.
The plaintiffs are now trying to get them back, along with a catalog of other assets that may well go beyond the US$346 million figure. Given the plethora of jurisdictions, it has proven extremely difficult to ascertain just how much loot was paid for with the stolen funds, much of it routed through two BVI shell companies, Good Star Ltd and Petro Saudi International.
The civil suit describes a bewildering series of sham transfers of funds and loans in amounts up to US$1 billion that passed back and forth between the entities that “were created as part of the various wrongdoers’ design, including Najib Razak and Jho Low,” in one case, for instance “so that US$700 million out of US$1 billion at the 1st Plaintiff (1MDB) would eventually pay as a result of the PSI Joint Venture could be siphoned.”
The misappropriation and laundering of the funds “were the result of various breaches of fiduciaries duties and trust by the former directors, executive and senior management, and employees” of 1MDB and its related companies. “In essence, the funds…which were to be utilized for investments in various ventures were instead wrongfully or fraudulently transferred out to entities registered in offshore jurisdictions which had no connection with or served no legitimate purpose in relation to the purported investment objectives of the…plaintiffs.”
And where did the money go? In addition to the US$346 million that went to Rosmah’s jewelry in this civil action, the US Department of Justice’s kleptocracy unit, in 2016, as widely reported at the time, seized US$1 billion in assets including penthouses, hotels, condominiums, mansions and other properties in Los Angeles, London and Australia, a US$35 million Bombardier Global 5000 corporate jet and paintings by Claude Monet and Vincent Van Goh. The Justice Department detailing the phenomenal amount of assets accumulated by “Malaysian Official 1” and his spouse included financing for the EMI music publishing house and for Red Granite Productions, headed by Rosmah’s son Riza Aziz by a previous marriage to make movies including the US$100 million 2013 production Wolf of Wall Street. The proceeds of the movies were later seized by the US government. In 2020, charges against Riza were dropped by the then-government because the funds were returned to the US government, shocking reform critics. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio had to return an Oscar originally won by Marlon Brando, which was gifted to him by Red Granite. Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr surrendered US$8 million in jewelry given to her by Jho Low.
Finally, another US$250 million went to construct the 91-meter superyacht Equanimity, whose owner was said to be Jho Low, although it is widely believed in Kuala Lumpur that it was Rosmah who picked the materials and consulted in the design of the vessel’s over-the-top interior. Equanimity led authorities on a worldwide chase before it was finally cornered in Bali and confiscated by Malaysian authorities, who sold it for US$125 million to the Genting gaming empire, which renamed it Tranquility and subsequently resold it to Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation, for an undisclosed price believed to be US$150 million.
The assets seized by the US government have not been returned to the Najibs. There are hundreds of millions still out there, along with Jho Low, who has been seen in Macao, Shanghai, and other cities, reportedly in the company of senior Chinese Communist Party officials. The task force will continue to look for them. Rosmah continues to be free on appeal. She regularly retrieves her passport to visit her daughter in Singapore. She has agreed to not dispose of or sell her designer handbags, jewelry, and other luxury items in the US$346 million lawsuit filed by 1MDB.