Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was arrested Wednesday (Sep 20) by anti-graft authorities in connection with a deposit of 2.6 billion ringgit ($627.79 million) into his personal account.
The authorities said that Najib was being held at the anti-graft agency’s headquarters and would be transferred to a court Thursday to face several charges once they are approved by the Southeast Asian country’s attorney general.
Najib has faced intense scrutiny since unexpectedly losing a general election in May to Mahathir Mohamad, who reopened investigations into allegations that billions of dollars were stolen from 1MDB.
In total, Najib was presented with 25 new charges on Thursday comprising 21 counts of receiving, using and transferring illicit funds, as well as four counts of corruption. He has pleaded not guilty in earlier arraignments linked to the receipt of a separate 42 million ringgit from a former 1MDB unit, as well as to accusations of money laundering and abuse of power.
1MDB, set up by Mr Najib in 2009, was meant to turn the capital, Kuala Lumpur, into a financial hub and boost the economy through strategic investments.
Instead, it started to attract negative attention in early 2015 after it missed payments for some of the $11bn it owed to banks and bondholders.
Then the Wall Street Journal reported it had seen a paper trail that allegedly traced close to $700m from the fund to Mr Najib's personal bank accounts. Billions of dollars are still unaccounted for.
sources: Wsj.com, reuters.com, bbc.com, Bloomberg.com