The Kabul Tribune (KT) — International media reported that Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay a $2.8 billion fine after being convicted in the massive 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal.
Malaysia’s High Court found the 72-year-old former leader guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering linked to more than $700 million that prosecutors said was transferred into his personal bank accounts from the state investment fund.
The sentencing concluded a years-long legal saga over the looting of 1MDB, a fund established in 2009 under Najib’s leadership to promote economic development and attract foreign investment. Investigators say billions of dollars were siphoned from the fund for personal and political use.
Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah said evidence showed Najib was directly connected to Low Taek Jho, widely known as Jho Low, a fugitive financier believed to be at the center of the scandal. Bloomberg quoted the judge as saying Najib was “no country bumpkin” and possessed significant political experience and intelligence.
International media noted that Najib, once the most powerful figure in Malaysian politics, now faces one of the harshest penalties ever imposed on a former leader in the country. He was already serving a prison sentence following a 2020 conviction in a separate case involving SRC International, a former 1MDB unit.
According to investigators, between 2009 and 2014, senior officials and associates looted more than $4.5 billion from 1MDB, laundering funds through several countries, including the United States, Singapore, and Switzerland. Authorities said the money was used to finance Hollywood films and purchase luxury assets such as hotels, a yacht, artwork, and jewelry.
The scandal began to unravel in 2015, when reports revealed that hundreds of millions of dollars linked to 1MDB had been deposited into Najib’s personal accounts. Najib denied wrongdoing, claiming the money was a donation, but subsequent investigations uncovered evidence of corruption and money laundering.
Public anger over the scandal triggered major political upheaval, leading to the defeat of Najib’s Barisan Nasional coalition in the 2018 general election, ending more than six decades of uninterrupted rule and marking Malaysia’s first change of government since independence in 1957.
The fallout also reached global financial markets. Goldman Sachs, which helped raise $6.5 billion for 1MDB through bond deals, later paid billions of dollars to settle investigations into its role in the affair.
