Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak (centre). (Source: AFP/VNA)
KualaLumpur (VNA)♑ – Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak haswithdrawn his legal action against 1Malaysia Development Berhad’s (1MDB) topthree investigators.
Thethree are Attorney General Tommy Thomas, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commissionchief Mohd Shukri Abdull and Commercial Crime Investigation Division director AmarSingh Ishar Singh, the Star Online reported. Najib’slawyer Badrul Hisham Abdullah said the move was based on the grounds that thesuit was filed before Najib was charged at the High Court with three counts ofcriminal breach of trust and one count of abuse of power. “We need to realign the case as the scenario haschanged,” he said. OnJune 30, Najib filed the action against the three individuals separately afterthey affirmed that the former PM had misappropriated the 1MDB fund.
1MDB is aninvestment fund formed by then PM Najib Razak in 2009 with the aim of servingMalaysia’s development through global partnerships and foreign directinvestment.
However, it became the centre of a money laundering scandal,allegedly causing losses of up to 3.7 billion USD and leading to probes intothe financial markets in several countries such as the US, Switzerland,Singapore, Malaysia, and China.
Najib was accused for the loss of 3.7 billion USD intransactions with other countries through 1MDB.
꧋ Najib wasarrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission on July 3. He was chargedby the Kuala Lumpur High Court with three counts of criminal breach of trust inhis former posts as a prime minister and minister of finance, in associationwith the transfer of 42 million Malaysian ringgit (10 million USD) from SRCInternational, a subsidiary of the 1MBD, to his personal bank accounts betweenAugust 2011 and March 2015. He also faced one count of corruption.-VNA
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