A former national leader just got absolutely nailed for stealing billions. Malaysia's previous Prime Minister, Najib Razak, was convicted on a massive pile of charges for looting a state fund called 1MDB, with a judge saying he used his official power to funnel roughly 2.2 billion Malaysian ringgit into his own pocket. Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah ruled on this in the High Court, finding him guilty of four abuse of power and twenty-one more for money laundering, specifically through his personal AmIslamic Bank account, and completely trashed his main defense about getting the money as a gift from Saudi royalty.
The court shot down his entire story about a mysterious Arab donor. Judge Sequerah stated the narrative had no merit, declaring those donation letters from Saudi royalty were obvious fakes, and the cash actually came straight from the 1MDB fund. This whole decision took years to reach, with a trial lasting over three hundred days, and the judge needed almost four and a half hours just to read the full verdict out loud in a courtroom full of people.
This new conviction does not change where he is currently living, however. Najib is already sitting in prison for a separate but similar scheme involving a company called SRC International, where he was convicted of misappropriating about 42 million ringgit. He is roughly halfway through a six-year sentence for that one, which could last until around 2028 or 2029. Even with this latest guilty verdict, his legal team can still drag the process on by appealing to higher courts, meaning this whole saga is far from finished.
The court shot down his entire story about a mysterious Arab donor. Judge Sequerah stated the narrative had no merit, declaring those donation letters from Saudi royalty were obvious fakes, and the cash actually came straight from the 1MDB fund. This whole decision took years to reach, with a trial lasting over three hundred days, and the judge needed almost four and a half hours just to read the full verdict out loud in a courtroom full of people.
This new conviction does not change where he is currently living, however. Najib is already sitting in prison for a separate but similar scheme involving a company called SRC International, where he was convicted of misappropriating about 42 million ringgit. He is roughly halfway through a six-year sentence for that one, which could last until around 2028 or 2029. Even with this latest guilty verdict, his legal team can still drag the process on by appealing to higher courts, meaning this whole saga is far from finished.
