TEHRAN, September 20 - Malaysian prosecutors charged former Prime Minister Najib Razak with 21 counts of money laundering and four counts of abuse of power on Thursday over hundreds of millions of dollars received in his personal bank account.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Mala
ysian prosecutors charged former Prime Minister Najib Razak with 21 counts of money laundering and four counts of abuse of power on Thursday over hundreds of millions of dollars received in his personal bank account.
The charges bring the total number against Najib to 32 as investigators ramp up a probe into how billions went missing from scandal-plagued 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) - a state fund that he founded and chaired.
Charges have piled up on Najib since he unexpectedly lost a general election in May to Mahathir Mohamad, who reopened the 1MDB investigation.
Prosecutors said Najib used his position as prime minister, finance minister and chairman of 1MDB to obtain funds totaling about 2.3 billion ringgit ($556.23 million) between 2011 and 2014.
Najib has faced money laundering allegations since the Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that $681 million was transferred to a personal bank account of the then-prime minister.
A year later, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the transfer and said the funds originated from 1MDB. It also said a total of $4.5 billion was stolen from the Malaysian fund.
Source:Reuters
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