THE US Department of Justice (DoJ) has repatriated to Malaysia US$452 million (RM1.9 billion) of stolen 1Malaysia Development Bhd funds.

The DOJ announced this in a statement yesterday.

The funds were laundered via major financial institutions including in the US, Switzerland, Singapore and Luxembourg, the DOJ said.

This brings the sum of 1MDB money returned to Malaysia to more than US$1.2 billion.

The DOJ has filed civil forfeiture suits to recover a total of US$4.5 billion of 1MDB funds which it said was misappropriated by high-level officials and associates of the state investment firm.

Following the filings at US courts in California and the district of Columbia, more than US$1.7 billion in stolen assets have been seized, the largest recovery to date under the DOJ’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, it said.

“The Department continues to litigate actions against additional assets allegedly linked to this scheme,” said the DOJ.

Penang-born businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, who was named by the  DOJ as a party to the defrauding of 1MDB funds, was slapped with a new charge in June over lobbying the US government in 2017 to drop investigations into the Malaysian fund and to have a Chinese dissident sent back to China. – August 6, 2021.