SINGAPORE prosecutors called 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) a “victim” of Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, who used money traceable to the state investor for his own benefit, in court filings reported by Bloomberg today.

About US$1 billion (RM4.3 billion) that 1MDB purported to invest in a joint venture with PetroSaudi International Ltd was diverted to a bank account beneficially owned by Low, the prosecutors said in the court filings made public today.

The prosecutors defined the Malaysian financier as the central figure in probes linked to 1MDB.

“The main victim in this case is 1MDB,” prosecutor Nathaniel Khng said in a Singapore state court. 

US prosecutors investigating kleptocracy and money laundering linked to 1MDB have called Jho Low, as he is popularly known, the “mastermind” in a plan to siphon billions from the state fund.

Among the assets bought with money allegedly stolen from 1MDB that US investigators wish to seize via a series of civil assets forfeiture actions is a multi-million dollar yacht belonging to Low.

Low, who is reported to be avoiding the public eye, had said that the US Department of Justice’s case was “completely without foundation”.

“We look forward to the court being presented with the actual facts which demonstrate that the DoJ’s case is completely without foundation,” he said through a representative, in response to the DoJ’s latest action to recover US$540 million in assets.

Yeo Jiawei, a former banker who was sentenced serving the longest jail term in Singapore’s 1MDB investigations, and who has admitted to charges of money laundering, is reported to have called Low “boss.”

In court proceedings today, Yeo received a 54-month jail sentence for money laundering and cheating offences linked to 1MDB. The jail term is to run concurrently with the 30-month jail term he received in December on charges of trying to tamper with witnesses in the probe.

Also In Singapore, senior banker Yak Yew Chee was last year sentenced to 18 weeks in prison and fined for forging documents and failing to disclose suspicious transactions related to Low.

Bloomberg did not receive a reply to requests to Low for comment.

Singapore’s investigations into 1MDB-related activities has so far seen five people convicted, four of whom have been sentenced to jail. There are investigation being conducted worldwide into misapproriation and laundering of 1MDB funds; so far the city-state is the only country to have pressed criminal charges. – July 12, 2017.