Reported: 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) 1MDB (Company)
Compiled by ScamMarketCap from public recordsHappened Jul 2, 2015Malaysia
1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was a state fund that Najib Razak set up shortly after becoming Malaysia's prime minister in 2009. The US Justice Department says senior 1MDB officials, their associates and Jho Low misappropriated more than $4.5 billion from it between 2009 and 2015, spending it on luxury homes, a superyacht and fine art and investing in the company that produced "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Najib was convicted in a related case in 2020 and began a 12-year sentence in 2022, later halved. In December 2025 Malaysia's High Court convicted him on 25 counts of abuse of power and money laundering over more than $700 million paid into his bank accounts from 1MDB, adding 15 years in prison and a fine of about $2.8 billion. He denies wrongdoing and has appealed. A conditional pardon granted in September 2026 would let him serve the rest of his first sentence at home once he pays a 50 million ringgit fine; in October he was still in prison. Jho Low, who faces US charges, remains at large.
In 2020 Goldman Sachs, which had underwritten $6.5 billion of 1MDB bonds, admitted to a bribery conspiracy and agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion to authorities in several countries, and its Malaysian unit pleaded guilty. By June 2024 the Justice Department had returned about $1.4 billion in recovered funds to Malaysia.
This case file is compiled from public records and established reporting. Status as of the last update, Nov 1, 2026.
Case files summarize court records, regulator actions and established reporting.
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