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THE High Court in Putrajaya has delivered another decisive judgment in the long-running 1MDB saga, finding former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak guilty of abuse of power and money laundering in a case involving billions of ringgit misappropriated from the state investment fund.
The ruling, handed down on Friday, marks the most significant verdict yet in the multibillion-dollar scandal that brought down Najib’s government in 2018 and triggered investigations across the globe.
Najib was convicted on 21 counts of money laundering and four counts of abuse of power linked to RM2.3 billion diverted from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
Najib, who served as prime minister from 2009 to 2018, co-founded 1MDB in 2009 and chaired its advisory board until 2016. The fund was established with the stated aim of promoting economic development, but instead became the vehicle for one of the largest corruption scandals in modern history.
Between 2009 and 2013, 1MDB raised billions of dollars through bond issuances intended for investment projects and joint ventures. Investigators later concluded that vast sums were siphoned off through a complex network of offshore accounts and shell companies.
The United States Department of Justice, describing its probe as the largest kleptocracy investigation it had ever undertaken, said US$4.5 billion was diverted from the fund. Malaysian authorities say billions more remain unaccounted for.
According to US lawsuits, the stolen money was used to finance an extravagant lifestyle, including the purchase of a private jet, a superyacht, luxury real estate, hotels and jewellery. Funds were also used to finance the 2013 Hollywood film “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
Central to the scheme was Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low. He has been charged in Malaysia and the United States and is accused of orchestrating the fraud, but remains a fugitive. He denies wrongdoing. Malaysian authorities say he is in China, a claim Beijing has denied.
Although Najib was not named directly in US court filings, he was referred to as “Malaysian Official 1”, according to Malaysian and US sources. US lawsuits alleged that this individual received US$681 million shortly before Malaysia’s 2013 general election.
Public outrage over the revelations played a key role in Najib’s defeat five years later.
In the latest case, Malaysian prosecutors said Najib illegally received more than US$1 billion traceable to 1MDB, with some of the money allegedly used to buy jewellery. Najib was first charged over these offences in 2019.
The former leader is already in prison. In July 2020, he was sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined 210 million ringgit after being convicted of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering involving about US$10 million from SRC International, a former 1MDB subsidiary. That verdict was upheld on appeal in 2021, and Najib began serving his sentence in August 2022, becoming Malaysia’s first former prime minister to be jailed.
In 2024, Malaysia’s Pardons Board halved his prison term to six years and reduced his fine.
Najib has faced a series of other trials linked to 1MDB with mixed outcomes. In March 2023, the High Court acquitted him and former 1MDB chief executive Arul Kanda of charges related to the alleged tampering of the fund’s audit report.
In another case, Najib and former treasury secretary-general Irwan Serigar Abdullah were charged with misappropriating billions of ringgit in government funds intended for payments to Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company.
In November 2024, the High Court granted both men a Discharge Not Amounting to Acquittal after prosecutors failed to provide crucial documents, although the judge noted they could be charged again.
Investigations into 1MDB have spanned at least six countries, including the United States, Singapore and Switzerland, and have ensnared banks, regulators and senior officials worldwide.
In 2020, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay US$3.9 billion to settle investigations into its role in underwriting US$6.5 billion in bonds for 1MDB.
When Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim became prime minister in 2022 and sought to renegotiate the settlement, Goldman Sachs sued the Malaysian government.
Two former Goldman bankers, Roger Ng and Tim Leissner, were later convicted in the United States for bribery and money laundering linked to the scheme.
As of September 2025, the Malaysian government said it had recovered 31.2 billion ringgit connected to the scandal.
Najib’s lawyers have said he will appeal against the latest conviction and have asked the court to allow any new sentence to run concurrently with his existing prison term. Sentencing has yet to be decided.
The verdict is widely seen as a critical test of Malaysia’s justice system and its willingness to hold powerful figures to account. For many Malaysians, the case symbolises years of frustration over corruption and abuse of power at the highest levels of government.
The international ramifications remain significant. US authorities once described 1MDB as “kleptocracy at its worst”, and the scandal reshaped global compliance standards while resulting in record penalties for financial institutions.
Although Najib no longer holds office, the consequences of his conviction continue to reverberate through Malaysian politics. The case reinforces the legacy of the 2018 election that ended decades of one-coalition rule and remains central to debates about governance, reform and the rule of law. - December 27, 2025