The
United States government moved Wednesday to seize more than $1 billion
in assets purchased with money that it believes was stolen from a
Malaysian sovereign wealth fund by people close to the country’s embattled prime minister.
Hidden
in the United States in real estate, art and other luxury goods, the
money was embezzled from the fund and moved around the world using
secretive shell companies that masked its trail, the Justice Department
said.
The
$1 billion that prosecutors say was laundered in the United States is
but a portion of the billions that international investigators suspect
was siphoned off by high-level officials at the fund and their
associates. The fund — called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB — is
overseen by the prime minister, Najib Razak, and has become a focus of
rising popular discontent with Mr. Najib’s government amid several
investigations at home and abroad.
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