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In New Complaint, US Prosecutors Disclose How 1MDB Funds Were Laundered

By Valentina Pasquali

The latest move by U.S. officials to confiscate hundreds of millions of dollars in assets believed tied to the theft of a now-estimated $4.5 billion from a Malaysian state fund further outlines how the money was first siphoned, then routed through global banks.

On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a civil complaint seeking to forfeit $540 million in high-end real estate, vehicles, jewelry and artwork prosecutors claimed was purchased for the personal benefit of Malaysian officials and their associates with funds embezzled from 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, from 2009 to 2015.

The goods were acquired through a “web of opaque transactions” involving fraudulent shell companies with “dummy bank accounts” in Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and the United States, Kendall Day, the acting deputy assistant attorney general for the department’s criminal division, told reporters during a press call.

Civil complaints brought last year detailed the first three phases of the fraud.

The perpetrators, including Malaysian financier and 1MDB adviser Low Taek Jho, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s stepson, Aziz, allegedly diverted $3.5 billion from 1MDB’s investments in international joint ventures and proceeds from three bond offerings to domestic and offshore bank accounts under their control.

Portions of the money, of which roughly $1 billion flowed through U.S. financial institutions, were ultimately used to finance the co-conspirators’ “lavish lifestyles,” as well as the production of the 2013 Hollywood blockbuster, The Wolf of Wall Street, the Justice Department said last year.

The complaint disclosed Thursday describes an alleged fourth phase to the embezzlement and laundering scheme, which prosecutors now believe may have exceeded $4 billion.

In 2014, 1MDB officials obtained $1.2 billion in loans from a syndicate of global financial institutions, led by Deutsche Bank in Singapore.

The officials claimed the loans were needed to buy back options previously sold to a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s own sovereign fund, International Petroleum Investment Company, or IPIC, when it provided guarantees for 1MDB’s capital raise in 2012, according to the latest complaint.

“1MDB officials secured approval of these two loans through material misrepresentations and omissions to Deutsche Bank, including that the proceeds of the loans would be paid to a legitimate affiliate of IPIC,” federal prosecutors said.

Most of the proceeds were instead allegedly routed to corporate accounts for two offshore entities named in a manner designed to convey a “false impression” of an affiliation with IPIC: Aabar-BVI, and a similarly-named legal entity established in the Seychelles.

The first loan tranche of $250 million was diverted through a series of transfers involving corporate accounts opened by several shell companies at BSI Bank and Falcon Bank in Switzerland, and DBS Bank in Singapore, with the funds ultimately coming to rest in Low’s personal account with BSI in Singapore.

Low then used most of the funds to buy a $261 million, 300-foot yacht, Equanimity, and moved some of them to accounts held by accomplices at AmBank in Malaysia and Falcon Bank in Switzerland.

In July 2014, a transfer of nearly $1 million was made to a Falcon Bank account ultimately controlled by “Jasmine” Loo Ai Swan, who served as 1MDB’s general counsel and executive director of group strategy in 2012 and 2013.

According to U.S. prosecutors, she worked closely with Goldman Sachs in preparing the three bond offerings the U.S. investment bank underwrote for 1MDB at the time. The funds were ultimately cleared through a correspondent account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York.

Corrupt 1MDB officials later that year obtained a second $975 million bridge loan to conclude the options buy-back from Aabar.

They secured the loan by fraudulently pledging the account of 1MDB’s subsidiary, Brazen Sky, as collateral to Deutsche Bank’s affiliate in Hong Kong.

The account allegedly held $2.3 billion of assets tied to a 2009 joint venture between 1MDB and private oil services firm PetroSaudi to develop energy concession rights in Turkmenistan and Argentina.

Deutsche Bank disbursed nearly $700 million to an account held at UBS in Singapore for the fraudulent, Seychelles-registered Aaabar via wire transfers processed through a UBS AG correspondent account in Stamford, Connecticut.

The co-conspirators spent some of the funds to buy the rights to movies Dumb and Dumber To and Daddy’s Home, paintings by Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko, as well as condominiums, offices and hotels in the United States and United Kingdom.

Shares were also purchased in multiple U.S. companies, including Palantir, a Silicon Valley-headquartered firm that provides data-analytics capabilities to a host of U.S. law enforcement, administrative and intelligence agencies, including the FBI and IRS.

The conspirators then circulated the rest of the money in and out of the accounts opened for Aaabar-Seychelles, Brazen Sky and other shell companies as part of an “elaborate, Ponzi-like scheme” to make it appear that 1MDB’s earlier joint venture with PetroSaudi had been profitable.

In fact, Low and his associates had already rerouted $1 billion from that investment to an RBS Coutts account in the name of Gold Star Limited during an earlier phase of their fraud, according to Sandra Brown, acting U.S. attorney for the central district of California.

“None of the investments made with the funds diverted from the Malaysian government’s 1MDB fund were held in the name of, or for the benefit of, 1MDB or any other agencies of the Malaysia government,” Brown said during the press call.

All told, dozens of financial institutions across the world handled the misappropriated funds, federal prosecutors said in the civil complaints, including Riyad Bank of Saudi Arabia, Caledonia Bank of the Cayman Islands, Standard Chartered of Singapore, Bank Privee Edmond de Rothschild of Switzerland, as well as U.S.-based City National Bank, Bank of Oklahoma, Citibank, Bank of America and M&T Bank.

BSI Bank and Falcon Bank had their licenses revoked last year by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and have been or continue to be the subject of regulatory enforcement actions and criminal prosecutions in Switzerland for blatantly violating anti-money laundering regulations.

Day, the acting assistant U.S. attorney general, told reporters Thursday that the Justice Department’s investigation of the 1MDB embezzlement scheme is ongoing, but noted that the new transactional details that came to light in the latest complaint do not necessarily imply liability for the financial institutions named.

Topics : Anti-money laundering , Counterterrorist Financing
Source: U.S.: Department of Justice
Document Date: June 15, 2017