Overview
- Malaysia’s High Court found the former prime minister guilty on December 26 in a 1MDB-related case and imposed a 15-year prison sentence.
- Prosecutors charged four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering tied to roughly 2.28 billion ringgit allegedly routed into his personal accounts.
- Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah said guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt and rejected the defense claim that the funds were Middle Eastern donations.
- The verdict adds to a separate sentence Najib is already serving from an earlier 1MDB conviction, which was halved in a partial pardon in January 2024 after his 2022 imprisonment.
- Low Taek Jho, described by investigators as the scheme’s mastermind, remains a fugitive as the scandal continues to reverberate through Malaysian politics and across international probes in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore.