Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund 1MDB and a former unit had filed 22 lawsuits seeking to recover more than $23bn in assets from entities and individuals who have allegedly stolen them, Malaysia’s finance ministry said on Monday.
Finance Minister Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the government is now pursuing so many “other wrongdoers” who have caused losses to 1MDB.
Last month, 1MDB has filed six suits against nine entities including two foreign financial institutions and 25 people for various violations including breach of trust, fraud and negligence, while SRC filed 22 lawsuits against 15 individuals and eight entities over for similar wrongdoings, Aljazeera reported.
According to Reuters, Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund is suing also subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Coutts & Co to recover billions in alleged losses from the corruption scandal.
1MDB is claiming $1.11bn (£785bn) from Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, $800m from JP Morgan (Switzerland) Ltd and $1.03bn from a Swiss-based Coutts unit, and interest payments from all of them, according to the lawsuit.
Those entities and people were “unjustly enriched by wrongfully receiving monies from 1MDB or SRC”, the ministry said in a statement.
“The government will not rest until all those involved are made fully accountable for the wrongdoings caused to the country through their involvement” in 1MDB and SRC, Zafrul said in a statement.
Malaysia has so far received a 10.5 billion ringgit ($2.5bn) settlement from Goldman Sachs last August.
The ministry said the government will also receive 2.83 billion ringgit ($689m) from the AmBank Group and 336 million ringgit ($80m) from Deloitte.
The 1MDB scandal sparked investigations in the United States and several other countries.
US investigators alleged that over $4.5bn was stolen from 1MDB by some Malaysian officials including the Former Prime Minister Najib Razak and his associates.
Najib Razak, who set up the 1MDB fund in 2009, was found guilty last year and sentenced to 12 years in jail, but he is appealing the sentence.
