Name: Ex-Malaysia PM Najib Razak given 15-year jail term over state funds scandal | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-12-26T16:59:15.000Z
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The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, has been found guilty of four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering.

The charges stem from the multi billion dollar corruption scandal at the State Fund 1mdb.

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The court dismissed his plea that the charges against him were a politically motivated witch hunt.

Mr. Najib was already in jail after being convicted on other charges related to the development fund.

Our correspondent Tessa Wong told us more about the background to the case.

So one MDB was a sovereign wealth fund for Malaysia.

It was touted as a way to lift the country or some parts of the country out of poverty and to advance development in Malaysia.

But in the end it became mired in a huge scandal, an international scandal I might add, you know, that saw millions of Malaysian Ringgit siphoned out of the fund.

And in a financier that was behind it is still on the run.

Now, Najib Razak, who was the Prime Minister at the time and who was one of the key architects of this scheme, he has denied that he was involved in any form of corruption.

But he has been found guilty today as he was back in 2020.

This is actually the second trial to involve him and the fund and this time it was for a far larger amount, about 2 billion ringgit.

Basically the court found that he was guilty of using his power as Prime Minister to take money out of the fund via subsidiary company and put it into his personal account and then he later transferred the money back into the subsidiary and that was seen as basically was seen as money laundering.

As you say, hugely damaging to Malaysia's reputation.

Do we know where the money went and has there been any attempt to recover it?

The money, as I've explained, was transferred back into the fund.

But the point was that, you know, he was found guilty of misappropriating these funds to which he has denied.

He has consistently said that he had thought at that time that it was a gift from a Saudi royal.

But this is an argument that was rejected by the courts and today they found him guilty.

Now, it's worth remembering that he's already serving prison time.

He is actually in jail for about 12 years, sentence that has been halved.

But with this verdict today, we can probably expect that his time in jail will be extended for far longer.

He's saying that he only he didn't really know about this, that this is a political witch hunt.

What do we know about this financier and his whereabouts?

His name is Joe Low and he has been supposedly on the run for many years.

He has been supposedly in China and other parts of the world.

Malaysian authorities have spent years trying to track him down and also to try to extradite him back to Malaysia to face charges.

But as of today, we are still quite unclear about where he is located.