Banking sector financial crime news
All that glitters is not Gold(man)
OPINION: On 28 July 2020, Najib Razak the ex-Malaysian Prime Minister was convicted of all seven charges in the multi-billion dollar 1MDB scandal and received a 12-year jail sentence and a hefty £39 million fine. The US Justice Department believes that more than £3.5 billion was stolen from the 1MDB fund, considerably more than the £540 million that landed in Najib’s bank accounts.
A week earlier than Najib’s conviction, the US Justice Department reached a £3.1 billion Goldman Sachs for its role in underwriting and arranging bond sales for the wealth fund totalling $6.5 billion. The settlement was in return for Malaysia dropping criminal charges against the investment bank.
The Malaysian Finance Ministry is reported to have returned more than $4.5 billion to the people of Malaysia. The country got their money back, the greedy Prime Minister with his fingers in the till got jailed and the bankers escaped any chance of criminal convictions – justice of sorts.
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