Update | US maps Malaysia’s 1MDB fraud trail from Kuala Lumpur to Hollywood
Money funded Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, Monet paintings and gambling sprees in Las Vegas
More than US$3.5 billion travelled a trail of fraud from Malaysia through a web of shell companies, fueling a spending binge on Monet paintings and luxury real estate in the US and Britain, with at least $700 million flowing back into accounts controlled by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Along the way, some of the money was handled by international banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Standard Chartered Plc and Deutsche Bank AG.
Some of the money funded a Hollywood blockbuster, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The stepson of Malaysia’s prime minister and associates sent more than $13 million to a Las Vegas casino for three days of gambling for a group that included an unidentified film actor whose description matches that of the film’s star, Leonardo DiCaprio.
This is all laid out in a dozen filings Wednesday by US prosecutors who detailed an alleged scheme of international money laundering and misappropriation from 2009 to 2015.
The Justice Department is seeking to seize more than $1 billion worth of assets it says went through US banks from Malaysian development fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, known as 1MDB, and was ultimately used to illegally acquire assets.