Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim takes a hard line against Goldman Sachs for being ‘complicit’ in 1MDB corruption scandal
- Goldman Sachs said in a securities filing last Friday that it may face penalties for its 1MDB dealings, and was fully cooperating with authorities
- The US Department of Justice has said the multinational money laundering that took place at 1MDB involved US$4.5 billion being misappropriated
Top Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim on Tuesday slammed Goldman Sachs for being “complicit” in the country’s 1MDB financial scandal that prosecutors say involved billions being looted from the national coffers.
Anwar’s comments, which also took aim at Western governments, put on display the government’s new hard line and aggressive approach towards probing the saga for which the former prime minister Najib Razak is facing dozens of criminal charges.
“It is a failure of governance. You allow corrupt leaders to go there and squander as much as possible. Elites were muted and complicit to the crime … international financial institutions, Goldman Sachs of course [were] named,” Anwar, heir apparent to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. “So many others, complicit to a crime when you know for a fact that billions have been squandered from the public purse.”
While the government of Mahathir, victorious in the May 9 election, began intensive investigations into the scandal soon after the probe, it has only now begun to openly target financial institutions for purportedly failing to take action or for turning a blind eye to the widespread money laundering.
In his budget speech last week, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng surprised observers by revealing it would not be paying some US$4.32 billion worth of 1MDB-linked debt to a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund, declaring instead that the government would work to claw back funds already disbursed.