Malaysia’s Najib faces life in jail, but is Jho Low the real 1MDB mastermind?

As prosecutors slap a further 25 charges on the former prime minister, a new book claims the true orchestrator of the multibillion-dollar scandal was a fugitive businessman

Reading Time:3 minutes

Najib Razak has pleaded not guilty. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:11pm, 20 Sep 2018Updated: 10:27pm, 20 Sep 2018

Malaysian prosecutors on Thursday slapped an additional 25 charges on the former prime minister Najib Razak over his alleged links to the multibillion-dollar scandal at state investment fund 1MDB, leaving the 64-year-old facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind prison walls.

The new charges piled pressure on the former leader as he reeled from a tumultuous fortnight in which unrelated money-laundering charges were laid against his lawyer Shafee Abdullah and key allies left his United Malays National Organisation (Umno) political party, which was the key player in the Barisan Nasional coalition that had run Malaysia for 60 years.

And things for Najib could be about to get worse – according to local media reports, attorney general Tommy Thomas is preparing charges against one of his family members, widely believed to be his wife Rosmah Mansor.

Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak. Photo: AP

Of the 25 new charges, four are for corruption, nine are for money laundering, seven for transferring illicitly obtained funds, and five for the use of ill-gotten gains. Najib pleaded not guilty.

The new charges are linked directly to the 1MDB scandal. Investigators have claimed that some US$700 million of 1MDB funds were wired into Najib’s bank accounts. 1MDB was 42 billion ringgit (US$10 billion) in debt at the time of the scandal.