FORMER TOP 1MDB EXEC, SENIOR LAWYER AMONG SIX TARGETED IN SWISS PROBE

Duo sought for bribery, misconduct, money laundering and criminal mismanagement

AFORMER top executive with 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and a senior lawyer with the strategic development company who worked with Goldman Sachs Group Inc are among six people targeted in a Swiss criminal probe into the multibillion-dollar scandal, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sources said the executive was suspected of authorising an illicit US$700 million (RM2.8 billion) transfer. The pair is being investigated for bribery, misconduct in public office, money laundering and criminal mismanagement.

T and L, as they can only be identified under Swiss law, were referred to as “two former officials at 1MDB” in a July 10 press release, issued after Swiss Attorney-General Michael Lauber visited his Malaysian counterpart in Putrajaya.

After years of stalled investigations into how up to US$4.5 billion was diverted from a fund created to develop the Malaysian economy and used to buy a yacht, paintings and luxury properties, the probes are making progress. Prosecutors in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore have been encouraged by the surprise defeat of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in May. His successor, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, named a new attorneygeneral, Tommy Thomas, who charged Najib on July 4 with corruption for his role in the affair.

Neither L and T were listed in public phone records and attempts to locate any representatives for them were unsuccessful.

Goldman has been under scrutiny for the role it played in raising US$6.5 billion in debt for 1MDB with the help of L, who was described as a “main point of contact” with the bank in a US criminal complaint in 2016.

L was not accused of any wrongdoing by US prosecutors in the 2016 complaint, but did receive a US$5 million payment for her work that was paid through shell companies into her Swiss bank account. L also sent a sixfigure sum to Goldman Sachs’s Tim Leissner for an investment they were making in a start-up.

Leissner was the lead banker on the 1MDB bond sales and left after he was put on administrative leave in early 2016.

Lauber pledged last month to step up his investigation after the new Malaysian government reopened a graft probe. He flew to Malaysia for a July 10 meeting with Thomas, and said in an interview afterward that 1MDB had been exploited as a “Ponzi scheme”.

Switzerland is investigating the affair because a clutch of Swiss banks and Swiss units of foreign banks were used to wire diverted money, including JPMorgan, Falcon Private Bank and BSI SA.

T had worked with 1MDB until 2011, when it was still known as Terengganu Investment Authority. Malaysian investigators acting on behalf of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission have issued arrest warrants for L and T.

Lauber confirmed that Swiss authorities have opened criminal investigations into four other people the attorney-general did not name — two executives at PetroSaudi, an oil-exploration company that partnered with 1MDB; and two former officials from the United Arab Emirates.