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Quick answers
What was 1MDB?
1Malaysia Development Berhad was a Malaysian state-owned development fund established in 2009. U.S. and Malaysian proceedings later described large diversions from the fund and related units, including SRC International.
When did the scandal become public?
Sarawak Report and the Wall Street Journal published major document-based stories in 2015. The U.S. DOJ filed civil forfeiture complaints in 2016. Those years are the public break, not the start of the underlying transfers.
What was Najib Razak convicted of?
On 28 July 2020 the High Court in Kuala Lumpur convicted him on seven SRC International counts, including abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering. The sentence was twelve years and a fine of RM210 million. The Federal Court affirmed on 23 August 2022.
Did the United States convict Najib?
No. The U.S. case most often cited is civil forfeiture of alleged proceeds, plus criminal cases against bankers (Leissner plea; Ng conviction). Najib's recorded criminal conviction in this atlas is the Malaysian SRC judgment.
What did Goldman Sachs pay?
In 2020 Goldman announced resolutions with the United States and other governments totaling about $2.9 billion, plus arrangements to return value related to 1MDB. Tim Leissner had pleaded guilty in 2018.
Who is Jho Low?
Low Taek Jho, a Malaysian financier, is described in DOJ complaints as a central intermediary. He was not in custody in the mid-2020s public record and is treated as a fugitive in those papers.
1MDB's legal impact is split: a Malaysian corruption conviction and a set of U.S. civil and FCPA outcomes that other funds still get compared to.
Culturally it is the rare development-fund case that general English-language readers met through a Scorsese movie's financing footnotes.
Law & institutions
- Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative — The 1MDB complaints are a leading modern example of U.S. civil forfeiture aimed at foreign official corruption proceeds.
- FCPA enforcement against a bulge-bracket bank — The 2020 Goldman package is cited in later bond-and-sovereign-client compliance training.
- Malaysian SRC jurisprudence — The 2020 judgment and 2022 affirmation are the domestic leading case on a prime minister's use of a related fund unit.
- Cross-border asset sharing — Returns of forfeited value to Malaysia are a practical model in later recovery memoranda, with the usual caveats about dates and remaining claims.
Culture
- The Wolf of Wall Street footnote — English-language features cannot leave the 2013 film out. The encyclopedia treats it as a forfeiture exhibit, not as the crime itself.
- Yacht and jewelry imagery — Luxury-asset lists from the complaints became the visual language of the case, sometimes crowding out the SRC legal elements.
- Sarawak Report as a type — A small investigative site sitting beside the Journal is now a stock example in press-freedom lectures about 2015 Malaysia.
- Development-fund skepticism — Later sovereign-wealth and strategic-fund stories in the FT and Journal are still compared, fairly or not, to 1MDB.
Money & scale
- ~$4.5 billion diverted (DOJ statements) — Department figures for funds taken from 1MDB, dated to the complaint period. Not every dollar was in the SRC trial.
- ~$2.9 billion (Goldman, 2020) — Corporate resolutions with the U.S. and other governments, plus value-return terms -- a bank number, not the theft total.
- RM210 million fine (SRC, 2020) — The Malaysian fine attached to Najib's twelve-year term. A different currency and a different legal theory from the DOJ billion figures.
The impact is a dual syllabus: kleptocracy forfeiture in Washington and a prime minister's conviction in Kuala Lumpur.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.