Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has been found guilty in his second major trial involving the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal.
The ruling was handed down by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Friday, where Najib, 72, was found guilty on four counts of abuse of power regarding the illegal transfer of about 2.2 billion Malaysian ringgit ($539m) from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
Najib faces 21 additional counts of money laundering, and the ruling was still under way at the court on Friday. Each charge carries between 15 and 20 years imprisonment.
Prosecutors accused Najib of abusing his position as prime minister, finance minister and 1MDB advisory board chairman by moving large amounts of money from the sovereign wealth fund to his personal accounts more than a decade ago.
The scandal first exploded in Malaysia in 2015, and Najib was later found guilty and sentenced in 2020 to 12 years in prison for misappropriating about $9.9m in 1MDB funds. His sentence was later commuted to six years.
This latest trial, Najib’s second, was widely considered the most significant to date because it directly involved 1MDB entities and much larger sums of money.
The marathon legal proceedings have spanned seven years and saw lawyers call 76 witnesses to the stand, including Najib himself.
