The US Department of Justice announced on April 14, 2020, that it had returned approximately $300 million in additional funds to Malaysia that had been misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and laundered through financial institutions in the US and around the world as part of an international money laundering and bribery scheme. To date, the US has recovered or assisted in the recovery of more than $1 billion in assets, representing the largest civil forfeiture ever conducted by the DOJ, and the largest recovery by the DOJ’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.
1MDB was a Malaysian investment development fund created by the Malaysian government to promote the economic development of the country. The funds were returned as the result of judgments that were entered by the US District Court for the Central District of California in 2019 forfeiting assets acquired by Low Taek Jho and others accused of misappropriating and laundering over $4.5 billion of 1MDB funds between 2009 and 2015.