Top court upholds jail for convicts in 1MDB scandal

Kuwait: The court of cassation, the top court in Kuwait, on Thursday upheld a 10 year-jail term on a sheikh and his Kuwaiti partner for taking part in the country’s largest ever money laundering case in the so-called Malaysian Fund.

The court, whose rulings are final, also confirmed a 10-year jail sentence against two foreign accomplices, a French businessman of Syrian descent and a Malaysian businessman and financier who is the main defendant in the scandal involving 1Malaysian Development BHD (1MDB), the Southeast Asian country’s sovereign wealth fund. The two were sentenced in absentia.

The court also jailed a Kuwaiti lawyer for seven years in connection with the case. The court ordered the convicts to return $1 billion and fined them KD 145 million. The men were first convicted by the criminal court and the ruling was upheld by the court of appeals before taking the case to the court of cassation.

The men were convicted of laundering $1 billion sent by the Malaysian convict, using a Kuwaiti bank account of the senior royal, and then transferring the money to Swiss bank accounts. Under the former prime minister of Malaysia Najib Razak, the country’s sovereign fund was systematically embezzled for a total amount of $4.5 billion, with the convicted Malaysian businessman Jho Low playing an instrumental role in the fraud.

The money was sent to several countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, China and others. The case attracted huge attention in Kuwait.