(Al Jazeera Media Network) The Swiss Federal Criminal Court has convicted two executives from an oil exploration company for embezzling more than $1.8 billion from Malaysia’s state investment fund 1MDB.
The verdict on Wednesday was the latest episode in the 1MDB scandal, a complex tale of international corruption that has engulfed a slew of financial institutions and individuals across the globe since allegations of wrongdoing surfaced in 2015.
Prosecutors alleged that Swiss-British national Patrick Mahony and Swiss-Saudi Tarek Obaid had helped set up a joint venture with 1MDB by creating the impression that their company, PetroSaudi, was backed by Saudi Arabia’s government.
This was not the case, but the accused persuaded 1MDB’s board to sign up to the scheme in 2009 before going on to defraud the fund, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment, the two executives took some $1.8 billion from the fund, with Obaid getting at least $805 million and Mahony at least $37 million.
Obaid was sentenced to seven years in prison while Mahony got six years. The court ordered that their assets, including property in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and funds totalling more than $240 million in multiple bank accounts, be confiscated and returned to 1MDB.
Lawyers for the two men, who had denied wrongdoing, could not immediately be reached for comment by the Reuters news agency.
Prosecutors said the two men created the fraudulent scheme with fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low, an adviser to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is in prison for his role in the multibillion-dollar scandal.
