Swiss prosecutors said Tuesday they have indicted two managers of a Saudi oil exploration company as part of a yearslong international investigation of a scandal linked to a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that the FBI once described as the “biggest kleptocracy case” ever.
The office of Switzerland's attorney general said the two PetroSaudi managers were accused of trying to enrich themselves and others by misappropriating at least $1.8 billion transferred to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund. Swiss officials did not name the pair, citing privacy reasons.
The indictments are the first of their kind in Switzerland, where some financial institutions were ensnared in the far-reaching scandal involving the state-owned investment fund known as 1MDB.
Malaysian investigators allege that more than $4.5 billion was stolen from the fund established in 2009 and laundered by associates of former Prime Minister Najib Razak through layers of bank accounts in the United States and other countries.
Some of the looted money allegedly paid for jewelry, hotels, art and a luxury yacht, and helped finance Hollywood films such as “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
More than $700 million landed in Najib’s bank accounts. He was sent to prison in Maylasia in August to serve a 12-year sentence for graft.
Swiss prosecutors said the PetroSaudi managers were indicted on charges of commercial fraud, aggravated criminal mismanagement and aggravated money laundering. The charges were based on events that took place from 2009 until at least 2015, the prosecutors said.
They allege the accused established a sham joint venture — purported to be between the Saudi and Malaysian governments — that would allow them to funnel $700 million to a Swiss company bank account controlled by Low Taek Jho, a fugitive financier who is accused of masterminding the 1MDB scheme. Low then allegedly transferred $85 million to the Saudi company managers.
Prosecutors also accused the two of convincing 1MDB’s board to transfer a further $830 million as part of a purported loan. The funds were then misappropriated, the Swiss investigators said.
As part of efforts to depict a joint venture of 1MDB and PetroSaudi as a “government-to-government transaction,” Low allegedly “manipulated” a 2009 meeting that involved Najib and Saudi Prince Turki Bin Abdullah Bin Abulaziz Al Saud on a yacht ‘Alfa Nero’ near the French Riviera resort town of Cannes, the Swiss attorney general's office said.
