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FILE – On Thursday, May 24, 2018, photo of the case file, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak arrives at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Mr Najib was arrested Tuesday by anti-corruption investigators and will be accused of his alleged role in the multi-billion-dollar looting of a public investment fund. (Vincent Thian, File / Associated Press)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Just two months ago, Najib Razak was a major figure in Malaysian politics and literally beyond the law. This mantle of privilege and impunity was ripped off Tuesday when anti-corruption police arrested him at his posh home in Kuala Lumpur.
Since its dramatic defeat in the May 9th legislative elections, the government has quickly reopened investigations into billions of dollars in looting. The state investment fund of 1MDB that Najib created when he took power in 2009. The fund, now deceased, has accumulated billions of debts and is making money. 39; subject of investigation in the United States and several other countries for embezzlement and money laundering. a series of humiliations since his electoral loss, the patrician and luxurious Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, were banned from leaving the country; loads of suitcases full of money, jewelery and hundreds of expensive designer bags of a staggering value of 1.1 billion ringgit ($ 272 million) were seized at their homes and in their homes. Other properties; Anti-corruption police questioned Najib for hours last month over the 1MDB scandal.
Najib will be indicted in court on Wednesday, making him one of the few Southeast Asian leaders to be prosecuted. The government said his arrest was linked to the suspicious transfer of $ 10.6 billion from SRC International, a unit of 1MDB, to his bank accounts, but gave no details about the charges against him.
Najib denies He accused the government of a "political revenge" against his family.
Najib, 64, educated in Britain, was born in the Malaysian political elite. His father was the country's second prime minister and his uncle was the third.
He entered politics in 1976 after the death of his father, becoming the youngest Malaysian legislator at age 22 and the youngest deputy minister two years later. He became prime minister in 2009, replacing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who was blamed for the smaller majority of the National Front party in elections the previous year.
Finance Minister and Prime Minister Najib guided Muslim-majority Malaysia through the global financial crisis. 2009, abolished the draconian security laws of the colonial era and reached out to ethnic minorities with a campaign "1Malaysia". Former President Barack Obama hailed him as a "reformer with a lot to do".
Despite this, the National Front again lost support in 2013, losing for the first time the popular vote in the opposition, but winning 133 of 222 parliamentary seats. Najib blamed the Chinese ethnic minority in Malaysia for abandoning its coalition and returning to reforms.
He imposed new repressive security measures and turned more and more to Islamists and ethnic chauvinism to consolidate his Malay support base. The opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy for the second time in 2015 and jailed in a case that he invented by the government to crush the opposition. .
2015 showed that $ 700 million related to 1MDB went into his private bank account. He unleashed massive street rallies demanding his resignation, but Najib responded with an iron fist. He sacked criticism from the government, including the Attorney General, who was preparing to accuse him and his deputy, to muzzle the media and to stifle scandal investigations.
The US Department of Justice alleges that $ 4.5 billion was stolen. is working to recover $ 1.7 billion that was used to buy assets in the US Court's deposits say $ 27.3 million to buy a 22-carat rose diamond necklace for Najib's wife. The new attorney general tried to whitewash Najib in 2016, saying the money was a political gift from the Saudi royal family and most of it had been returned.
Najib's reputation was however defeated. Another scandal at the FELDA planting agency and an unpopular tax on goods and services that it introduced in 2015 for an increase in the cost of living have also increased rumors among rural Malays against leadership from Najib. Mahathir Mohamad, who led Malaysia for 22 years until his retirement in 2003. Mahathir joined former political enemies and unified a fractured opposition
The electoral defeat was attributed in part to the reputation of Mahathir as a statesman transforming a Southeast Asia. backwater in a modern economy. His involvement with the opposition helped to allay voters' fears of possible chaos under a new government. Many Malays were haunted for decades by racial riots in 1969 that killed more than 200 people.
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