Developments continue around claims of money being siphoned off from a large, state-run fund in Malaysia.

A former employee at the Singapore arm of BSI, the Switzerland-headquartered bank being acquired by Zurich-listed EFG International, has been charged with money laundering as global probes into a Malaysian corruption scandal continue.

“In response to press queries, the Attorney-General’s Chambers [of Singapore] confirms that yeo Jiawei (33-years-old, male), a former BSI Singapore employee, was charged with an offence udner s.47(1)© read with s.47(6)(a) of the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (Cap 65A),” the AGC said in a statement today on its website. It gave no further details. 

The AGW did not mention 1Malaysia Development, the Malaysian state-owned fund from which a number of persons, including Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, are alleged to have siphoned money for personal use. Amid the scandal – 1MDB and the premier deny wrongdoing – authorities in Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland have initiated investigations. Swiss authorities have, for example, frozen some bank accounts connected with the matter.

Swiss authorities estimate that around $4 billion may have been taken from state companies Malaysia.

Among latest developments connected to the affair, the chairman of Malaysia-headquartered CIMB Group, Nazir Razak, took a “leave of absence” pending a review of the bank’s processes and policies, after he distributed S$9.5 million ($7 million) in political funds in the run up to the 2013 election at the request of Najib Razak, who is his brother. The scandal has been a further blow to confidence in the probity of Malaysia’s financial system, raising concerns about transfer of illicit funds, bribery and corruption

Following publication of a recent Malaysian parliamentary report on the fund, meanwhile, the 1MDB board said it has collectively tendered its resignation to Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance.

In Switzerland a few days’ ago (see here), the Office of the Attorney General said: “As part of the criminal proceedings on suspicion of embezzlement committed against the Malaysian sovereign fund 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Berhad), the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) has extended its proceedings to two former Emirati officials, in charge of Abu Dhabi sovereign funds. The OAG also sent two requests for mutual legal assistance to Luxembourg and Singapore.”

The two former Emirati officials are being investigated for fraud, criminal mismanagement, misconduct in public office, forgery of a document, bribery of foreign public officials and money laundering. In the Swiss development, the Berne-based OAG said that its extension of criminal proceedings took place within the Genting/Tanjong chapter, one of the four main chapters of the Swiss investigation opened on 14 August 2015. Explaining the background, the Swiss body said 1MDB subsidiaries issued two series of bonds to finance investments in electric power plants. This chapter of the proceedings covers the circumstances in which these subsidiaries obtained the guarantee to repay these bonds from an Abu Dhabi sovereign fund.