Thick and fast

HAVING smouldered for more than a year, international investigations into 1MDB—a Malaysian state investment firm at the heart of a sprawling financial scandal—are now burning fiercely. On July 20th America’s Justice Department began proceedings to seize more than $1 billion of assets, which it alleged had been purchased with funds siphoned out of the firm. It is the largest single action the department has ever launched.

The goodies concerned include luxury properties, artworks by Van Gogh and Monet, and a jet, according to court filings. Authorities say 1MDB’s money was also spent on gambling and used to make the “Wolf of Wall Street”, a film about a high-living swindler starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It was made by a production company co-founded by Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak. (A spokesman for the firm, Red Granite Pictures, said neither it nor Mr Riza had done anything wrong.)

Mr Riza is among several people the Justice Department claims are “relevant” to its case. So is Low Taek Jho, a Malaysian tycoon who helped to set up 1MDB, and two former officials at an Abu Dhabi state firm with which 1MDB did business. Also listed in the complaint (but not named) are four employees of 1MDB and a high-ranking Malaysian government official who is described as a relative of Mr Riza and for the moment known only as “Malaysian Official 1”.

1MDB was launched in 2009, the year Mr Najib became prime minister. It was supposed to bring investment to Malaysia by forging partnerships with foreign firms. But by 2014 it was struggling to service debts of more than $11 billion. Questions about it multiplied last year when it was discovered that around $700m had entered Mr Najib’s bank accounts shortly before a close election in 2013. (Mr Najib says the money was not related to 1MDB, but was a perfectly legal, personal donation from a Saudi royal, much of which has been returned. Malaysia’s attorney-general agrees.)

The Justice Department says the assets it is seeking to recover are associated with “an international conspiracy to launder funds misappropriated” from 1MDB. Its filing alleges that between 2009 and 2015 more than $3.5 billion belonging to the firm may have been pinched by “high-level officials of 1MDB and their associates”. The complaint provides extensive detail on the deals in question, which it divides into three “phases”, beginning in 2009, 2012 and 2013.

The proceedings now starting in America relate only to the seizure of assets, and do not amount to criminal charges against the individuals alleged to be involved. In the meantime several cases are advancing elsewhere. In May the Swiss financial regulator fined BSI, a private bank which handled some of 1MDB’s money, and launched proceedings against two of its former employees.

On July 21st authorities in Singapore said that they had seized or frozen assets worth S$240m ($175m), half of it belonging to Mr Low or his family, as part of an ongoing probe into transactions linked to 1MDB. The local financial regulator also announced that it would be taking action against three big banks—DBS, UBS and Standard Chartered—for “lapses and weaknesses” in their efforts to prevent money-laundering. With investigations underway in half a dozen countries, expect to hear much more.