KUWAIT CITY - A court in Kuwait convicted fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho known as Jho Low in absentia on Tuesday on charges of money laundering related to the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.
Quoting the report of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas, a sheikh and his partners including two other foreigners were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
While a lawyer was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of money laundering involving Malaysian funds.
Therefore, they were ordered to return US$1 billion (RM4.4 billion) in addition to having to pay a fine of KD145 million (RM2 billion).
However, the newspaper did not reveal the name of the sheikh involved, including the partner or the lawyer.
But only mention it as 'Malaysian funds'.
The report mentions that it is related to the largest money laundering case in addition to identifying the identity of the foreign money as Low and a Syrian-French businessman named Bachar Kiwan.
Based on a report published through the Sarawak Report portal claiming that the Malaysian fund refers to 1MDB.
In addition, the same portal claims that the mentioned sheikh is the son of the former Prime Minister of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah.
Meanwhile, the associated partners are allegedly Low's associates Hamad Al Wazan and his lawyer, Saud Abdelmohsan.
The Al-Qabar report reported that the five of them were charged with money laundering in the form of Chinese currency equivalent to KD343,700,000 (about RM4.95 billion).
The news agency claimed that the five individuals in question knew that the money in question was the illegal proceeds of misappropriation from a Malaysian investment fund.
The newspaper reported that the case was delayed for two years before being reopened because the prosecution faced obstacles in obtaining information from abroad. - Agency
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| Telling line up (left to right) Bachar Kiwan, Majd Suleiman and Sheikh Sabah the main partners in Al Waseet, plus Jho Low and his Wharton college friend from Kuwait, Hamad Al Wazzan – forging relations in Kuwait February 2016 |
In what’s being described as a landmark ruling in Kuwait, the courts have in the past hours handed down a crushing guilty verdict against the once all-powerful son of a former prime minister, Sheikh Sabah Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.
The royal businessman has been sentenced to ten years in jail for having cooperated with Jho Taek Low, proxy to the convicted ex-Malaysian PM, Najib Razak, in laundering hundreds of millions of ringgit looted from the Malaysian public.
At stake, at the very least, is a stunning RM2 billion/(KD 145 million) cited by the courts as remaining in the guilty man’s bank bank account, although the judgement also confirms that over a billion dollars were in fact laundered through it
Also convicted were Jho Low himself, the Sheikh’s personal lawyer, a college friend of Jho Low’s and continuing business partner, Hamad Al Wazan* and a former business associate of the Sheikh, Bachar Kiwan, who fled Kuwait at the time of the crime, having fallen foul of the criminal gang.
All were sentenced to the same ten year jail term – this being the first actual sentencing in absentia of Malaysia’s world famous financial fraudster, Jho Low, in a foreign court.