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The US Justice Department is working to seize $1B in illegally-acquired assets from a Malaysian fund—including royalties from the 2013 film, “The Wolf of Wall Street” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The US alleges the assets picked up through the fund—officially named the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)—were purchased by Malaysian public officials and their relatives, totaling more than $3.5B in assets, $1B of which was laundered through US banks, Bloomberg reports.
The ill-gained assets include high-end real estate properties and hotels throughout New York, Los Angeles and London, some very costly artwork by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet and a jet worth $35M, Wall Street Journal reports.
1MBD is under investigation from several countries, including Singapore, Switzerland and Luxembourg, for alleged money laundering and corruption. “Unfortunately and tragically, a number of corrupt officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch says.
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