The Swiss Attorney General Micheal Lauber said he was confident the money laundering probe into scandal-hit Malaysian fund 1MDB would bear fruits and this despite Malaysian authorities’ refusal to cooperate.
“It would have been very desirable from our perspective if Malaysia had cooperated,” he said.
To recap, Malaysia’s Attorney General Office, despite repeatedly saying it will cooperate with any foreign agencies investigating the 1MDB scandal, refused to reply to the Swiss Attorney General’s office request for detailed information on the issue.
In a chilling response, the Swiss AG said: “It’s not hopeless, in fact it’s the opposite,” while addressing a news conference.
He said the probe was making progress, based on money-laundering reports, bank documents and work with Singapore and other countries.
But “we’re still confident that we can successfully conclude the process in this area, in particular in the open cases against the two banks,” he said, referring to Swiss private banks BSI and Falcon.
Malaysia rebuffed Switzerland’s request for legal assistance in probing 1MDB on several occasions, Lauber’s office had said in November.
In his report, Lauber repeated his remarks that his probe of Malaysia’s scandal-hit state fund 1MDB has been hampered by Malaysian authorities’ refusal to co-operate.
But Switzerland’s top enforcement officer reiterated that other countries are helping to resolve billions of dollars in suspected misappropriations involving fund employees, banks and officials from Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.