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- 01 30, 2025
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case to make kleptocrats blush. Some $4.5bn of public funds were stolen—more than the entire annual revenue of almost half the world’s governments. Much of the money was squandered on high living: a superyacht, gambling sprees, a $23m diamond necklace. Some was even spent making a film about financial fraud, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, as if to taunt the investigators trying to track the stolen funds around the world.In the end, however, the gumshoes got their man. Malaysia’s highest court this week upheld of Najib Razak, the country’s prime minister at the time of the theft, through whose personal accounts more than $700m of the stolen funds passed. He has been for his part in the scandal and ordered to pay a fine of $47m.