Malaysia’s obsolete state fund 1MDB has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, Coutts & Co, and JP Morgan, seeking to recover the billions that were allegedly lost in a corruption scandal at the fund.

As a part of the lawsuit, 1MDB is reportedly claiming interest payments of $1.11 billion from Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, $1.03 billion from Swiss-based Coutts unit, and $800 million from JP Morgan (Switzerland).

According to the documents filed by 1MDB at a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday, the company’s claims are premised on breach of contract, negligence, conspiracy to defraud/injure, and/or dishonest assistance.

The three companies, however, did not respond to the lawsuit’s claims immediately.

Speaking on the matter, finance ministry of Malaysia stated that 1MDB and a former unit had filed 22 civil lawsuits for recovering over $23 billion in assets from the individuals and entities allegedly involved in defrauding of the fund and its ex-subsidiary. However, it did not find any of people or entities being charged.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the Deutsche Bank stated that the bank has not been served any papers and that it is not aware of the basis for a legitimate claim against it.

According to the US and Malaysian investigators, at least $4.5 billion was embezzled from 1MDB between the period from 2009 to 2014, as a part of a wide-ranging scandal. This scandal has reportedly implicated high-level officials, financial institutions and banks across the world.

Malaysian authorities had earlier mentioned that there were billions of dollars more that are unaccounted for.

These lawsuits apparently come after Malaysia had recovered around $5 billion in assets after the deals over the last three years with the prominent U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, which had helped 1MDB secure billions of dollars of funding along with audit firm Deloitte and others.

Source credits: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/malaysia-1mdb-sues-deutsche-bank-jp-morgan-coutts