KUALA LUMPUR — A High Court judge has compared the scale of Najib Razak’s looting in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal to something far larger than historic invaders, saying the former prime minister’s offences made “Attila the Hun look like a choirboy.”
In the 809‑page grounds of judgment published on June 16, presiding judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah, a Federal Court judge who convicted Najib on all 25 counts on Dec. 26, 2025, described the 1MDB affair as “the largest episode of kleptocracy in the world,” as widely reported in the international press.
Sequerah recounted the case’s protracted history: charges were first filed in September 2018, the trial finally began on Aug. 19, 2019, and the proceedings stretched about six years amid delays including the COVID‑19 pandemic and overlapping trials. He said the duration likely exceeds any other trial in Malaysian history.
Najib was convicted of four counts of abusing his position to obtain RM2.28 billion (S$720 million) and 21 counts of money laundering involving the same sum. The offences were tied to transactions at an AmIslamic Bank branch in Bukit Ceylon between 2011 and 2014. He received a 15‑year jail sentence and an RM11.39 billion fine; the judge ordered that the sentence begin in 2028 following the completion of a separate six‑year term from the SRC International conviction.