Efforts to recover assets linked to 1MDB will continue whatever happens to any convicted person’s sentence, Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in a written reply in Parliament.
Civil claims, he said, have a different legal basis and different evidential requirements from criminal proceedings. Whether the government and 1MDB can press on with their civil claims depends on the grounds of each claim, the evidence and court orders, and any seizure of assets must comply with the law. He said the government remained committed to recovering 1MDB-linked assets.
He was answering Howard Lee (PH-Ipoh Timur), who asked for an assurance that recovery efforts would not be affected by developments concerning any convict’s sentence.
In September, former prime minister Najib Razak was granted a conditional pardon allowing him to serve the rest of his prison sentence under house arrest until 23 August 2028, subject to payment of a RM50 million fine. He was jailed in August 2022 after losing his final appeal in the SRC International case, and in February 2024 the Federal Territories Pardons Board halved his 12-year sentence and cut his fine from RM210 million to RM50 million.
Separately, Najib was convicted in December 2025 of abuse of power and money laundering involving more than RM2 billion linked to 1MDB, and was sentenced to 15 years’ jail and fined RM11.38 billion. He is appealing against that conviction.
The law behind it
The power of pardon comes from Article 42 of the Federal Constitution. For offences in the Federal Territories, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong exercises it on the advice of the Federal Territories Pardons Board. A pardon deals with punishment: it can remit or reduce a sentence, and it can be granted on conditions.
Recovering assets is a separate process. A civil claim for money or property is decided on the balance of probabilities, a lower standard than the proof beyond reasonable doubt required for a criminal conviction. Malaysia’s anti-money laundering law also allows the court to order property forfeited in proceedings that do not depend on a conviction. That is why, as the minister put it, a civil claim turns on its own grounds, the evidence and court orders.