Singapore High Court grants wind-up of firms linked to 1MBD scandal

The Singapore High Court has granted winding up applications filed for three BVI-incorporated entities connected to the 1MDB scandal, which saw billions looted from the sovereign wealth fund.

It means the liquidators can now bring statutory claims against Standard Chartered Bank and BSI Bank in Singapore over their role in allegedly facilitating the fraud, particularly relating to transactions involving these companies that predate Singapore's cross-border insolvency framework.

Angela Barkhouse and Toni Shukla, in their capacity as joint liquidators of certain BVI entities utilised by the perpetrators of the 1MDB scandal, said: "This is a positive step forward in the efforts to hold financial institutions and individuals responsible for their role in the large-scale fraud involving 1MDB.

"The Singapore Court’s latest decision will allow the Court-appointed liquidators to hold those who facilitated fraudulent acts against the companies fully to account. Now that these local winding up orders have been granted, the relevant statutory claim(s) against SCB Singapore and BSI Singapore will be filed in short order.

"The overall objective is to recover assets from the individuals and institutions our investigations have identified as having culpability for the misappropriation of assets from the companies, assets which are ultimately traceable to funds which were originally meant to benefit the people of Malaysia but were siphoned off.”