On Tuesday evening, Malaysia’s disgraced ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak was escorted by a heavily armed police convoy in an SUV to his luxury Kuala Lumpur mansion, marking the end of his four-year in-prison stint following high-profile corruption convictions tied to the global 1MDB scandal. The 73-year-old politician was greeted by a throng of jostling journalists stationed outside his residence, located in one of the capital’s most exclusive neighborhoods, which had been formally designated as a federal prison ahead of his arrival. The landmark transfer came hours after the Kuala Lumpur High Court issued a ruling clearing all legal hurdles for Najib to serve the remainder of his reduced sentence under house arrest, following weeks of procedural delays that had pushed back a planned initial transfer date the previous Friday. The legal odyssey stretches back to 2020, when Najib was first handed a 12-year prison sentence for charges of abuse of power, money laundering, and breach of trust linked to 42 million ringgit (approximately $10 million) siphoned from SRC International, a former subsidiary of the state-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) sovereign wealth fund he co-founded. He began serving the sentence in 2022, before an appeal court later halved the term, and in September 2024, Malaysia’s King issued a conditional royal pardon allowing him to complete the remaining two years of his sentence at home — a deal that required Najib’s political party to pay a $12 million fine as a key term of the arrangement. The 1MDB scandal, which first came to light a decade ago, sent shockwaves across global financial and entertainment circles, ensnaring high-profile entities from Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs to A-list Hollywood figures. Official investigations estimated that a total of $4.5 billion was misappropriated from the public wealth fund into private accounts, with prosecutors alleging more than $1 billion of that sum flowed directly to accounts linked to Najib. Throughout the years of legal proceedings, Najib has consistently denied all wrongdoing, with his legal team arguing he was deliberately misled by his close advisers, most notably fugitive financier Jho Low, who has maintained his own innocence and remains at large to this day. Controversy has flared widely in the wake of the house arrest approval: critics of the decision argue it severely undermines Malaysia’s years-long anti-corruption efforts, and have publicly questioned the legal validity of the arrangement, pointing out that no explicit provisions for formal house arrest exist in the country’s existing penal code. Najib still faces a pending appeal against a 15-year prison sentence handed down in a separate December 2025 trial, where he was convicted of misappropriating nearly 2.3 billion Malaysian ringgit (around $569 million) directly from the 1MDB fund. Under current court orders, he will begin serving that 15-year term immediately after his two-year house arrest period concludes in August 2028.
Malaysia’s disgraced former PM leaves jail for house arrest after embezzling millions
