SINGAPORE (June 29): Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) has to set aside RM44.6308 billion ($15.1 billion) from now to pay the remaining interest on four 1MDB bonds and to redeem the principal sums when they expire.
The total principal sum of the four bonds is RM31 billion and the total interest paid on the bonds to date is RM8.54 billion. And the total interest to be paid from now till the bonds expire – in 2039 – is RM13.63 billion.
Hence, by the time all the bonds are retired, MOF would have had to pay a whopping RM53.17 billion.
The four bonds were issued for the joint venture with PetroSaudi International in 2009, the purchase of power stations from Tanjong and Genting in 2012 and for the development of the Tun Razak Exchange in 2013.
However, the bulk of the money raised has been misappropriated and is now the subject of a worldwide probe, and the new Pakatan Harapan government has vowed to go after all those responsible and to also try and recover most, if not all, of the money.
Much of the stolen billions had been used by Jho Low, Riza Aziz and their Middle-Eastern co-conspirators to buy assets in the US, according to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) which has called the scandal the world’s biggest ever case of kleptocracy.
Find out more about the financial costs of the bonds, the amount of money Jho Low took and what he did with it in this week’s issue of The Edge Singapore (Issue 836, week of June 25), on sale now at newsstands.
Subscribers can log in and read How Malaysia ended up with a RM53 billion liability it has to settle.
