A pair of Beijing-backed infrastructure projects is being investigated by the Malaysian government for supposed links to the corrupt state investment fund involved in the 1MDB scandal.
The country’s finance minister Lim Guan Eng said that the previous government, led by the recently defeated Najib Razak, had agreed to make payments on two Chinese-built oil and gas pipelines with a combined cost of over $2 billion, without paying attention to the projects’ progress.
According to the Financial Times, the two three-year projects had only completed 13% of the total construction 12 months into development, yet 90% of the invoice had been paid by Malaysia’s government to the Chinese state-backed Petroleum Pipeline Bureau.
“We are strongly suspicious this is all part of the 1MDB scam,” said Lim. “The problem of course lies with the local treasury officials and the leaders who approved and signed not only the contract but also the payments.”
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