Questions around a troubled Malaysian state investment fund and missing money in the Middle East have widened to include as much as $1 billion more.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that officials in Abu Dhabi were trying to understand why a $1.4 billion transfer that the fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., said it made to a counterparty in the Middle Eastern emirate wasn’t received. Now, those officials are questioning a further $993 million that 1MDB reported it paid to the Abu Dhabi fund, the International Petroleum Investment Co., but which also appears to be largely missing, people familiar with the matter said.
Officials from 1MDB and IPIC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The questions deepen the mystery around 1MDB, which was set up by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 to invest in Malaysia’s economy. The fund is now struggling to repay more than $11 billion in debt and is at the center of a corruption scandal that is destabilizing Mr. Najib’s government.
Earlier this year, a Malaysian government investigation found almost $700 million entered the prime minister’s private accountsthrough entities linked to 1MDB ahead of a close election in 2013. The source of the money is unclear, and the government investigation hasn’t detailed what happened to the funds that went into Mr. Najib’s personal accounts. Malaysia’s anticorruption body in August said the funds were a donation from the Middle East. The donor wasn’t specified.
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