Kagan poses with UMS academicians and students.
KOTA KINABALU (June 14): The United States is committed to doing what it can to return every sen of the 1MDB money that it can find and seize, back to the Malaysia people, said its ambassador to Malaysia, Edgard D. Kagan.
“I think our Department of Justice continues to look for assets that are traced back to 1MDB. I think the honest truth is you can probably see the numbers, the amount has gone down over time and the reason for that is all sorts of easier to find items have been found.
“We are committed to continuing to look, we are committed to doing what we can to return every sen of 1MDB money that we can find, and seize, and return to the people of Malaysia,” Kagan told reporters attending the “International Relations Ambassadorial Talk” with USA Ambassador to Malaysia at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Chancellor Building on Friday.
He also said that the US Department of Justice had played a really critical role in the whole 1MDB saga, going back to 2016 and had seized significant amounts of money recovered through asset forfeiture that originated from 1MDB.
The most recent tranche of seized assets, forfeited assets totalling $156 million dollars are being returned and transferred to Malaysia, he said.
“This brings the total that the US Department of Justice has seized and returned to Malaysia to over $1.4 billion dollars,” he added.
However, Kagan said that this was not enough.
“We recognise that Malaysia and Malaysians suffered much greater losses,” he said.
“However we are proud of the fact that the US has played such an important role in addressing the 1MDB issue and if you look carefully nobody else has seized or forfeited anywhere near as many assets and return them to the people of Malaysia,” he said.
Kagan said that he felt this was not done out of charity and as a gift.
“We do this as a responsibility because this is the money that belongs to the people of Malaysia that was stolen from them and that should go to them for the benefit of the people of Malaysia,” he said.
