Swiss seize Monet and Van Gogh paintings in 1MDB case

The Swiss authorities, acting on United States request, have seized three rare paintings linked to an investigation into the scandal-hit Malaysian state fund 1MDB. A spokeswoman for the Federal Office of Justice said the paintings were Vincent van Gogh's La maison de Vincent à Arles and Claude Monet's Saint-Georges Majeur and Nympheas avec Reflets de Hautes Herbes. She was confirming a report by the Neue Luzerner Zeitung newspaper. "The operation is not over yet so we will not comment at the moment on the location of the paintings," she said. The US government on Wednesday filed lawsuits seeking to seize $1 billion in assets bought with money believed to have been stolen from the Malaysian 1MDB sovereign wealth fund. The civil lawsuits allege that a total of $3.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB, a fund Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak established in 2009 and whose advisory board he chaired. Federal prosecutors are seeking to seize $1 billion that they ...