Riza, who ran a Hollywood production company Red Granite Pictures, appeared in a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday morning charged with five counts of money laundering, accused of receiving $248 million into Swiss bank accounts from the Malaysian state fund 1MDB, which was controlled by Najib.
The Wolf of Wall Street producer Riza Aziz, who is the stepson of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, has been charged with embezzling millions of dollars from the Malaysian government.
It was a US justice department investigation that first accused Red Granite productions of using stolen 1MDB money to fund Hollywood productions, from Wolf of Wall Street to Dumb and Dumber 2 and Daddy’s Home.
Riza has been accused of receiving the 1MDB money into a bank account in Switzerland and then transferring the funds in smaller amounts, between $1.2m and $133m, into a Red Granite bank account in the US.