Global News Podcast - Malaysia ex-PM found guilty in state funds scandal

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Former Malaysian PM Najib Razak has been convicted of abuse of power and money laundering in the biggest case to emerge from the 1MDB state fund scandal. The seventy-two year old, who is already in jail for other charges linked to 1MDB, is sentenced to a further 15 years. His lawyer says he will appeal. Also: there have been demonstrations outside the Delhi High Court against the decision to suspend a life sentence for rape imposed on a former governing party official, Kuldeep Sengar; heavy rain storms across large parts of California have triggered floods and mudslides and left at least three people dead; President Zelensky says he'll meet President Trump this Sunday to discuss the latest peace plan for Ukraine; and hopes for finding a treatment for Alzheimer's disease.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and at 1600 hours GMT on Friday the 26th of December, these are our main stories. Malaysia's former Prime Minister has been sentenced to 15 years in prison over his involvement in one of the world's biggest corruption scandals. Demonstrations are held outside Delhi's high court against the decision to suspend a former governing party official's life sentence for rape. Also in this podcast, heavy rainstorms across large parts of California have triggered floods and mudslides and left at least three people dead. President Zelensky says he'll meet Donald Trump on Sunday

to discuss ways to end Ukraine's war with Russia and... I've not seen so much hope in Alzheimer's disease research than I do right now, so I'm really hopeful that we'll see meaningful change in my lifetime. And the prospect of life-changing treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The one MDB corruption scandal in Malaysia, which involved siphoning off huge sums from the state-owned wealth fund, made headlines around the world when it came to light a decade ago. Now, the former Malaysian Prime Minister, Najip Razak, has been found guilty of money laundering and abusing his power to plunder the state funds.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He's already serving six years for a separate case over the multi-billion dollar embezzlement from the state investment scheme. His lawyer says Mr Najib will appeal. A correspondent in Southeast Asia, Surinjanatawari, has been following the case. Yeah, he's been found guilty of abuse of power and money laundering,

four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering. Now, you may remember the 1MDB scandal. He has been accused of redirecting funds from a state fund that he actually founded back in 2009 into his personal bank account. Of course, he has always denied any wrongdoing, but we do have a judgment from this particular case,

the second, so far, and it has taken seven years. There have been a number of witnesses. There have been a number of depositions. He is already in jail. after he was convicted years ago in another case related to one MDB. Yes, he's serving six years, isn't it? So what will this new court case and this finding mean for the 72-year-old now? The case he is in jail for now was actually commuted,

so it was shorter than the original sentence. Having said that, he did request to go on house arrest earlier this week, and he was denied that request. The 72-year-old has a lot of political support, his conviction and his involvement in the case has really divided the country. There were only a few supporters outside the court today for the ruling, but already there are many people who are saying that the entire case is politically motivated. Having said that, a lot of people are watching the case for it very closely. It was a huge corruption scandal with a number of countries, a number of countries,

a number of prominent figures both in Malaysia and internationally who were implicated as well. So this is really sort of coming to a head after many, many years of investigations. Have we had any reaction from Najib Brasak or his lawyers or people close to him? Now, Najib's lawyers have always claimed

that he was misled by one of his advisors, a financier called Joe Lowe, who has maintained his innocence but is essentially a fugitive. and is wanted in many places, including the United States and in Singapore as well. His lawyers, Najib's lawyers, have always said that if he is found guilty, they will push for a stay of execution and that they will try and appeal whatever the decision is. But as I said, you know, Najib has a lot of support as well from the outside,

and I'm sure this is not the end that we'll hear of this case. Surinjana, Tuari. Next to India, where a decision this week by the High Court in Delhi to suspend the jail term of a former BJP lawmaker convicted of rape has provoked outrage across the country. Kaldip Sengar was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after he was found guilty of raping a 17-year-old girl after luring her to his home with the promise of a job interview.

The court ordered his release on bail, prompting demonstrations, including outside the court. I heard more from our global affairs reporter and Barrison Etherajan. It was one of those most high-profile cases in India at that time because an ordinary person, a family, they were trying to fight against a politician who was powerful in that part of India. And when it came after years of struggle, there was a lot of satisfaction among activists. And they said it was one of those cases where,

on a rape case, you can get a verdict. But after six or seven years, now the court, I mean, he appealed against the verdict as well as the sentencing. So the court has granted conditional bail with a lot of conditions and also suspended the sentence as because he has already appealed against the verdict. So that was the court's decision. But it has also come under a lot of criticism and it has sparked outrage across India. because the background to the story itself like there was initially there was the family was accusing police of inaction and her father was beaten by a group of men and he died in custody and then for in that case also Mr. Sengar got 10 years sentence actually he's in jail he has not been released in another case in this father's death case he's still in jail number two when the victim was traveling in a car before the verdict there was a suspicious car crash according to the family in which two of her aunts, they got killed, and she was severely injured.

So there was a lot of, in a build-up to this verdict and case, and she was even holding a protest in front of the chief minister's house to attract attention. That's why the case is very significant. And the abuse survivor herself has spoken out, what she said? The family, in fact, a couple of days ago, the victim and then the survivor and then her family members held a strong protest, and they're worried about, their safety, given what happened before, the family went through a lot, and that is why they're saying, so, you know, we fought so hard to get justice, and now we see that, you know, family

members were, you know, died and my father died in connection with the case, and that is why they're worried about, and also it will set a precedent in other cases as well, that is a real worry for them. And Barasarajan, an estimated 55 million people worldwide have dementia, a figure that experts believe will triple by the year 2050. But there is a note of optimism as leading researchers believe life-changing treatments for Alzheimer's disease,

the primary cause of dementia, could be available within five to ten years. Our health correspondent James Gallowher reports from an operating theatre at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary Hospital in Scotland. I'm all washed and scrubbed up now because in order to answer this question, can we cure Alzheimer's disease?

We're actually going to start with some brain surgery. So we're in the operating theatre now and they're just preparing the patient ready to remove the tumour. I am Paul Brennan and I'm the professor of neurosurgery here in Edinburgh. Today we have a gentleman who's got a tumour which has spread up to his brain. So we're going to do a craniotomy to make a hole in his skull and then we'll remove the tumour.

and that will be us. Paul, good luck. Thank you very much. So we stood at the back of the operating theatre now with Dr Claire Durant from the University of Edinburgh. Claire, you're here for a very special reason. Yeah, absolutely. So in order to get the tumour that he's operating on today, he's going to have to take a normal piece of brain out that would normally go in the bin. Now, instead of going to the bin, we're going to rush that back to our lab so we can do the experiments that we want to do. We never forget the kind of amazing altruism that we see in these patients that on the worst day of their life, they'll sign and form and say, you know what, something good is going to come out of this bad day. And I'm always in awe of these patients. And I really do hope that we're going to move

forward to have a world free of many different horrible neurological diseases. How rare is it to work on human adult brain tissue in Alzheimer's research? There's really a handful of places worldwide that would do this technique. Okay, so James, we've got the brain sample. It's tucked away safely in its biosecurity box, we're going to grab a taxi and head back to my lab. Hello. Hello. The team all ready and waiting to respect. Should I pop you guys in some lab puts on? So this is our lab. Everything you see here has been designed to support the live human brain work we do here. What do you learn about Alzheimer's disease by looking at healthy brain tissue? By taking what we think is healthy, we have a perfect human brain model in a dish.

What we can then do is we can add things that we think are involved in Alzheimer's disease and see how human brain responds to that. So things like taking toxic proteins that have been extracted from the brain of someone who died with Alzheimer's disease who donated their brain. So when you say adding in those toxic proteins, you're thinking of some of the characteristic hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. So you see something called amyloid and something called tau building up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

So you can take that and just add it in and see what it does. Absolutely. So we can see the destruction of synapses in response to that. And we can follow other reactions and look for ways of potentially intercepting it. The biggest question, the one we've been set, can Alzheimer's ever be cured? I absolutely believe that it will be cured one day. The evidence we have at the moment is that it is a disease and that we know from past experiences that disease can be cured.

Maybe one day we'll find evidence in the future that Alzheimer's disease is inherently part of being human and if we all live to be 200, it would be so intertwined. But at the moment, I don't see that evidence there. I've not seen so much hope in Alzheimer's disease research than I do right now. There's just so much to look forward to, I think. So I'm really hopeful that we'll see meaningful change in my lifetime. That was fascinating. But while we're here in Edinburgh,

I want to catch up with Professor Tara Spires-Jones, who's the Director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Science. Claire said her instinct was that we could cure Alzheimer's disease. Do you share that? Yes, I'm very optimistic that in the short term, we will have treatments that can meaningfully slow or stop disease progression, hopefully. Right now, we really don't. And in the long term, I think we should be able to prevent dementia's entirely,

and hopefully we'll get to a cure as well for people who already have symptoms. That's harder, but I think we will get improvements or at least stop progression and catch it early enough that that is enough to really make your life normal. Professor Tara Spires-Jones ending that report by James Gallagher. Nigeria's foreign minister Yusuf Taga has indicated that there could be further U.S. military action against jihadist groups in the country. On Christmas Day, the U.S. military said it carried out airstrikes in coordination with the Nigerian government in northwestern Nigeria, targeting militants linked to the Islamic State group. The Trump administration has previously accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks and has claimed a genocide is being perpetrated.

Those accusations have been repeatedly denied by Abuja. Barry Marston is BBC monitoring jihadi specialist, and I asked him what we know about these strikes. For anybody following jihadist developments in West Africa, these strikes may have come as a huge surprise because they occurred in Sokoto State in northwestern Nigeria. The Islamic State has never claimed any attacks or never claimed to have a presence in that state.

whatsoever. Its presence in Nigeria is actually the best part of a thousand kilometers away in the northeast of the country, centred upon Borno State. It's one of the most active branches of Islamic State, claiming daily attacks on the military, but certainly not in Sokoto. So the location of the attack may well have raised eyebrows. We've been following developments in northwestern Nigeria, though, for some time. And we believe that the likely target of the attacks may well have been an entity called the Lacroara Group, which has been very visible in that part of the country for a couple of years, sort of causing disturbances, staging attacks on local people,

adopting a very militant version of Islam that it's been propagating to local people. The UN Security Council in a report six months ago also warned of this that this entity may have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State and may sort of be setting itself up as an extension of this group in the region. So in that respect, there may be a logic to the location of these strikes. So is it a patchwork of militants throughout the north of Nigeria? If you look at the northwest, it's exactly that. There is this patchwork of often very local groups.

In fact, Oqaeda's Sahil branch claimed its first ever attack in Nigeria. just nearly two months ago. It's been very active in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, starting to get active in Benin and then out of the blue claimed an attack across the border. But there's a number of entities affiliated with Al-Qaeda. There's also a number of entities which may be affiliated with the Islamic State, so-called Boko Haram, which has been as well active for many years in the northeast of the country. So yes, it's this whole cauldron of jihadist entities that are becoming increasingly active and causing a concern for security observers and local people. And they go around kidnapping people for money and what else do they do?

Well, it's complicated. In terms of kidnapping people for money and some very recent notorious incidents where large numbers of people have been abducted, very often not what we'd think of as jihadists. It's often been bandit activity, which has been the most visible and most damaging element for the Northwest. So the jihadist groups are often a lot smaller, and because of the very high levels of instability, a lot of their activity sort of often goes unreported beneath the surface, and hence it's been a really important phenomenon to be watching for some time. Some of these groups are really at each other's throats in nearby Burkina Faso, Islamic State, and al-Qaeda have been engaging in very bloody confrontations with each other

with very different ideologies, different affiliations, which means that these sort of small and ironic groups won't necessarily hook up into sort of being a broader, like-minded entity. Barry Marston, BBC Monitoring's Jihadi Specialist. Still to come in this podcast. We use artificial intelligence to investigate 300 years of European history, reading texts and collect a vast amount of information on the smells of the past. We visit the lab dedicated to preserving smells both good and bad.

New Year's Resolution. Own how you show up online. It's easy with a domain and matching email from GoDaddy. Now just 99 cents per month. for new customers their first year. Ring in 2026 with a domain and matching email at goaddy.com slash new year. That's goaddy.com slash new year to own how you show up online. President Zelensky says he'll meet President Trump this Sunday to discuss the latest peace plan for Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said there was 90% agreement with the United States

on the proposals for an end to the war with Russia and that security guarantees for Ukraine were almost ready. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian leader indicated for the first time a willingness to negotiate with Moscow over territory. So, what are the chances of any progress being made before January 1st? Our correspondent, Samir Hussein, is in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. It certainly seems like there has been a lot of conversations happening between American officials and Ukraine.

officials and the fact that President Zelensky has posted on X that a lot could be accomplished before the new year is really kind of hinting that perhaps there might be more progress. One of the things that Mr. Zelensky had mentioned, of course, was that an agreement on new timings and new kinds of meetings, presumably because some of the thornyest issues remain in terms of the peace negotiations and perhaps that needs to escalate more to lead. to leader conversations. So what will President Zelensky be trying to get out of his meeting with President Trump, do you think? Well, certainly one of the things that he's already achieved is getting those much wanted

and much needed security guarantees. I think in terms of what's next is going to really try and push for some of the land concessions that Ukraine has expressed a willingness to discuss. Now, there were two sort of versions being sort of discussed. One was creating a free economic zone within the Donetsk region. The other would be to create a demilitarized zone exactly at the battle lines or front lines as they are right now, which is Ukraine's preferred option. But of course, now everyone is waiting for Russia and what their possible response will be. And what is the attitude in Ukraine?

I mean, you're in Kiev. what's their attitude to these peace negotiations? Are they optimistic? Well, people have now spent their fourth Christmas during a time of war. This is a war that has raged on for a very long time. And people are weary. They do want peace. But when it comes to any kind of land concessions, I think that's where you see quite a lot of differing opinions. Some people saying there should be no giving up of any Ukrainian territory. while others kind of accept that perhaps there might need to be some concessions in order to get peace.

Samir Hussein in Kiev. Israeli police say two people have been killed in a stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel. The defence minister, Israel Katz, says it was a terror attack carried out by a Palestinian. Officials say the attacker hit a man with a car before fatally stabbing a 19-year-old woman. A suspect has been taken to hospital. A correspondent Shama Khalil gave me the latest from Jerusalem. We've heard from Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, who said that the IDF are preparing an operation in the area of Kabataya,

and this is the area where they believe the assailant is to be from. We have details now from both the IDF and the police. They're both on the scene. And we understand that the assailant carried out a string of attacks. Before the running over and the stabbing, we also understand that he rammed into a car, lightly injuring the driver, fatally killing a six-year-old pedestrian in a hit-and-run and fatally stabbing a woman near a bus stop. We also understand from the officials that the assailant has been neutralized, he's been shot in the leg and then taken to hospital.

We know that he's in a stable condition as this investigation continues. Officials from both the IDF and the police commissioner's officer saying that they are investigating a possible terror attack. Separately, I also want to bring you some details that have come to us from a video that has been circulating overnight on a settler attack in the occupied West Bank. It was Christmas Day and it was in Derjir on the west entrance of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. And that video was showing an Israeli settler running over a Palestinian man as he was praying, as he was kneeling down to pray. And in the video, you can see that man under the quad bike that the settler was riding.

But then he comes off from the bike and then he walks out. We know now that the settler has gotten a five-day house arrest for that attack. Shyam Khalil. Heavy rainstorms across large parts of California have triggered floods and mudslides and left at least three people dead. The storms have brought around 27 centimetres of rainfall to parts of Los Angeles County. Emergency responders have had to perform several rescues, including of people stuck in vehicles, as John Donison reports.

Much of Southern California is already underwater, and months' worth of rain are expected to fall in the coming days. Rivers have been turned into raging torrents. And for local residents, it's been a grim Christmas, with helicopters having to be used to winch some to safety. We saw there were a bunch of emergency lights down at the end of the road, and we walked as far as we could with, getting swept up in the water and saw that there were people that my neighbors were on top of

their roof, three people on top of the roof, just sitting there and waiting. So we haven't had any storms like this one where, oh, I've seen houses being damaged and we've had damage on our property. This is definitely the worst of it, including being stuck at a house and having completely impassable roads. Those traveling by road to be with family found themselves. stuck. I thought we were able to get through it. We did it. I just shut off. Battery turned on, started smoking and stuff turned off. Last summer, Southern California was battered by fires. This winter, it's floods. Scientists say extreme weather is being driven by climate change.

And for this particular storm, the heaviest rains could be still to come. John Donison. A particular smell continues. take us back in seconds to a time, a person or a place. Now, an academic project at University College in London is aiming to preserve smells that are in danger of disappearing. For example, the scent of old books in a library or the ink on a typewriter ribbon. Dr. Cecilia Bambibre is researching and preserving

what's known as olfactory heritage. And Caroline Wyatt visited her lab at the university to have a good sniff around. So now we're standing in front of the main equipment we use to study smells with cultural value. This is called a GCS or a gas chromatograph. Basically, we can capture smells that are either in the environment or smelly materials and use this instrument to analyze it by separating each of the components of that smell so we can describe them and record them for the future.

basically we know what the smell is made of. Okay, so now we're standing in front of a fume hood, and in this space we bring back smells that have been lost by using the data that we get from the instrument and from our own experience to recreate them as fragrances. Why have we not most of us thought about preserving smells from the past? Is it that we don't appreciate this particular sense as much as we do, perhaps, the visual.

I wouldn't say we don't appreciate it. People don't often need a lot of time to think, and this is something that we've recently seen when we put out a call to invite people to record the smells that have value to them in what we call the UK smell inventory. What have people written in to say should be preserved and why do they want these particular smells preserved?

Some of them are the smell of places that have meaning to people because they pass through these places many times a day or because they bring back memories from childhood. We have people sharing the smell of breadmills, for example. The underground, the tube is a big feature in our inventory. There's also a bit of nostalgia, for example, the floor polish for wooden floors used in schools. It's a very powerful smell that evokes memories of childhood. When you have the ideas in of the things that people want you to save as part of our smell heritage, do you recreate them chemically?

Do you kind of take an artisan approach? What happens? We have done recreations or reconstructions, different ways of capturing and bringing back smells that have meaning to people. For example, I work with the library at St. Paul's Cathedral. We conducted chemical analysis of the environment in San Paul's Cathedral's library. We also described the smells. I took people to the library, asked them to describe it in their own words.

And I work with a London-based perfumer to recreate that smell. So we have an archive of it. Would you like to smell it? I would love to smell it. That's a lovely smell. There's notes of vanilla and wood Because we know by analysing paper We find notes of cookie-like smells

Also a little bit of fresh grass That's a really complex smell And I wouldn't have necessarily thought That books had a smell of grass But it definitely smells libraryish What we do is to think about smells That have cultural value But the way we bring them back

to share with people, takes many forms. With the smell of cities, for example, we've worked in a project called Od Europa, where we use artificial intelligence to investigate 300 years of European history, reading texts, and collect a vast amount of information on the smells of the past. People had described, for example, the smell of the cities of Amsterdam in the 17th century. This city was described as a beautiful virgin with a stinking breath because the canals were the place where people used to drop all the waste so people planted linden trees all along the canals to counter that foul smell.

Oh wow, that's quite a divisive smell as in it's got a really perfumy top but it's got quite something foul underneath. Shall we try something completely different? Yes, please. This is an interpretation of the smell of hell that we developed for a painting from 1549 by Martin Sheffer, Christ in limbo.

It shows Christ at the gates of hell. You can see a dragon, you can see smoke, you can see a goat, and all these notes were picked up by perfumers to create this composition that I'm going to share now. Hell does not smell good. In fact, I can't even describe what those smells are. A bit of sulphur, of course. And there is caproic acid, which evokes the goat.

It's a good incentive to be good, isn't it? Fascinating stuff there from Dr. Cecilia Benbibri, lecturer in sustainable heritage at University College here in London. And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Kai Perry. The producers were Charles Sanctuary and Shantel Hartel.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye. Thank you.