A Malaysian financier wanted for his role in the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB financial scandal has been offered asylum abroad, his spokesman said Friday, as reports surfaced he was in the Middle East. The news came a day after US officials announced that Low Taek Jho had struck a settlement to forfeit assets worth $700 million, including a Beverly Hills hotel and a private jet, as part of efforts to recover stolen cash.

The jet-setting former unofficial adviser to 1Malaysia Development Berhad allegedly played a key role in plundering the sovereign wealth fund, in a fraud that also purportedly involved former premier Najib Razak. The whereabouts of Low, who has been charged over the scandal in the US and Malaysia, are a mystery but his representatives now say he has been offered asylum, without naming a country.

"We understand that Mr. Low was offered asylum in August 2019 by a country that acts in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights," a spokesperson for Mr. Low, through his attorneys, told AFP.