In order to get political leverage in Malaysia, China basically cut a deal to gloss over the stolen funds in 1MDB. $16B for the East Coast Rail Link for an estimated cost of $7.25B, to cover $4.78 billion of 1MDB debt.
Also this:
“At a meeting the next day, Sun Lijun, then head of China’s domestic-security force, confirmed that China’s government was surveilling the Journal (aka WSJ) in Hong Kong at Malaysia’s request, including “full scale residence/office/device tapping, computer/phone/web data retrieval, and full operational surveillance,” according to a Malaysian summary of that meeting.”
