According to the FT, Khadem al-Qubaisi, the jailed former managing director of Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic), is being probed by authorities in Milan, a person close to the matter has revealed.
The publication reported that the Italian prosecutor’s office said it is “currently working to collect the final elements” for the investigation.
It will look into whether Qubaisi illegally used confidential information to authorise trading by Falcon Private Bank in UniCredit’s shares when Ipic’s Aabar division was preparing to take a 5% in Italy’s largest bank by assets in 2010.
He allegedly made €21m (£17.5m, $22.5m) from the deal.
Qubaisi is the former chairman of Swiss private bank Falcon, which saw it’s Singapore branch shut down by local regulators last year over anti-money laundering breaches in the 1MDB investigation, alongside another Swiss bank BSI.
Meanwhile, Qubaisi was arrested last August by Abu Dhabi authorities as a key figure in a global investigation into alleged fraud at 1MDB, which saw more than $4.8bn siphoned off from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund into the accounts of high profile politicians and their middle men.
The US Department of Justice has alleged Qubaisi received $473m of money diverted as part of a conspiracy to misappropriate $1.37bn from two Ipic-guaranteed bonds issued by 1MDB in 2012 worth $3.5bn.
Earlier this month, Switzerland’s financial regulator confirmed that it is continuing its 1MDB money laundering investigation into UBS Group and three other private banks.
