The Singapore High Court has barred foreign liquidators from suing Standard Chartered and BSI Bank over transactions allegedly linked to the 1MDB scandal, in a ruling that could set back international efforts to recover billions lost from the state fund.
The court ruled that the republic’s cross-border insolvency framework could not be retroactively applied to deals made before the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act came into force in 2018, The Straits Times reported.
The liquidators of Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners and Brazen Sky, both implicated in the multi-billion-dollar scandal, had sought to use “avoidance claims” to reverse suspect transactions and recover assets.
But Justice Aidan Xu dismissed their applications, citing Article 23(9) of the 2018 law.
The provision, unique to Singapore, explicitly prevents…