The production company behind "The Wolf of Wall Street" has agreed to pay the U.S. government $60 million to settle claims it benefited from a massive Malaysian corruption scandal.
The settlement between prosecutors and Red Granite Pictures Inc. was approved Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The case was part of an effort to recover more than $1 billion prosecutors said was stolen from 1MDB, a Malaysian-owned investment fund. The Department of Justice said the complex money laundering scheme was intended to enrich top-level officials of the fund, including some close to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Money was diverted from the fund to buy properties in New York and California, a $35 million jet, art by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, and a $260 million yacht.
Proceeds also went to fund movies by Red Granite Pictures, which was co-founded by the stepson of Razak.
The funds financed the Martin Scorsese-directed "The Wolf of Wall Street," which starred Leonardo DiCaprio in a film about the excesses of a crooked stock trader. The settlement also included forfeiture claims to the rights of "Dumb and Dumber To" and "Daddy's Home."
The film production company said in a statement that it was happy to put the matter behind it so it could focus on filmmaking.
The 1MDB case is the largest single action the Justice Department has taken under efforts to recover foreign bribery proceeds and embezzled funds and several other lawsuits are pending. Other countries including Singapore and Switzerland are conducting probes.
The Grammys’ voting body is more diverse, with 66% new members. What does it mean for the awards?
For years, the Grammy Awards have been criticized over a lack of diversity — artists of color and women left out of top prizes; rap and contemporary R&B stars ignored — a reflection of the Recording Academy's electorate. An evolving voting body, 66% of whom have joined in the last five years, is working to remedy that.
At last year's awards, women dominated the major categories; every televised competitive Grammy went to at least one woman. It stems from a commitment the Recording Academy made five years ago: In 2019, the Academy announced it would add 2,500 women to its voting body by 2025. Under the Grammys' new membership model, the Recording Academy has surpassed that figure ahead of the deadline: More than 3,000 female voting members have been added, it announced Thursday.
"It's definitely something that we're all very proud of," Harvey Mason jr., academy president and CEO, told The Associated Press. "It tells me that we were severely underrepresented in that area."
Reform at the Record Academy dates back to the creation of a task force focused on inclusion and diversity after a previous CEO, Neil Portnow, made comments belittling women at the height of the #MeToo movement.
Since 2019, approximately 8,700 new members have been added to the voting body. In total, there are now more than 16,000 members and more than 13,000 of them are voting members, up from about 14,000 in 2023 (11,000 of which were voting members). In that time, the academy has increased its number of members who identify as people of color by 63%.
"It's not an all-new voting body," Mason assures. "We're very specific and intentional in who we asked to be a part of our academy by listening and learning from different genres and different groups that... Read More