Najib Razak with his wife Rosmah Mansor.

Malaysian investigators have stated they are tracing bank transactions made by the prime minister’s wife, this comes following media reports that up to $700m was siphoned into possible accounts of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts.

A special task force has been set up to investigate the state investment company 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) who is believed to have channeled the cash into the Prime Ministers accounts. The task force said it has frozen six bank accounts which associated to the investigation whilst seizing documents from 17 accounts spread across two banks.

The task force has been comprised of Abu Kassim Mohamed of the Anti-Corruption Commission, central bank governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar and Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail.

A spokesperson for the taskforce said that “The task force knew about this (transactions into Rosmah Mansor’s bank account) before the (media) expose and an investigation is being conducted.”

The activist website Sarawak Report released a story on Thursday that 2 million ringgit ($523,000) in cash had been deposited into the prime ministers wife’s account in Affin Bank Bhd earlier this year.

Just last week the Wall Street Journal said that according to documents from the probe the task force looking into 1MDB had traced close to $700 million of deposits into personal bank accounts of Najib Razak. Since then the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has threatened to sue The Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday 1MDB’s office was raided whilst the day after an interim report on 1MDB by the national auditor was handed over to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny.