The US Department of Justice (DOJ) may have filed the 1MDB-related civil forfeiture suit but it later applied for a stay because it wanted to freeze the assets while a parallel criminal probe is ongoing.

This was suggested by US attorney Thomas Goldstein, who is an experienced Supreme Court practitioner.

"I think that... what they (DOJ) wanted to do is make sure those assets were not dissipated so that they (the assets) can be held onto and returned if appropriate and if it was determined that they were related to 1MDB.

"There is a criminal process ongoing, it hasn't produced anything yet, but they want the assets frozen so that it does not get sold or anything like that," Goldstein said...