The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has just begun, and it was a starkly different Wednesday night for two of Malaysia's former leaders. Our correspondent Rian Maelzer has the details.

RIAN MAELZER KUALA LUMPUR "It was a sharply contrasting start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan for two former top Malaysian leaders. Former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim celebrated with thousands of his supporters Wednesday night, having been freed from custody earlier in the day."

At around the same time, police carried out raids on the home of former prime minister Najib Razak and other properties linked to him. Najib's lawyer said he believed the searches were tied to money-laundering investigations. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says the country's former attorney general has confirmed that he had been preparing to charge Najib in relation to the 1MDB corruption scandal when Najib abruptly removed him from office in 2015. The new administration this week also made public the auditor general's report into 1MDB that Najib's government had classified as an official secret.

AZMI SHAROM LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA "The only rationale is to hide the extremely poor corporate governance of this institution. There was decision after decision made without any approval by the 1MDB board. This looked to be a consistent pattern and the thing is we are not talking about a few million dollars. We are talking about billions of dollars."

The report says 1MDB racked up 10 billion dollars in borrowing for which the government is now liable. And it's not clear where much of that money ended up.

RIAN MAELZER KUALA LUMPUR Countries investigating the 1MDB money trail, including Singapore, Switzerland and the US, have welcomed the pledge by Malaysia's new government to give them its full assistance to track down and recover the missing money. Rian Maelzer, CGTN, KL.