Malaysia is suing businesses owned by Deutsche Bank, Coutts & Co and JP Morgan over money lost with 1Malaysia Development.
The now-defunct state fund is seeking to recover billions.
According to a lawsuit, the fund is seeking $1.11 billion from Deutsche Bank Malaysia, $1.03 billion from Coutts' Malaysian unit and $800 from JP Morgan. Interest is also being sought, court documents said.
1MDB said in the lawsuit it was seeking those amounts as a result of the three companies' "negligence, breach of contract, conspiracy to defraud/injure, and/or dishonest assistance."
A Deutsche Bank representative said the company had yet to be served papers and it remained unaware of any basis for a legitimate claim. JP Morgan and Coutts have not responded.
Malaysia's finance ministry said 1MDB had filed 22 separate civil suits against companies and individuals involved in alleged fraud. The fund is seeking to recover more than $23 billion in assets from the respondents who allegedly defrauded the fund and its subsidiaries.
Sources with knowledge of the matter said one of the people being sued was the country's former Prime Minister, Najib Razak - who had headed the fund.
The ministry said it had already recovered nearly $5 billion in assets over the past three years from companies such as Goldman Sachs.
Malaysian officials and U.S. investigators said billions of dollars were allegedly stolen from the state fund between 2009 and 2014. The scandal implicated many international top officials and companies.
Switzerland's finance regulator Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority has accused a local unit of JP Morgan of antimoney laundering violations over its 1MDB transactions. JP Morgan said it was investigating the accusations and it would improve training and business process monitoring.
Last year, a banker working at Coutts & Co was convicted in Switzerland for violations related to a failure of reporting suspicious transactions linked to 1MDB.
