The 1MDB Heist: How Jho Low & the Prime Minister stole $4.5 billion

[00:00:14] Welcome to Great Business Stories and today's episode is called the 1MDB Heist

[00:00:20] How Jo Low and the Prime Minister Stole 4.5 Billion Dollars

[00:00:25] This episode really is a cracker. It's the fascinating story of how a young

[00:00:31] Malaysian businessman called Jo Low who was educated in Harrow in England and he

[00:00:36] formed one of the most notorious and definitely lucrative business

[00:00:42] partnerships with the Malaysian Prime Minister and together they siphoned off a

[00:00:46] jaw-dropping 4.5 billion dollars. It's the story of how Jo Low and his friends

[00:00:52] spent their real-gotten gains by splashing out on parties, multi-million

[00:00:58] dollar properties, jewelry, art as well as financing Hollywood movies and there's

[00:01:03] one movie in particular that you'll definitely know. It's also the story of

[00:01:08] Malaysia and the endemic corruption that emanates from the very top. A Prime

[00:01:15] Minister who not only brazenly loots the national coffers but who also is the

[00:01:21] main suspect in the grisly murder of a young woman. This episode was recorded

[00:01:27] last year in April 2023 and even now in April 2024 there are still some

[00:01:33] court cases going on related to 1MDB because this is a business story, a

[00:01:38] business scandal that's going to be with us for many, many years. It's a

[00:01:43] fascinating story and we really hope you enjoy it.

[00:01:47] Hey Keith how's it going?

[00:01:49] Morning Kaelin, how are you?

[00:01:51] Not too bad, not too bad. I'm happy to have gone through the 1MDB story that

[00:01:58] we're going to go through today because I found it a really interesting

[00:02:01] story altogether.

[00:02:03] Yeah I mean for me plenty of first suggested it as a topic. I wasn't

[00:02:08] familiar with the story at all now as I started to read it I would have

[00:02:12] seen some of the society pictures or remember some of the famous poker

[00:02:17] games etc but I wasn't familiar with the story at all. What

[00:02:22] what drew you to it and how long was it on your radar I suppose is the

[00:02:26] first question for me.

[00:02:27] Being on the radar for years because it's a story that just keeps popping up

[00:02:31] because as we go on and talk about it, court cases related to it are

[00:02:37] still ongoing even as we're talking there's prize from the Fuji's is

[00:02:42] actually in court this week in charges related to it. So kept on

[00:02:47] popping up and it's just a fascinating story and when I

[00:02:51] started looking into it it is one of like the greatest financial

[00:02:55] scandals in the Department of Justice called us the largest

[00:02:58] leptocracy case today's. So I was kind of going you know what I

[00:03:02] got to just start doing big deep dive into this find out what

[00:03:06] exactly it's all about and I suppose to give our listeners kind

[00:03:09] of a quick summary of what it's about it's basically about this

[00:03:13] fund over in Malaysia which is called one Malaysia development

[00:03:18] Burhad and Burhad stands for PLC over in Malaysia and it's

[00:03:23] basically where a young guy got together with the Prime Minister

[00:03:27] of Malaysia, the Prime Minister of Malaysia set up this funds that

[00:03:31] was meant to sort of develop infrastructure and provide jobs

[00:03:35] for the people of Malaysia. And they basically just lucidice and

[00:03:40] stole over 4.5 billion from us and it's as much a story I

[00:03:44] suppose about the stealing of the money as it is about the

[00:03:47] story of how they spent that money as well which was kind of

[00:03:51] crazy as well. You mentioned all the society photographs and if

[00:03:55] you Google the characters that we'll be talking about in this

[00:03:58] you will see a lot of photographs of a lot of champagne, a

[00:04:01] lot of yachts, a lot of parting and it just the extravagance

[00:04:05] of it was just off the charts.

[00:04:07] And what did you use for your for your research?

[00:04:10] Then I know so I went to my usual route as our listeners

[00:04:13] would probably get familiar with. I go to the routes of

[00:04:17] online where I look up the credible news agencies,

[00:04:20] Wall Street Journal, New York Times, all the online sources.

[00:04:23] But for one MDB there's two particular sources I need to give

[00:04:26] a special mention to and one of them is an online website

[00:04:30] called the Sarawak Report which is founded and edited by a lady

[00:04:36] by the name of Sarah Rue Castle Brown and a very brave

[00:04:40] interesting journalist actually a debtor it's while she was

[00:04:42] writing this and then the other main source is a

[00:04:46] fantastic journalist by the name of Mary Anjali who works

[00:04:49] for Al Jazeera and they have an excellent one on one East

[00:04:52] documentary series and she has several videos that you'd be

[00:04:57] able to see on YouTube release it to the Scanlan Kuna one on

[00:05:01] one interview with the Malaysian Prime Minister which is

[00:05:04] really, really worth watching just to see him squirm.

[00:05:07] And you went down the book route?

[00:05:08] Yeah I went down the book route so I read a billion dollar

[00:05:11] whale written by two Wall Street Journal authors Tom White

[00:05:17] and Bradley Hope.

[00:05:19] A really interesting book it's a very labyrinthine sort of story

[00:05:24] fascinating lots of huge cast of characters deliberately over

[00:05:29] to expect probably to muddy the waters and smear everybody into

[00:05:34] some of these projects but fascinating nonetheless you know.

[00:05:39] It is, it is and I suppose there's two main characters

[00:05:42] you're right there's a load of characters I try to keep

[00:05:44] the names to minimum because there are so many different

[00:05:46] characters and there are so many different deals involved

[00:05:49] but the two main characters involved here are the first guy a guy

[00:05:53] by the name of low tech Joe but more commonly known as Joe Low

[00:05:58] and he was the mastermind of this whole scheme.

[00:06:01] Born in 1981 the son of I got the impression his parents

[00:06:05] were upper middle class not really wealthy but wealthy enough.

[00:06:09] Yeah I think so there's actually no where wealthy

[00:06:13] as wealthy as he attempted to kind of portray them later on as

[00:06:18] it's good questions start to arise about how he was accessing

[00:06:21] all of this capital.

[00:06:22] He started referring to family wealth and started to be wealth

[00:06:26] but I don't believe they were certainly wealthy enough to give

[00:06:29] him a very good education in the UK and the US but certainly

[00:06:34] nowhere near the level to wealthy but it's potential

[00:06:37] to portray them as having.

[00:06:39] Yeah because I mean he did go to he went to Harrell in London

[00:06:42] and I mean I looked that up like that's 41,000 to year or so.

[00:06:46] You know they had a they were wealthy enough and obviously

[00:06:49] they sent him to Harrell because if you look at the alumni in

[00:06:52] Harrell you've got seven former prime ministers like Winston

[00:06:54] Churchill, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock Holmes and

[00:06:58] what's he doing the Marvel universes.

[00:07:00] Dr. Strange.

[00:07:02] That's it.

[00:07:03] And as you said then after Harrell he went to Wharton

[00:07:06] Business School.

[00:07:07] I don't know if you had a quick look up at Wharton.

[00:07:10] I had a look at the alumni.

[00:07:12] In the alumni alone we have and I'll just go off my little

[00:07:15] tangent here but the sixth grade story is already from

[00:07:18] Wharton Business School.

[00:07:19] You have Warren Buffett went there.

[00:07:21] Wow.

[00:07:21] So interesting story there.

[00:07:23] John Scully do you know that name?

[00:07:24] Oh yes, the Apple guy.

[00:07:26] The sugar water guy.

[00:07:28] Yes and he's the guy who's sacked Steve Jobs.

[00:07:32] So he'll definitely come into one story.

[00:07:34] Another guy by the name of Stephen A. Cohen.

[00:07:37] Are you familiar with him?

[00:07:37] No I'm not familiar with that name.

[00:07:39] There's a great book called Black Edge.

[00:07:41] He owned a hedge fund.

[00:07:43] The most controversial hedge fund outperformed all other

[00:07:48] hedge funds ended up being fined 1.8 billion.

[00:07:51] Great book on that.

[00:07:52] Another alumni Michael Milken.

[00:07:54] Oh yeah.

[00:07:55] Jockbunking.

[00:07:56] Another guy Frank Catrone.

[00:07:57] If we're doing the internet bubble he was the guy if

[00:08:00] you wanted to do an IPO back then you went to

[00:08:03] Frank Catrone.

[00:08:04] Elon Musk is.

[00:08:05] Did he graduate or is he a wonder?

[00:08:06] I don't know if he did.

[00:08:08] I don't know if he did but I don't know if we do one on

[00:08:11] Elon Musk but we definitely do one I'd say on the

[00:08:13] PayPal mafia because of the.

[00:08:14] Yeah absolutely.

[00:08:16] Yeah and another alumni is Trump.

[00:08:19] So if he went before.

[00:08:20] Oh for Bones Burr himself.

[00:08:23] Yes.

[00:08:25] No again I think we're doing a story on Trump.

[00:08:28] Probably just on his business.

[00:08:29] I don't think he's into the politics side of it.

[00:08:31] No no definitely not.

[00:08:33] But yeah so that's where he went to school in America

[00:08:37] but you're right let's if we go back to England

[00:08:39] because that's where it all started.

[00:08:40] He was in Harrow and he met a guy called Rizak Najib.

[00:08:44] Yes.

[00:08:45] And Rizak Najib is the Malaysian Prime Minister's

[00:08:48] stepson and through this relationship with Rizak

[00:08:50] he got very friendly with the Prime Minister and his

[00:08:52] wife a lady by the name of Rosma Mansour.

[00:08:55] And as I said I don't want to get into too many

[00:08:57] names but it is worth mentioning her because

[00:08:59] she's quite a central character in all this isn't she?

[00:09:01] Yes absolutely yeah yeah.

[00:09:03] Hello.

[00:09:04] Amanda Marcus of her time really.

[00:09:06] Very much and she wasn't a wilting flower I mean

[00:09:09] when you go through the transcripts and all that

[00:09:12] and as we talk later on when it comes to the court cases

[00:09:15] she was very much a power broker and as involved in

[00:09:19] this whole scheme as as low and the Prime Minister

[00:09:23] a guy by the name of Najib Rizak

[00:09:25] who would be the other central character.

[00:09:28] And is it one of these two schools I think there was

[00:09:31] there was probably when you look at Jolo

[00:09:35] and sort of his centrality to the story I guess

[00:09:38] there's two elements that really stand out.

[00:09:40] One is sort of the concept of the sovereign wealth fund

[00:09:44] which he would have probably identified through the

[00:09:49] the Middle Eastern guys who was rubbing shoulders with

[00:09:52] and became aware of it there.

[00:09:55] That's one sort of formative moment I would think

[00:09:57] and then the other one is probably his ability

[00:09:59] to network and party.

[00:10:02] His networking and partying was definitely

[00:10:04] I mean you know he was a smart guy that's obvious

[00:10:07] but his ability to network and to pick out people

[00:10:11] of key influence he could use to meet other people

[00:10:15] of key influence and as you said partying

[00:10:18] because he seemed to have met an awful lot of these people

[00:10:20] while he was out partying that that seems to be

[00:10:23] to me his his key strength.

[00:10:26] He definitely leveraged that to the maximum benefits.

[00:10:31] So what happens then after War Group?

[00:10:37] Well it seems that his earlier business career

[00:10:42] and he's a very young man even here but I didn't get

[00:10:45] a whole lot on his initial successes other than

[00:10:48] his first big recorded deal was in 2006 when he was 25

[00:10:53] and he was financed by a Kuwaiti bank to purchase

[00:10:56] a luxury high-rise building in Kuala Lumpur for 87 million dollars.

[00:11:00] Okay, yeah.

[00:11:01] Now doesn't say I couldn't find out how much he made from that

[00:11:03] so he's only 25 at the time.

[00:11:05] Personally I think in the book they say he didn't make

[00:11:08] much of anything at all from that.

[00:11:09] Didn't he?

[00:11:10] Yeah.

[00:11:11] But it still set him on the track in that

[00:11:14] after he did that deal he set up an investment group

[00:11:17] that included a Malaysian prince and this again talks

[00:11:19] to his ability to network.

[00:11:21] So there was a Malaysian prince, a Kuwaiti sheik

[00:11:24] and a friend of his from the United Arab Emirates

[00:11:26] who had done to become ambassador for the United States

[00:11:28] and Mexico is now one of the most influential people

[00:11:31] in Abu Dhabi.

[00:11:32] So he set up this fund with these people

[00:11:35] and again there's not much detail.

[00:11:37] I didn't get much detail on what this sort

[00:11:39] of investment group did.

[00:11:40] Did you get anything on that?

[00:11:42] I know there was an investment in oil tankers

[00:11:47] so I guess that's fairly typical

[00:11:51] of the oil industry in Abu Dhabi linked to the Middle East.

[00:11:54] But I'm not sure if that was one of the investments

[00:11:57] in 1MDB or whether it was in the earlier investment fund

[00:12:00] or whether one was sort of collapsed into the other

[00:12:03] and not entirely clear a lot.

[00:12:05] Yeah, yeah it's all a bit fuzzy.

[00:12:07] His early business career I think is very hazy.

[00:12:10] It really doesn't crystallize what he's up to

[00:12:13] until he starts this 1MDB fund

[00:12:16] or he gets involved with the Prime Minister.

[00:12:18] And I think the key moment that we can start to look at

[00:12:23] is it's 2009, September 2009.

[00:12:26] You've got Joe Lo, you got Najib Razak,

[00:12:29] the Malaysian Prime Minister.

[00:12:30] Najib Razak's family, his wife, his kids

[00:12:33] on a 300 foot soup we got off the coast of

[00:12:37] no sorry on the Mediterranean Sea

[00:12:39] and they're there with a Saudi prince,

[00:12:41] a guy called Prince Turkey bin Abdul Aziz.

[00:12:45] He's the seventh son of the king

[00:12:46] and so he's brother of the infamous Muhammad bin Salman,

[00:12:50] the current Crown Prince

[00:12:52] and the guy who's widely believed to have murdered

[00:12:55] or ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist.

[00:12:58] So we've went from bones burrs to bone saws.

[00:13:06] Apologies for the interruption.

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[00:14:52] More or less.

[00:14:56] Oh God, that's bad.

[00:14:58] So this guy, this Crown Prince is a brother of MBES

[00:15:01] and there's another guy on board,

[00:15:02] a guy by the name of Tarak Obed,

[00:15:04] a guy that's Joe Lowe mess while partying in Geneva.

[00:15:09] So this is where the discussion on that boss took place

[00:15:15] where I presume they decided they would set up

[00:15:19] this one MDB fund.

[00:15:20] Well, I think there was a fund already there

[00:15:22] and the Najib Raza kind of took over that fund

[00:15:26] because as prime minister he was also strangely

[00:15:28] minister for finance, which I thought really weird.

[00:15:33] And they renamed it one MDB

[00:15:36] and they set up a joint venture with these two Saudis

[00:15:42] who have formed a company called Petro Saudi International.

[00:15:46] Yeah, so they're the guys that had the two Tunkers?

[00:15:51] Exactly, yeah.

[00:15:52] Yeah.

[00:15:53] And the Petro Saudi told potential partners

[00:15:56] that he controlled oil fields in Central Asia,

[00:15:58] which he would put up as a clash really

[00:15:59] at to secure cash fund from state investors.

[00:16:02] So on this, he asked the dealers agreed

[00:16:04] Petro Saudi and one MDB formed a 2.5 billion joint venture

[00:16:09] and they're going to use the funds

[00:16:11] to invest in projects in Malaysia.

[00:16:13] And I'm assuming to create jobs

[00:16:15] and develop infrastructure.

[00:16:17] Is that more or less what the...

[00:16:18] Yeah, exactly.

[00:16:20] So this concept works very well.

[00:16:23] There's loads of sort of examples,

[00:16:26] particularly I guess Norway.

[00:16:29] This is a shining beacon of one of these

[00:16:32] state backed sovereign world funds

[00:16:35] who invest very carefully and minimize the impact

[00:16:39] on the resources within the kind of whole country

[00:16:44] and try to develop a sustainable investment fund

[00:16:48] for a development role.

[00:16:51] That last part of the sentence has been missed

[00:16:54] when the model is copied over to Malaysia.

[00:16:59] But yeah, that tells exactly right.

[00:17:02] Yeah.

[00:17:03] And I suppose that's the key difference here

[00:17:05] because Joe Lo and Najib Razak really just...

[00:17:09] It wasn't as if they set up this fund

[00:17:11] and their intention was, you know,

[00:17:12] we take a little bit here and a little bit there.

[00:17:14] Their intention basically was just to under this fund

[00:17:19] and take as much out of it as possible.

[00:17:21] It wasn't just skimming off the top.

[00:17:23] Like this was like crazy.

[00:17:27] I think one of the amazing things was we had set up the fund.

[00:17:32] Petrosaoudi goes, okay, so we're going to put our assets in.

[00:17:37] Money goes into the fund and they go,

[00:17:39] okay, so we're going to take our money back out

[00:17:41] that represents the value of our assets.

[00:17:45] So that should have been a big red slash and light

[00:17:48] and an alarm going off somewhere or something.

[00:17:51] As soon as the account was nearly kind of set up,

[00:17:54] 700 billion US dollars whipped out.

[00:17:57] That's it.

[00:17:58] I mean, within weeks of this meeting on the yachts in September,

[00:18:02] the fund was set up.

[00:18:04] Joe Lo then told the 1MDB board

[00:18:06] because again, it should be noted

[00:18:07] that Joe Lo never actually sat on the board of 1MDB

[00:18:10] and throughout this whole saga,

[00:18:13] Joe Lo sort of says, I had nothing to do with 1MDB,

[00:18:15] but he did.

[00:18:16] He called the shots because he had

[00:18:18] the backing of the prime minister

[00:18:20] and he could ring up 1MDB whenever he wanted

[00:18:22] and said we need this and the 1MDB board knew

[00:18:26] that this is at the say so of the prime minister.

[00:18:29] So he was on board to have control of the board.

[00:18:33] That's one of the amazing things.

[00:18:34] As things started to sort of unravel a little bit

[00:18:39] in the book, what they say is

[00:18:41] that he communicated primarily by email

[00:18:44] but not in emails in his own name.

[00:18:46] So he had a number of associates

[00:18:49] and he would communicate

[00:18:51] but not really communicating his own name.

[00:18:54] So a master of being one remove away from the blame

[00:18:59] if you like, a very careful, cute sort of a guy

[00:19:04] who made sure that there was always

[00:19:07] one remove away from him.

[00:19:08] I guess that's one of the other interesting things

[00:19:11] from the story.

[00:19:12] It's always like a theme.

[00:19:14] He was very generous to the people who surrounded him.

[00:19:18] He would have spread the love

[00:19:20] and to a certain extent I suppose spread the blame

[00:19:23] around his circles.

[00:19:26] So he involved everybody in the scheme indirectly.

[00:19:30] So it was a sheer guilt and responsibility

[00:19:32] from everybody who he circulated with and worked with.

[00:19:35] Most definitely.

[00:19:36] I mean, he's not a guy you would have liked to have missed

[00:19:38] because the amount of money as you said

[00:19:40] that he offered people,

[00:19:42] it would have been hard for a lot of people

[00:19:44] to turn this down

[00:19:45] because let's go back to this initial deal.

[00:19:48] So one MDB is set up within weeks of it being set up.

[00:19:51] Joe Low rings up the one MDB board and says,

[00:19:54] yeah, Petro Saudi had put 700 million

[00:19:56] into this joint venture as a loan.

[00:19:59] We need to pay them 700 million now

[00:20:01] and the Petro, the IMDB boards went okay.

[00:20:05] Basically they gave 700 million into the fund

[00:20:08] and Joe Low moved it straight out of his account

[00:20:11] or straight out of the account into his own account.

[00:20:13] And as you said, probably many steps removed.

[00:20:16] You know, it was hard to track these things

[00:20:17] but it did go into an account connected to Joe Low.

[00:20:21] And on the same day that he transferred that 700 million,

[00:20:25] two Petro Saudi directors,

[00:20:26] one the guy Tarak O'Bad we named on the Boas

[00:20:29] and another, and he was only 32 at the time.

[00:20:32] Another guy called Patrick Mahoney in,

[00:20:35] the Americans would probably say Mahoney

[00:20:37] but it was Mahoney, a guy based in London.

[00:20:40] Both of those guys got paid $85 million each.

[00:20:46] Now they had only set up this within a few weeks.

[00:20:48] So within a few weeks of meeting Joe Low

[00:20:50] and getting this deal sorted,

[00:20:52] they got paid 85 million each.

[00:20:54] Basically they were paid 85 million to allow Joe Low

[00:20:58] to steal 700 million.

[00:21:00] And you could see now it'd be a hard thing

[00:21:02] for a lot of people to say no to.

[00:21:05] As you said he's overly generous like,

[00:21:07] I mean, 85 million for a few weeks work.

[00:21:11] And brazen.

[00:21:14] I mean, this isn't drids and drabs of money

[00:21:16] coming out of the account.

[00:21:17] This is a huge chill of the total capital of the company.

[00:21:21] We've doubted him one go.

[00:21:23] That's it, that's what I'm saying like,

[00:21:25] they weren't even, brazen is the word,

[00:21:27] they weren't skimming a bit to try and get away with it.

[00:21:29] They just swiped it all and just took it all out.

[00:21:32] And then you think, all right,

[00:21:34] so what were they doing with the money?

[00:21:36] This initial 700 million,

[00:21:39] the Saro Act report,

[00:21:40] and I'm sure you probably had it in your book as well.

[00:21:43] They've a few messages from Facebook that were posted

[00:21:46] when the 700 million transfer went into the account

[00:21:50] controlled by Joe Low and it's from one of his lieutenants

[00:21:53] and on Facebook,

[00:21:54] and you can see these messages on Facebook,

[00:21:56] he texted or he put in the following message.

[00:21:59] I feel the earth move under my feet.

[00:22:02] Right?

[00:22:02] And then 10 days later,

[00:22:04] the same guy posted a message saying,

[00:22:06] in Vegas, bring a jacket because it's raining crystal.

[00:22:10] Ha ha ha.

[00:22:13] Yeah, the earth moving under your feet

[00:22:14] was probably one of the luxury yachts or not.

[00:22:17] Probably what?

[00:22:18] Because I mean, if you then look at the figures,

[00:22:20] it really did rain champagne

[00:22:22] because between even October 2009 and June 2010

[00:22:27] just a period of eight months,

[00:22:29] it's estimated that Low and his entourage

[00:22:32] spent over 80 million on alcohol,

[00:22:35] gambling in Vegas, private jets,

[00:22:38] renting super yachts and to pay for playmates

[00:22:40] and Hollywood stars to hang out with them.

[00:22:43] So, and Hollywood stars was definitely central

[00:22:46] to the whole Joe Low.

[00:22:48] Yeah, poor Jamie Foxx comes out all over the book.

[00:22:52] He seems to be like a personal entertainer for Joe Low.

[00:22:57] Oh, you see, I only saw him mentioned

[00:22:59] as he attended this party.

[00:23:00] No, no, he's saying things

[00:23:02] and entertains and compares

[00:23:05] and he's cited several times in the book.

[00:23:09] Well, this is right.

[00:23:11] I wonder if he wanted the guys they're referring to

[00:23:13] because we have one of the Hollywood personalities said

[00:23:16] that he was offered half a million dollars

[00:23:20] to accompany Joe Low on his entourage to Vegas

[00:23:22] with private jet hospitality and gambling chips thrown in.

[00:23:25] Now that Hollywood personality who wasn't named

[00:23:27] said he refused, but he said he knows

[00:23:29] that other Hollywood people accepted the offer.

[00:23:32] Yes.

[00:23:33] And another one, you mentioned Jamie Foxx,

[00:23:35] one that I came across because I suppose visually

[00:23:39] it makes a big splash is him and Paris Hilton.

[00:23:41] Yes.

[00:23:42] And Paris Hilton was hanging out with him all the time.

[00:23:46] And even though she denies

[00:23:47] that she was ever paid to hang out with him,

[00:23:49] Hilton's entourage and Low's entourage

[00:23:51] were in each other's company.

[00:23:53] Yes.

[00:23:53] An awful lot of the time.

[00:23:54] And I saw for Hilton's 29th birthday,

[00:23:57] Low bought her Cartier watch,

[00:23:59] gave her $250,000 in gambling chips

[00:24:03] and asked her to join him at the barricade table

[00:24:05] where in the space of 10 minutes

[00:24:06] he proceeded to lose two million dollars.

[00:24:09] Is that what you did in your life as well?

[00:24:11] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:12] Under several instances of he and Paris Hilton

[00:24:16] being sort of socializing and partying together.

[00:24:19] Yeah.

[00:24:21] And then of course, we probably get into it a little

[00:24:24] in a little while, but later on to the Caprio

[00:24:27] and some of the Hollywood guys seemed to have

[00:24:31] given that sprinkle of stardust to the entourage as well.

[00:24:36] Definitely.

[00:24:37] And accommodation as well, right?

[00:24:40] So they get these kind of luxury suites in Vegas hotels

[00:24:44] and they essentially reserve them for months

[00:24:48] just the excess is just mind boggling.

[00:24:52] That's it.

[00:24:53] I mean, it is the excess

[00:24:54] when you're spending that kind of money,

[00:24:56] even though you've stolen 700 million

[00:24:59] and I think after paying off the Petro Saudi guys

[00:25:01] you've got 530 million.

[00:25:03] I'm guessing 530 million can only get you so far.

[00:25:06] So, you know,

[00:25:07] Low and his guys had to start dipping more

[00:25:10] into the 1MDB money bank or piggy bank and they did.

[00:25:14] I mean, I've got a few more figures here

[00:25:16] like in 2010, Low got 1MDB

[00:25:19] to invest 500 million in joint venture

[00:25:22] and he used 260 million of that,

[00:25:24] just took it out to buy a Malaysian bank

[00:25:26] of which he was the majority shareholder

[00:25:28] and apparently 260 million was way more

[00:25:31] than the bank was worth.

[00:25:32] So he made a nice bit of money out of that.

[00:25:35] And then in 2010,

[00:25:37] he got 1MDB to add an additional 830 million

[00:25:41] to the joint venture

[00:25:42] and US Department of Justice officials said this,

[00:25:45] 330 million again went straight out

[00:25:48] into an account that was controlled by Joe Low.

[00:25:50] So within the first two years of 1MDB,

[00:25:53] we're looking at well over a billion

[00:25:55] already stolen out of the account.

[00:25:57] So it's amazing.

[00:25:59] It is nuts.

[00:26:00] It is nuts.

[00:26:01] And now alarm bells going off.

[00:26:03] I think one of the other interesting things is

[00:26:05] this isn't actually too much

[00:26:09] after sort of banking crisis and that bomb.

[00:26:13] So you would imagine regulators

[00:26:15] and oversight should have been sort of,

[00:26:19] alarm bells, particularly Goldman Sachs

[00:26:23] appears to be sort of...

[00:26:24] Well, I mean, we're gonna get into Goldman Sachs now

[00:26:27] because that's where it really starts to rein money.

[00:26:31] And I think Goldman Sachs are very much

[00:26:35] in the firing line here.

[00:26:40] Yeah, let's talk about Goldman Sachs first of all

[00:26:42] because Goldman Sachs entered the equation

[00:26:44] through a German banker called Tim Leisner.

[00:26:47] Yes.

[00:26:48] This guy is a German.

[00:26:50] He definitely doesn't sound like any German I've ever missed

[00:26:52] because this guy, he's a reputation as a ladies man.

[00:26:55] Yeah.

[00:26:56] He converted twice to Islam,

[00:26:58] both types to impress Muslim women he was dating.

[00:27:01] He was known in Goldman Sachs as a hardcore, hearty animal.

[00:27:05] Yeah.

[00:27:06] While the whole 1MDB scandal was going on,

[00:27:09] he married Kamora Lee Simmons,

[00:27:11] the former wife of Russell Simmons,

[00:27:13] founder of Def Jam.

[00:27:14] Definitely another good story I'd say there

[00:27:16] in Russell Simmons and Def Jam.

[00:27:18] And she herself, very successful businesswoman

[00:27:20] on the Fat Farm clothing line,

[00:27:21] she's a net worth of about 200 million.

[00:27:23] But while he was married to her,

[00:27:25] he was also married to another woman

[00:27:27] and he had given Kamora Simmons

[00:27:30] a Photoshop documents showing that he was divorced

[00:27:33] from this one so he's a thigamist as well.

[00:27:34] So he was definitely a flamboyant, I suppose liar.

[00:27:41] Yeah.

[00:27:42] You can certainly see how sort of burns

[00:27:44] of a feather flock together in terms

[00:27:46] of the relationship with Joe Lowe then.

[00:27:48] Exactly, exactly.

[00:27:50] But this guy, despite all that litany of,

[00:27:54] I suppose character flaws,

[00:27:56] he was still made chairman of Goldman Sachs,

[00:27:58] Southeast Asia and why?

[00:28:00] Because apparently he was good at bringing in the money.

[00:28:03] He was a rainmaker.

[00:28:05] And although somebody said his character suited

[00:28:08] countries like Malaysia and I think this is

[00:28:09] when you said, you know,

[00:28:10] why weren't there any red flags?

[00:28:13] There should have been red flags in the US, most definitely.

[00:28:16] But in Malaysia, I think as we'll find out,

[00:28:19] the level of corruption is so deep

[00:28:21] and the power that the ruling party has over

[00:28:25] all aspects of life that this story really had

[00:28:28] an awful lot of trouble filtering true

[00:28:30] to the general public.

[00:28:32] And even when it started being broke in the US.

[00:28:35] Plus there was the political reality as well,

[00:28:40] that I suppose.

[00:28:42] So yes, you know, a corrupt country.

[00:28:46] But at the same time,

[00:28:48] I believe Obama was in power.

[00:28:51] He was turning his sort of political focus towards

[00:28:58] the Far East, you know,

[00:29:01] in an effort to kind of head off the influence of China.

[00:29:05] So what's interesting from a geopolitical perspective

[00:29:08] is I guess what you have is maybe

[00:29:12] maybe a deliberate overlooking of some of those excesses

[00:29:17] and some of that corruption from a geopolitical perspective

[00:29:20] because it's convenient politically expedient to do so.

[00:29:25] I think that's the right.

[00:29:26] And I think I saw photographs,

[00:29:28] I think Najib Razak, the prime minister of Malaysia,

[00:29:32] allied himself very closely with Barack Obama.

[00:29:34] There was him and Barack Obama playing golf together.

[00:29:37] I think on the political sense, yeah,

[00:29:39] that probably had an impact as well.

[00:29:43] But Goldman should have definitely,

[00:29:45] I mean, Goldman did know when we look at this.

[00:29:49] Just getting back to Tim Leisner,

[00:29:51] he and a guy called Roger Inge,

[00:29:54] who was head of Goldman in Malaysia,

[00:29:56] got together with Jolo and they said,

[00:29:58] okay, well let's raise some bonds for the 1MDB fund.

[00:30:02] Now Goldman Sachs had already red flagged Jolo

[00:30:06] and decided not to do business with him previously

[00:30:09] because they considered the source of his money

[00:30:12] to be very, very suspect.

[00:30:14] And that's their business with him personally

[00:30:16] as a private banking client?

[00:30:18] Yes, that was this, but he was on their radar.

[00:30:21] So he was on their radar.

[00:30:23] They knew not to do business with him.

[00:30:25] And yes, Goldman Sachs went on to underwrite

[00:30:28] 6.5 billion into the 1MDB fund.

[00:30:32] And I'm guessing because we have other examples of this,

[00:30:35] I'm guessing they knew that Jolo was involved in this.

[00:30:38] But why did they decide to do business with them?

[00:30:41] Well, I think one of the reasons was

[00:30:43] when you look at the 6.5 billion

[00:30:45] that they underwrote for these bonds,

[00:30:47] they earned Goldman Sachs over 600 million.

[00:30:51] That's nearly a 10% commission.

[00:30:53] Whereas the normal commission on these type of bonds

[00:30:55] is one to two.

[00:30:56] That's one to two cents, yeah.

[00:30:57] Yeah, one to two percent.

[00:30:58] So low was paying 10%.

[00:31:01] And I'm guessing that, you know,

[00:31:03] this maybe smoothed Goldman's conscience.

[00:31:06] Yeah, when it came to...

[00:31:08] I wonder if Tim Leisner was giving someone,

[00:31:12] as well as license to do his off-vish

[00:31:14] when he was bringing in the sort of money?

[00:31:17] Yeah, yeah.

[00:31:18] So it is a big stain.

[00:31:20] And I mean, as we'll see later on,

[00:31:21] Goldman paid dearly for us.

[00:31:24] But in the course of a sudden year

[00:31:26] between 2012 and 2013,

[00:31:28] Goldman raised 6.5 billion.

[00:31:31] And it's estimated that out of this 6.5 billion,

[00:31:35] I think something like 2.5 billion was stolen by Jolo.

[00:31:39] They're the figures I had.

[00:31:40] Would you have the same numbers?

[00:31:42] Yeah, it's very hard to be definitive about it,

[00:31:45] I suppose.

[00:31:46] I think for me, the other interesting point is

[00:31:50] to try and understand how or what they secured

[00:31:53] those bonds against what would be assets.

[00:31:56] Yeah, but I didn't find anything there.

[00:32:00] My sources were more or less based on

[00:32:02] just the main headline figures,

[00:32:03] and they didn't dig into...

[00:32:05] Why were they telling each other?

[00:32:06] Why are they telling outside potential investors?

[00:32:08] I'm not sure because they quit out to 700 million

[00:32:13] early on.

[00:32:13] So I don't know what assets were left.

[00:32:15] I know certainly they were appointed

[00:32:17] towards these oil tankers or transport ships.

[00:32:22] But there must have been other

[00:32:24] physical assets that were bought.

[00:32:27] I remember reading about there was talk of

[00:32:30] in the process of buying certain refineries

[00:32:32] down in South America, was it in Harrogwire?

[00:32:35] Stuff like that.

[00:32:36] But I couldn't find...

[00:32:38] In all my research, there was very little real assets.

[00:32:42] There was a few hotels that Jolo bought.

[00:32:44] Yes.

[00:32:46] There wasn't a whole lot there.

[00:32:48] Yeah, and then there's a little bit of sort of ambiguity

[00:32:53] when you see purchases happening.

[00:32:55] Well, same spending really.

[00:32:56] That kind of line between what's Jolo property

[00:33:00] and what's company property.

[00:33:02] So if it was the stake bought me and my music,

[00:33:05] but I think that might have been by Jolo personally

[00:33:09] as opposed to through the fund.

[00:33:11] Yeah.

[00:33:12] It's all very murky, but I suppose what is out there,

[00:33:15] and this is really...

[00:33:17] I suppose the iPop and stuff, as you mentioned,

[00:33:19] what Jolo seems to have bought personally.

[00:33:22] And I got a list here and it really is...

[00:33:26] It's just crazy.

[00:33:27] Now, he bought all this in the space of just a few years

[00:33:30] and it just shows you how extravagant and how out there.

[00:33:34] And while he was doing all this,

[00:33:36] you can't spend this type of money without raising eyebrows.

[00:33:38] And he did raise eyebrows.

[00:33:40] People were saying, who's this guy

[00:33:42] and where's he getting all the money?

[00:33:43] Because this is what he bought.

[00:33:45] These are the kind of things that when you buy them,

[00:33:47] they're in the papers.

[00:33:48] So he bought a four bedroom penthouse

[00:33:50] and time-owner centre for $30.5 million,

[00:33:53] a condo and so-ho for $14 million,

[00:33:55] a house in LA for $39 million,

[00:33:58] a house for the Prime Minister's steps son in LA

[00:34:01] for $17.5 million.

[00:34:03] He bought a penthouse in London for £35 million,

[00:34:06] a red brick in Belgravia, London for £17 million,

[00:34:10] a private jet for $35 million.

[00:34:12] In 2013 alone, he spent $330 million on art.

[00:34:18] On art.

[00:34:19] On art.

[00:34:20] And then between April 2013 and September 2014,

[00:34:24] he bought $200 million worth of jewelry.

[00:34:27] The $8 million of that apparently went to the model,

[00:34:30] the supermodel Miranda Kerr.

[00:34:32] Yeah.

[00:34:32] Was he dating her or was he just-

[00:34:34] I think he was.

[00:34:35] Giving her the jewelry.

[00:34:37] So she had broken up with Orlando Bloom, I think.

[00:34:42] They moved into sort of each other's orbit.

[00:34:47] He shared her with gifts.

[00:34:49] I think quite not that long afterwards,

[00:34:52] then she would have met Evan Spiegel, the Snapchat guy.

[00:34:58] Yeah, I think they're still married

[00:35:00] and have a family together.

[00:35:02] Nice, right.

[00:35:03] So I don't know how real it was,

[00:35:05] but that's a theme.

[00:35:07] Yeah.

[00:35:08] Sure.

[00:35:09] You know, the friendships are-

[00:35:10] Beautiful women.

[00:35:12] And you were never sure if he was dating them or not,

[00:35:14] or if they were just along for the ride.

[00:35:17] But it's difficult.

[00:35:18] Yeah, and he had a long-standing girlfriend

[00:35:20] from back home as well.

[00:35:22] So it was a little-

[00:35:23] Oh, did he?

[00:35:24] Yeah, the long-standing sort of relationship

[00:35:25] which is a little bit peculiar

[00:35:27] because sometimes she was out in the open

[00:35:30] and then sometimes she wasn't.

[00:35:32] Then he had a girlfriend who was a singer

[00:35:35] or a Malaysian singer.

[00:35:35] I heard about her, yeah.

[00:35:36] And I think he tried to help her

[00:35:39] develop an international fan base

[00:35:41] but with limited success.

[00:35:44] Right.

[00:35:44] I wondered if this girl from back home

[00:35:46] could make $8 million worth of jewelry.

[00:35:49] I don't think so.

[00:35:50] I think the Prime Minister's wife

[00:35:52] was the biggest recipient to some of that jewelry.

[00:35:54] Well, interesting you should mention her

[00:35:56] because next on my list was,

[00:35:57] I don't know if they referenced this in the book,

[00:36:00] a $27 million pink diamond necklace.

[00:36:04] And this is-

[00:36:06] There was a famous meeting between Joe Low,

[00:36:08] Rose Maimansur, that's the Prime Minister's wife,

[00:36:11] and the New York Jeweler, Lorraine Schwartz,

[00:36:13] the Metana Yoss, again in the Mediterranean.

[00:36:16] And the hire of the Yoss itself

[00:36:18] apparently cost $4 million just to hire the Yoss

[00:36:21] so that they could meet up and discuss

[00:36:23] and maybe they were doing a fitting or whatever.

[00:36:26] But the end result was that Joe Low bought Rose Maimansur

[00:36:30] a $27 million pink diamond necklace.

[00:36:33] Pink diamonds, yeah.

[00:36:34] Yeah.

[00:36:35] And I'm guessing there that maybe Joe Low

[00:36:37] after spending $4 million on that yacht

[00:36:39] probably thought, you know what?

[00:36:40] I'd probably better off just get my own Yoss

[00:36:42] and smash it out all this passion.

[00:36:44] So he went off and he bought a yacht called the Equanimacy,

[00:36:47] which he bought for $261 million.

[00:36:50] So, yeah.

[00:36:52] And that was actually used as a way

[00:36:56] to try and determine where he was.

[00:37:00] So because that boat became so identifiable

[00:37:04] when he started to run sort of,

[00:37:06] run afoul of the law,

[00:37:08] when he started to move into the crosshairs

[00:37:12] of legal entities,

[00:37:13] they tracked the location of the boat

[00:37:15] to try and understand where he might be.

[00:37:17] Right.

[00:37:19] So it's like some Bond villain or something, you know?

[00:37:23] Some amount of money.

[00:37:24] And then the final thing I have on his nose,

[00:37:26] two more things on his spending spree.

[00:37:28] So there was his 31st birthday party.

[00:37:31] Oh yeah, notorious.

[00:37:33] Yes, yeah.

[00:37:34] I mean, this birthday party apparently

[00:37:37] the host of Lifestyles and the Rich and Famous,

[00:37:39] I forget his name now,

[00:37:40] but he reckoned it was the most expensive party in LA ever

[00:37:43] and he put a price tag of $100 million on the party.

[00:37:47] Yeah, so there was private jets in,

[00:37:50] there was accommodation on the strip

[00:37:51] and all of the suites and the casinos.

[00:37:55] There was limousines and private car hire.

[00:38:00] It just crazy stuff.

[00:38:02] In your Ferris wheel?

[00:38:04] A bar of car from Solid Ice.

[00:38:06] But I thought this was the best.

[00:38:08] Britney Spears was paid a million dollars

[00:38:10] to jump out of her birthday cake

[00:38:12] and sing Happy Birthday to Joe Lowe.

[00:38:15] And the gangster rap, or gangsta style.

[00:38:19] Gangnam style.

[00:38:20] Gangnam style.

[00:38:21] Sawyer or whatever he had.

[00:38:23] Yeah, he was apparently paid even more than a million dollars

[00:38:26] just to perform at the event.

[00:38:29] Yeah, I guess Britney's jumping out of the cake

[00:38:33] is a bit like Marnum on Roll.

[00:38:36] That's what it was like in two and a book anyway.

[00:38:39] Was this?

[00:38:39] Yeah, as you said Jamie Foxx was there,

[00:38:43] DiCaprio was there, Kanye West,

[00:38:46] Kim Kardashian, Robert De Niro,

[00:38:48] all of Hollywood by the sounds of it was there.

[00:38:50] Yeah, so he was cuddling up to movie producers

[00:38:53] and directors as well.

[00:38:54] So he would have meshed DiCaprio

[00:38:59] and would have played a lot of poker with him.

[00:39:01] DiCaprio was a famous poker player.

[00:39:03] So it's kind of a fascinating kind of character.

[00:39:09] But what striking is, I guess for me,

[00:39:13] when you see pictures of him,

[00:39:16] he looks uncomfortable and awkward.

[00:39:20] He doesn't look like he's comfortable

[00:39:24] in the company of these A-list Hollywood superstarts really.

[00:39:28] And this was this, in the party they said

[00:39:31] there wasn't just something like a VVVIP,

[00:39:34] those different areas of VIP sections.

[00:39:37] And Joe Lowe stayed in obviously the VVVIP section

[00:39:41] just on his own with one or two friends.

[00:39:44] And he'd come out, they said every now and then

[00:39:46] just to say hello.

[00:39:47] But you're right, the whole thing people

[00:39:49] that were at the party said it was so strange.

[00:39:51] He wasn't mingling, he didn't seem comfortable.

[00:39:54] Mingling wasn't the sort of the life and soul

[00:39:57] of the party, this gregarious outgoing kind of fella.

[00:40:01] He stayed in this roped area with a few of his close friends

[00:40:04] and that was it like.

[00:40:05] So yeah, he definitely doesn't seem like

[00:40:09] your standard playboy, but it seems like

[00:40:11] he still wanted all the surroundings

[00:40:13] and the trappings that come with being this rich playboy.

[00:40:17] Yeah, and I wonder, it was so ostentatious

[00:40:20] and so obvious.

[00:40:23] When were the alarm bells ringing?

[00:40:26] And did anybody, surely the prominence of these people

[00:40:30] and the lifestyles that they had

[00:40:33] should have been ringing alarm bells back home, right?

[00:40:36] You would have come so.

[00:40:38] This was very public, his spending was very public.

[00:40:41] There were photos of him starting to appear in magazines

[00:40:45] and talking about public.

[00:40:48] He financed the Prime Minister's son-in-law

[00:40:50] set up a production company called Red Granite.

[00:40:52] Jo Lowe financed it and Jo Lowe, true one MDB,

[00:40:56] put in a hundred million into the Wolf of Wall Street film.

[00:41:00] And this was hugely public.

[00:41:02] And so public thus Leonardo DiCaprio

[00:41:05] thanked Jo Lowe from the stage

[00:41:07] when he received his Golden Globe Award.

[00:41:09] So you're right.

[00:41:12] Whatever about this filtering true to American,

[00:41:14] I think Jo Lowe had loaded tall tales

[00:41:16] to tell any journalist that asked us

[00:41:18] to where the source of this money was coming from.

[00:41:21] Would surely people back in Malaysia

[00:41:23] would be kind of going, no, this is all?

[00:41:26] Yeah, and there was alarm bells.

[00:41:28] I know certainly the actual Wolf of Wall Street

[00:41:31] is saying the same right now.

[00:41:33] The guy who-

[00:41:34] Gordon Belfort.

[00:41:35] Yeah, said I know a con man when I see.

[00:41:38] He said there's something just not right about this.

[00:41:41] Oh, but he missed Jo Lowe.

[00:41:42] Yeah, so he was a consultant to the movie obviously.

[00:41:45] Of course, yeah.

[00:41:47] And don't forget that this was their second foray

[00:41:50] into Audi what they'd made Dumb and Dumber 2

[00:41:53] which was a disastrous movie

[00:41:56] and we're negotiating and troll money around

[00:41:59] in an effort to buy the right soul

[00:42:00] source of movies at this stage.

[00:42:02] Yeah.

[00:42:03] I think one of the lucky moments in the story

[00:42:08] is the fact that it was an or rated picture

[00:42:12] or likely to be given the script

[00:42:13] and what they wanted to do.

[00:42:15] And some of the other studios were reluctant

[00:42:19] to be involved in it or reluctant to finance it

[00:42:22] and they're erred out that the financing might be problematic.

[00:42:26] So to a certain extent, it was a lucky one to pick up.

[00:42:30] They were lucky they were in the right place at the right time.

[00:42:33] Yeah, because it was challenging to raise

[00:42:35] finance and support for this movie

[00:42:37] because of the nature of the script

[00:42:40] be it drug taking and sex.

[00:42:42] Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:44] And partying of course.

[00:42:46] Yeah, it's kind of a funny idness.

[00:42:48] A movie about a guy who swindles millions

[00:42:51] parties like it's 1999

[00:42:55] by Ziyas is actually financed

[00:42:58] by a guy who is doing exactly that.

[00:43:00] But yeah, so I mean, it was all very public

[00:43:03] but I suppose we've talked a lot

[00:43:05] about one guy who's involved

[00:43:07] but none of this would have happened

[00:43:09] without the impulse and the say so

[00:43:11] of the Prime Minister of Malaysia guy.

[00:43:14] Yeah, so maybe he was able to suppress

[00:43:16] some of this news from...

[00:43:18] Well, I mean as we get into this

[00:43:20] he definitely was.

[00:43:22] I wasn't aware of Malaysia or Malaysian politics really

[00:43:26] until obviously I started looking into this

[00:43:28] and it's interesting.

[00:43:30] Nizhi Razak, the Prime Minister,

[00:43:32] he was political royalty in Malaysia.

[00:43:34] That's right.

[00:43:35] His father was the second Prime Minister ever of Malaysia.

[00:43:38] His uncle then became the third Prime Minister

[00:43:41] ever of Malaysia.

[00:43:42] They led a party that held on to power

[00:43:45] since the foundation since Malaysia became independent in 1957.

[00:43:49] And so Razak was the heir apparent.

[00:43:52] He was an Anglophile, went to school and college in the UK,

[00:43:55] seen as a modus

[00:43:56] and was seen as a good bit more liberal

[00:43:58] than other Malaysian politicians.

[00:44:00] And initially he transformed tough laws

[00:44:02] and public gatherings.

[00:44:03] He cut government subsidies,

[00:44:05] loosened restrictions on foreign investment

[00:44:08] but as the spotlight started

[00:44:10] to focus on his corruption

[00:44:11] he became a modus and less liberal.

[00:44:14] He really instated detention without trial.

[00:44:17] They pursued a number of their critics

[00:44:20] with unseditioned charges.

[00:44:22] There was stuff in his history

[00:44:24] before he became Prime Minister

[00:44:26] that definitely would have pointed to his darker side.

[00:44:30] Are you aware of the submarine deal?

[00:44:32] Did that come out?

[00:44:33] No, no, no.

[00:44:34] Oh well this is really interesting

[00:44:36] and this is a bit grisly.

[00:44:37] This is all fun and games

[00:44:39] taking millions spending them and all that

[00:44:41] but this is actually a very scary

[00:44:45] part of where corruption can lead to.

[00:44:47] So this is a scandal that followed

[00:44:49] Razak throughout his career

[00:44:50] and it's an event that happened in 2002

[00:44:52] when he was Minister for Finance

[00:44:53] or Minister for Defence rather.

[00:44:56] He signed a 1.2 billion submarine deal

[00:44:58] to buy three French submarines

[00:45:00] and an Angolian interpreter and young mother

[00:45:02] by the name of Atlantuya Sharabu

[00:45:05] acted as an interpreter for this deal.

[00:45:07] Okay.

[00:45:09] Now it's transpired

[00:45:10] that there was a 114 million kickback

[00:45:14] that went into a company controlled by Razak's right-hand man

[00:45:17] and the money was apparently for

[00:45:19] an inverted commas consulting work

[00:45:21] even though the company that the money went into

[00:45:23] had only been founded a few months beforehand.

[00:45:26] So it was basically a kick-cruption.

[00:45:28] Yeah.

[00:45:28] Corruption.

[00:45:29] That went, the majority of that 114 million

[00:45:32] you can be sure went to Razak.

[00:45:35] Now apparently Atlantuya, the interpreter

[00:45:37] was promised 500,000 euro from this

[00:45:41] and she was also having an affair with Razak's right-hand man.

[00:45:45] So it's all a bit messy.

[00:45:47] But basically she never received the money

[00:45:49] and it's believed that when she threatened to talk about

[00:45:52] what she knew about

[00:45:53] she was kidnapped,

[00:45:55] taken to a forest, shot dead

[00:45:58] and then military-guided explosives

[00:46:00] were struck to her body

[00:46:01] and she was blown to pieces.

[00:46:02] Oh my God.

[00:46:03] Yeah.

[00:46:04] Now two policemen from an elite squad

[00:46:06] whose job it was to protect senior politicians

[00:46:10] and who had no connection with Atlantuya,

[00:46:12] they didn't even know her.

[00:46:14] They had no connection at all.

[00:46:15] They were found guilty of her murder

[00:46:17] and apparently all the evidence points to them

[00:46:19] and they've actually admitted to us.

[00:46:21] But they've also said that Najeeb Razak

[00:46:24] the current or the Malaysian prime minister

[00:46:27] during 1MDB and behind all this

[00:46:29] that he ordered her murder.

[00:46:31] Now there's a lot more to destroy

[00:46:33] than we can go through here

[00:46:34] but I'd really recommend any listener

[00:46:37] that wants to see more of this.

[00:46:38] They look up the 101 East documentary

[00:46:41] by Mary Ann Jollies,

[00:46:42] she's journalist I've referenced before

[00:46:44] and they're really going to detail of this.

[00:46:46] So...

[00:46:47] And a sad who broke the story?

[00:46:49] No, the story was...

[00:46:51] There was a trial because his right-hand man

[00:46:54] was implicated very early on in the story.

[00:46:56] Right.

[00:46:57] Now he got off

[00:46:59] and Razak has always maintained his innocence

[00:47:02] but the policemen who were found guilty of it

[00:47:05] I think one of them is still in Australia

[00:47:07] but one of them managed...

[00:47:08] One of them was Kos and is in Malaysia

[00:47:10] on death row at the moment

[00:47:12] and that policeman has said that

[00:47:14] he took his orders from Razak

[00:47:16] and it was Razak who ordered that they kill her.

[00:47:20] So very, very grisly.

[00:47:22] So this the kind of guy you're dealing with?

[00:47:24] Yeah, you're right.

[00:47:26] It's not just sort of the fun and games

[00:47:29] and the entertainment and the purging.

[00:47:30] It's ruthless.

[00:47:32] Yeah, nobody gets in his way

[00:47:34] and if they do, you know,

[00:47:36] he's take whatever step necessary

[00:47:38] to make sure that he doesn't get implicated.

[00:47:42] And...

[00:47:42] But anyway, I suppose getting back to 1MDB

[00:47:45] did Razak, how did Razak profit from this?

[00:47:48] Well, within days of the 2013 Goldman Sachs Bond offering

[00:47:52] finishing, 681 million of funds

[00:47:57] were placed into Razak's account which...

[00:47:59] Wow.

[00:48:00] I just found amazing that it actually...

[00:48:02] He didn't even try and hide it.

[00:48:03] He went straight into his own personal bank account

[00:48:07] which is just...

[00:48:08] It didn't even rest anywhere in the meantime.

[00:48:10] Didn't even rest while I left all their tates, no.

[00:48:13] Yeah.

[00:48:14] Went straight into his bank account.

[00:48:16] So there was that huge jump of cash.

[00:48:21] There was jewelry and gifts to the family.

[00:48:24] There was a transfer of property.

[00:48:27] I mean, what was the total amount that the Razak...

[00:48:31] Well, nobody knows...

[00:48:32] Family received.

[00:48:34] Nobody knows.

[00:48:34] I mean, we know there's that 681 million

[00:48:37] that would need to account.

[00:48:39] We know then and I've got a litany of what they found

[00:48:42] in their property when they raided them

[00:48:44] but I suppose it's worth letting the listeners know

[00:48:46] that it took a few years for this to come out in Malaysia

[00:48:49] because Razak was in power.

[00:48:52] Yeah.

[00:48:53] The transfer of 681 million happened in 2013

[00:48:57] and it was only in 2015 that the Sarah Acc report

[00:49:01] got loads of leaked documents from a whistleblower.

[00:49:04] Yes.

[00:49:05] And the whistleblower is a whole story unto itself

[00:49:07] because this poor whistleblower ended up in jail,

[00:49:09] in Thailand.

[00:49:10] That's right.

[00:49:11] I mean, the story strings to this

[00:49:12] but the whistleblower gave the Sarah Acc report

[00:49:15] loads and loads of documents, the elite tons.

[00:49:19] And the documents showed that 681 million

[00:49:21] was transferred from an account in Singapore

[00:49:24] that was linked to Jolot and went into Razak's account.

[00:49:28] And because Razak was in power,

[00:49:30] he was able to control the narrative.

[00:49:32] He basically sacked the attorney general

[00:49:34] and put in a new attorney general.

[00:49:36] Any politicians that started raising concerns

[00:49:38] were arrested on spurious charges.

[00:49:41] There were four members that headed

[00:49:43] an investigating Parliamentary Account Committees,

[00:49:46] they were promoted without any choice

[00:49:49] to cabinet positions

[00:49:51] which then left them with no power

[00:49:52] to continue investigating

[00:49:53] and Committees work was declared suspended.

[00:49:55] And then a mysterious fire swept to police headquarters

[00:49:58] where records of white collar crimes were kept.

[00:50:02] And at the same time,

[00:50:02] the government started blocking any websites

[00:50:04] that were reporting on this.

[00:50:06] And they also put out an arrest warrant.

[00:50:08] They asked Interpol to put out a red notice

[00:50:10] to arrest warrant for the arrest

[00:50:12] of Claire Rue Castle Brown,

[00:50:13] the editor of Sarah Acc report.

[00:50:15] Interpol refused to do so.

[00:50:16] Yeah, she would have been,

[00:50:17] she's Gordon Brown's sister now.

[00:50:20] She is.

[00:50:21] She is.

[00:50:22] She is a real tough cookie by the side.

[00:50:24] Yes, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:26] So yeah, so he basically,

[00:50:27] why because he was in power,

[00:50:29] he was able to shut down any mention of this.

[00:50:34] And so then you're kind of going,

[00:50:36] okay but it still came out that he had 681 million.

[00:50:40] So it took him a few months to explain that.

[00:50:42] And when he did, he said,

[00:50:43] oh the 681 million was a donation from Saudi Arabia

[00:50:48] as a thank you for helping in the fight

[00:50:50] against Muslim extremists.

[00:50:52] And it was to use to fund his party as election time.

[00:50:55] And the attorney general,

[00:50:56] the new attorney general who he put in place

[00:50:59] even came out and said, yeah, that's all good.

[00:51:02] Money came from Saudi Arabia

[00:51:03] and the prime minister gave 620 million back

[00:51:06] because he didn't spend all of us.

[00:51:10] So they used it to sort of,

[00:51:14] because it was an election around this time as well.

[00:51:17] So they would have used some of it

[00:51:18] just for local election purposes.

[00:51:22] What fraction of it?

[00:51:23] A fraction of it.

[00:51:25] And I'd say it must have hurt Razzak big time

[00:51:27] to give 620 million of that hard earned cash back to.

[00:51:32] Yeah.

[00:51:33] He said he gave it back to Saudi Arabia.

[00:51:34] But there were reports from the two guys

[00:51:36] you talk about from the billion dollar wheel

[00:51:39] in the Wall Street Journal at the time

[00:51:40] and in the Sarac report,

[00:51:42] they had tons of documents showing that this was loaded.

[00:51:45] BS, that the funds came from accounts linked to Joe Lowell.

[00:51:50] And how did the wheels come off?

[00:51:52] I mean, it seems like, okay.

[00:51:54] So one had Joe Lowell starting to maybe re-portray

[00:52:00] and excuse his lifestyle,

[00:52:02] talking about historical wealth.

[00:52:04] He started to realize, I think,

[00:52:07] as news was breaking back home

[00:52:10] that he needed to be a little bit more careful around

[00:52:13] how he communicated, how he was seen.

[00:52:16] They seemed to dial back the high profile visibility

[00:52:20] a little bit.

[00:52:22] Where did it all start to turn?

[00:52:25] When did things start to take care?

[00:52:28] Well, I'm not too sure about the history

[00:52:30] or the record in America

[00:52:32] because the American Department of Justice

[00:52:34] were definitely calling to Joe Lowell.

[00:52:36] But where it all really started to unravel

[00:52:38] for Razzak was his party lost power.

[00:52:41] His party had been in power since 1957 or 1959.

[00:52:46] He knew as long as he stayed in power, he was fine.

[00:52:49] But the opposition who ran against him

[00:52:51] ran against him on the promise

[00:52:52] that they will investigate 1MDB.

[00:52:55] So they won.

[00:52:56] They started investigating 1MDB.

[00:52:58] They raided Razzak's house.

[00:52:59] When they raided Razzak's house,

[00:53:01] they found 567 luxury handbag stuff

[00:53:05] worth $30 million in cash.

[00:53:07] They found 423 luxury watches

[00:53:10] and they found 12,000 items of jewelry

[00:53:14] said to be worth around $273 million.

[00:53:18] So this was, again, there's pictures of this online

[00:53:22] of the police raid where there's supermarket trolleys

[00:53:25] full of all these luxury goods.

[00:53:27] So this was the beginning of the end for Razzak

[00:53:30] and for Joe Lowell as well.

[00:53:32] And the end of it was for Razzak

[00:53:35] was that he was brought up on charges.

[00:53:39] He was convicted in 2022,

[00:53:42] sent to jail for, I think it was 12 years

[00:53:46] and he was fined $49.5 million.

[00:53:49] And his wife, Rosemann Mansour,

[00:53:51] again, while we haven't talked about her,

[00:53:53] that $273 million in jewelry

[00:53:55] that was found in their property.

[00:53:57] And an awful lot of that is linked directly to her

[00:54:00] because again, 101 East,

[00:54:02] the documentary series I have,

[00:54:04] our guys talk about,

[00:54:05] they've interviewed a businessman

[00:54:06] who said they met her regularly

[00:54:08] where she took jewelry bribes

[00:54:10] in return for government contracts.

[00:54:12] So she was definitely involved in this.

[00:54:14] Now, she was sentenced in 2022, September,

[00:54:17] to 10 years in prison and was fined $194 million.

[00:54:22] But she's still out on appeal

[00:54:25] and this is the sad thing about it.

[00:54:27] The Razzak's party, even though they lost in 2018,

[00:54:30] they're back in power now again

[00:54:32] and I would say there's every likelihood

[00:54:35] that Rosemann Mansour won't get jail time

[00:54:38] and there's every likelihood

[00:54:39] that Razzak will be pardoned and released,

[00:54:42] I would say sometime soon.

[00:54:44] You would say to yourself,

[00:54:45] they must have some of this wealth salted away

[00:54:47] but to brazenly have, again, brazen,

[00:54:50] that's a word we kind of started the conversation on,

[00:54:54] to brazenly have that wealth on show in your house,

[00:54:59] in a handbag of jewelry available.

[00:55:03] It doesn't seem like they took any care

[00:55:06] to salt it away somewhere or either flee the country or...

[00:55:11] No, no, this is the arrogance I think

[00:55:13] that is just so obvious.

[00:55:16] They were untouchable.

[00:55:18] They never ever saw the day

[00:55:21] where the police might raid our house.

[00:55:23] They saw themselves as so above the law

[00:55:26] that they never, you know,

[00:55:27] that's why I think he put 681 million

[00:55:30] directly into his account.

[00:55:32] He just thought, but I can do whatever I want.

[00:55:34] Who's going to question me?

[00:55:36] Wow.

[00:55:37] Yeah, the arrogance was...

[00:55:39] And this is a country,

[00:55:41] it's not a particularly rich or prosperous country

[00:55:45] necessarily, so you would imagine

[00:55:48] there should have been a huge glamour

[00:55:51] and protests on the street at this tap-tock.

[00:55:53] Well, I think from my reading of it,

[00:55:56] corruption is accepted in Malaysian society.

[00:56:00] If you look at the documentary

[00:56:01] where Mary Anjali interviews businessmen,

[00:56:04] it was like, this is how you do business in Malaysia.

[00:56:07] We mentioned earlier about Tim Leisner

[00:56:09] and how he was well suited to doing business in Malaysia

[00:56:11] because there's a mixture of business and politics

[00:56:13] where skimming and a bit of corruption is the norm.

[00:56:17] But it was the size of this corruption

[00:56:19] that brought people out onto the streets.

[00:56:21] But I think there is a very...

[00:56:23] It's sad to say there's a resignation and acceptance

[00:56:27] within Malaysian society

[00:56:28] that corruption is part of doing business.

[00:56:31] So it's a cost-to-doing business, though?

[00:56:33] It's a cost-to-doing business,

[00:56:34] but there definitely was an awful lot of anger

[00:56:36] over the size, the amount of corruption.

[00:56:39] So even the guy who came into power after Razak said,

[00:56:43] and he had been Prime Minister for 20 years

[00:56:45] or something before Razak came into power,

[00:56:47] he admitted that there was corruption

[00:56:48] when he was in government.

[00:56:49] But he was like, oh, but it wasn't as bad as it was

[00:56:51] with Razak and you're kind of going,

[00:56:53] you can't have any...

[00:56:54] You know, if you allow any bit of corruption

[00:56:56] become the norm, then it is...

[00:56:58] You're gonna find this.

[00:56:59] It's no fault.

[00:57:00] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:57:01] And then I guess just to bring it to a conclusion,

[00:57:05] as you're reading, as I was going towards the end of the book,

[00:57:08] I thought, okay, so the scales are starting to fall

[00:57:11] from people's eyes.

[00:57:13] And the reality of this sort of situation

[00:57:15] is becoming clear to everybody.

[00:57:17] Prime Minister is under arrest.

[00:57:20] Who captured Joe Lowe?

[00:57:25] And that's the thing, Joe Lowe was still out there.

[00:57:28] And apparently according to your guys

[00:57:30] who wrote the Bill and Dollar Whale,

[00:57:31] they've traced an account to the British Virgin Islands

[00:57:35] that has 333 million in it.

[00:57:37] And they believe he owns that.

[00:57:39] He's hiding in China, is that right?

[00:57:41] I think so, although there's been rumors of him

[00:57:44] popping around.

[00:57:45] I certainly won't be going to Malaysia in a hurry,

[00:57:48] I think, but there was rumors of him

[00:57:51] being in the Middle East as well.

[00:57:53] Obviously, his kind of connections over there.

[00:57:56] Yeah.

[00:57:57] And then there was talking, having a family, having kids.

[00:58:01] So life is moving on for Joe Lowe.

[00:58:04] But it never cost?

[00:58:06] Never cost.

[00:58:07] And you know what you're saying?

[00:58:08] He won't go back to Malaysia.

[00:58:09] And Malaysia's saying, oh, they've got a risk warrants out

[00:58:12] from they wanting him back.

[00:58:14] But I think with Razak's party back in power,

[00:58:18] the last thing they want to bring Joe Lowe back

[00:58:20] because Joe Lowe just has too much on them.

[00:58:23] So I can't see Malaysia ever going out there

[00:58:27] and begging countries, oh please arrest Joe Lowe

[00:58:29] if you see him.

[00:58:30] They don't want him back at all.

[00:58:32] So I think he's pretty much OK on that front.

[00:58:35] But now the US Department of Justice

[00:58:37] having a risk warrant out for him,

[00:58:39] so he can't go to the US.

[00:58:40] So he won't be able to see Paris Hilton anymore.

[00:58:42] No more Vegas for Joe Lowe.

[00:58:44] No more Vegas, no more Vegas.

[00:58:45] But I'm sure there's plenty of casinos

[00:58:47] over in the Far East that he'd be able to acquaint.

[00:58:50] Yeah, so he's still at large.

[00:58:52] And an awful lot of his cronies are with him, I believe, aren't they?

[00:58:55] Like they're still...

[00:58:57] Yeah, I can't remember a guy's name, Fat Sultik.

[00:59:01] This guy whose name was used in emails

[00:59:04] and who corresponded sort of indirectly.

[00:59:07] I think he's an incredible sort of character.

[00:59:13] I wonder about the future we'd like for him.

[00:59:15] Are we likely to hear from him again?

[00:59:18] I would say the next time we hear from him,

[00:59:20] he won't be in a good way.

[00:59:22] That's for sure.

[00:59:24] It'll be something to do with 1MDB.

[00:59:26] Maybe there are a lot of countries that are looking for him

[00:59:28] and maybe he will fly into the wrong place sometime

[00:59:31] and the US will be able to get their hands on him.

[00:59:33] There might be something like that.

[00:59:35] I mean, you know...

[00:59:36] Or he goes legit, baby?

[00:59:38] I don't know. Can he go legit?

[00:59:40] I mean, he's in China now

[00:59:41] and I believe that the Chinese aren't too keen

[00:59:44] for him to talk an awful lot about what kind of business

[00:59:47] he does over in China either.

[00:59:50] I don't know. I think, OK, he's got a lot of money,

[00:59:52] but I think his options are running out year by year.

[00:59:58] And I don't know if it's going to go in well for Jolo.

[01:00:02] But you never know.

[01:00:03] He's a smart guy and he seems to have always stayed one step ahead.

[01:00:08] And strangely, I was reading in Malaysia,

[01:00:11] he's actually become the system of a cult hero

[01:00:13] because they think that he stayed one step ahead.

[01:00:17] He stole all this money.

[01:00:19] And when I was summing this up, I was like,

[01:00:20] I'd say, you know, that's kind of the sad thing about this.

[01:00:23] It's their money.

[01:00:25] Yeah. Only in a country where corruption is so endemic

[01:00:28] because someone like Jolo, the guy who stole their money,

[01:00:31] he's seen as a hero figure

[01:00:32] and also the fact that a guy is corrupt as Najib Razak,

[01:00:36] a guy who not only stole billions from the people of the country,

[01:00:40] but who also has a huge question mark

[01:00:42] over his possible involvement in the murder of young woman.

[01:00:45] Not only might this guy be released,

[01:00:47] this guy could be Prime Minister again.

[01:00:49] And I think it's really sad for Malaysia

[01:00:52] that the stink of corruption just seems to stay

[01:00:56] and hurt me throughout their political and business life.

[01:00:59] It's a tragedy.

[01:01:01] It is. It is.

[01:01:02] But they're an interesting story all the same.

[01:01:04] A great story.

[01:01:06] And almost doesn't seem real.

[01:01:09] I know. I know.

[01:01:10] I mean, you couldn't make it up.

[01:01:12] No. Make a great movie.

[01:01:14] It would.

[01:01:15] We shall show it always.

[01:01:16] That's...

[01:01:18] It can't be. Cool.

[01:01:19] All right, Keith.

[01:01:20] All right. Good shot.

[01:01:22] Good shot.

[01:01:22] And it's your turn next time to come up with a story.

[01:01:24] So I have one.

[01:01:25] I have one.

[01:01:26] I do, but I'm not going to ruin it just yet.

[01:01:29] OK. I'll talk to you and you can tell me.

[01:01:31] Perfect. Cool.

[01:01:32] Talk to you.

[01:01:32] All right, Keith.

[01:01:33] Take care.

[01:01:34] Bye.