The hundreds of millions that had been spent on art work, jewelry, real estate, gambling and parties did not realize any return on the “investment”.
A 2015 document leak reported in The Edge, Sarawak Report, and The Wall Street Journal showed that Malaysia's then-Prime Minister Najib Razak had channeled over RM 2.67 billion (about US$700 million) into his personal bank accounts from 1MDB.
on 2 July, Rewcastle Brown and the Wall Street Journal reported that Malaysian government investigators had discovered that $681m from banks, agencies and companies with ties to 1MDB had been deposited in Najib’s private accounts in 2013.
The DoJ also accused Najib of receiving $681m in cash from 1MDB
Jho Low-
These funds were used to purchase luxury items and properties in New York, Los Angeles, and London as well as:
The Wall Street Journal has reported that a $33.5 million a penthouse condominium in Manhattan in New York’s Time Warner Center was owned by a shell company under control of Low's family trust,
and then was sold and transferred to a shell company controlled by Najib's stepson.
the Beverly Hills hotel Viceroy L’Ermitage
Another home in Beverly Hills, "known as the pyramid house for a gold pyramid in its garden", was owned by a shell company controlled by the Low family trust,
and was sold and transferred to Najib's stepson by transferring shares of the shell company to him.
Jynwel is connected with deals including the acquisition of New York's Park Lane Hotel for US$660 million in 2013 with The Witkoff Group and Mubadala
Low spent around $310 million on art (masterpieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Monet and van Gogh) even setting a record for paying the highest price for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Dustheads,” at $48.8 million.
$250 million superyacht Equanimity
He also, between April 2013 and September 2014, purchased $200 million worth of jewelry. Eight million of that money was for gifts for supermodel Miranda Kerr, whom Low dated in 2014.
a $35 million Bombardier Global 5000 private jet
PetroSaudi
According to documents seen by the Guardian, the Good Star transaction made one of the company’s two founders, a Saudi national named Tarek Obaid, then 32, and Patrick Mahony – the company director who handled PetroSaudi’s business affairs, then 33, very rich men.
Between September 2010 and May 2011, 1MDB agreed to lend an additional $830m to the joint venture with PetroSaudi
bringing 1MDB’s total investment to $1.83bn.
Of these new payments, US officials allege, $330m was paid into the Swiss account they say was controlled by Low
on the basis of a request by Obaid – who is identified in the US legal complaint as “PetroSaudi CEO”.
Emails and bank records seen by the Guardian suggest that in the nine months from September 2010, Obaid transferred $77m from his Swiss JP Morgan account to his PetroSaudi co-founder, Prince Turki bin Abdullah.
According to the US authorities, banking records show that in the spring of 2011, Prince Turki also received $24m from the Good Star account controlled by Low.
Records indicate that on 30 September 2009, Good Star agreed to pay $85m to Obaid, which the Seychelles company described as a fee for “brokering services”.
The money was deposited into Obaid’s Swiss JP Morgan account.
At the same time, emails and legal documents indicate that Mahony was given a contract as “investment manager” for Good Star.
On 20 October, Obaid emailed his contact at JP Morgan to request that $33m be transferred into an account belonging to Mahony.
Four days later, Mahony began discussions to set up an offshore company to buy a £6.7m townhouse in Notting Hill – and by 12 November, contracts for the house had been exchanged.
The former banker created a numbered bank account in Switzerland, and all payments for the purchase were made from this account, via a British Virgin Islands company that Mahony had set up.
According to Justo, Mahony had agreed to pay him about 6.5m Swiss francs (£5m) in severance. However, in the midst of a heated conversation, Mahony’s phone rang. It was Obaid, who apparently told Mahony to settle on 5m Swiss francs (£3.85m). Justo, who had poured his heart out to Mahony, telling him he was at his “lowest point emotionally”, shed tears. A day later, Justo claims that he was told his severance package would, in fact, be 4m Swiss francs (£3m).
Switzerland-
The US justice department identified RBS Coutts and Rothschild Bank as conduits for transactions in the corruption complaint. The Swiss attorney general is probing the billion-dollar fraud. The banks declined to comment when contacted by the Guardian.
United Arab Emirates-
In April the UAE froze hundreds of millions of dollars in accounts held by alleged conspirators in the 1MDB fraud and banned the account holders from traveling abroad.
Goldman Sachs-
The Wall Street behemoth earned $593m in fees for the issue.
Leissner bought homes “for all the women in his life” and became a “mini version of Low,” according to defense attorney said.
Ng pocketed $35 million in kickbacks as part of a “brazen” scam, according to prosecutors.
Leo-
He financed the American film company Red Granite Pictures and the production of The Wolf of Wall Street and other films. Low invested $100 million into the production of The Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio specially thanked Low for his involvement during one of the awards ceremonies. Authors of …Whale… told The Post: “There was a willful ignorance. If you’re being handed $400 million to make films, maybe you don’t ask too many questions.”
Red Granite, a production company that was backed by Low in 2011, threw a lavish party in Cannes which included a performance by Kanye West and one by Pharell. Celebrities in attendance included DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper, and Jamie Foxx.
Jordan Belfort, the subject of “The Wolf of Wall Street” who had spent 22 months in prison for crimes related to a stock fraud scheme, also attended the party. He told his girlfriend that something didn’t look right, Billion Dollar Whale reports.
“The event must have cost at least $3 million, Belfort calculated, as he nibbled on canapés and watched the A-list entertainment. And the movie hadn’t even gone into production!” “‘This is a f–king scam — anybody who does this has stolen money,’ Belfort told his girlfriend, as the music thumped. ‘You wouldn’t spend money you worked for like that.’ ”
The jury was also shown a contract for Leonardo DiCaprio that dated back to November 2009. The actor was flown on an exclusive private jet to attend Low’s birthday party and was paid $150,000 to attend the party, a dinner, and private gambling activities. DiCaprio was one of his closest celebrity friends, and Low even gifted him a $9.2 million Basquiat artwork once.
Paris-
For her 29th birthday in Las Vegas, Low gave Hilton $250,000 in gambling chips and gifted her a Cartier watch.
Even Hilton laughed at the audaciousness of it all, as she and her monied entourage were no match for Low in sheer extravagance. “He was putting down bigger and bigger bets, hundreds of thousands of dollars on single hands,” the authors write. “Then, in a cascade of bad luck, taking all of 10 minutes, he lost $2 million. The stunned entourage couldn’t compute the way he parted with money — seemingly without breaking a sweat — and some began to whisper about this guy and how he acted like the cash wasn’t his own.”
Kim-
Kim Kardashian once flew home from Las Vegas after a night of baccarat with the Malaysian billionaire Jho Low carrying $250,000 in a trash bag, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Thursday, citing newly surfaced FBI documents.
According to Bloomberg, Kardashian told the FBI in 2019 that 10 years prior, she was at a casino in Las Vegas with Low and two "Wolf of Wall Street" producers, Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland. Low won a big hand. He then gifted his chips to Kardashian, which turned out to be worth over $350,000. She told the FBI that when she went to the casino counter to cash out, she was handed $250,000 in "a trash bag full of one hundred dollar bills," which she loaded in her carry-on suitcase that she took home on Southwest Airlines. She collected the remaining $100,000, again in a trash bag, during a subsequent trip to party with Low in Las Vegas, the FBI report added.
Bloomberg reported the FBI report also said Low gave Kardashian a further $100,000 for fireworks at her 2011 wedding to the NBA player Kris Humphries, as well as $305,000 in cash. Kardashian spent the money on a white Ferrari, which she later sold to buy a Lamborghini in her second husband's name, according to the publication.
Tom Ford-
At the moment when everything began falling apart, Jho Low was in talks to do some pretty big deals—including buying a big stake in the fashion label Tom Ford.
Low was one of the most skillful networkers the world has ever seen. According to Wright [author of …Whale…] Low’s story tells us “Everything is for sale!” Including high society and the elite of the world. Even actors, models, bankers and businessmen worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars need (or want) more money.
For example, Miranda Kerr made $7 million the year before she began dating Low. But that’s not enough to live on a $250 million super yacht and throw champagne-drenched parties on the French Riviera.
DiCaprio was wealthy beyond measure but was enticed by Low’s promises of $400 million in film financing, including to make The Wolf of Wall Street, at a time when Warner Brothers didn’t want to finance the film. That’s not the kind of money the actor could command.
He used his friendships with Hollywood stars to entice Arab businessmen into deals. When they saw Kate Upton on a boat, they were hooked by Low. Many of his friends in the Middle East were excited to be involved in deals, but they also loved the lifestyle of being around Jho, especially the celebrities and supermodels. The world of the 0.1 percent is also extremely small—once Low was in it, he was able to move from one person to the next. He would size up someone’s use to him and leverage it.
Sources:
https://www.sizezero.org/blog/darksideofmodeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuElbzeSEA4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-FEaFcyj3Q
https://nsp.lse.ac.uk/articles/158
https://scandalous.media/blog/dark-hollywood-yachting
https://www.the-triton.com/2023/04/the-dark-side-of-yachting/
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-66479335
https://www.superyachtcontent.com/superyacht-crew-lifestyle/sexual-abuse-in-yachting/
https://www.courttv.com/news/lawsuit-targets-diddy-and-son-apple-does-not-fall-far-from-the-tree/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jho_Low
https://www.businessinsider.com/kim-kardashian-flew-home-vegas-250k-trash-bag-jho-low-2023-3
https://fortune.com/2022/03/07/jho-low-fugitive-1mdb-financier-biography/
https://nypost.com/2018/09/15/i-own-you-youre-my-bitch-jho-lows-hollywood-power-play/
https://blog.limkitsiang.com/2015/12/29/the-rm7-bil-petrosaudi-caper/
https://myassets.theedgemalaysia.com/pics/2024/1MDB_1_TEM1542_theedgemalaysia.jpg
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2022/06/09/najibs-trial-ambank-official-says-1mdb-asked-to-remove-petrosaudis-name-as-us95m-beneficiary-and-to-record-bank-account-number-only/11523
No comments:
Post a Comment