Grubstakers - Episode 43: Jho Low

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

On this episode we talk Jho Low, the man who managed to steal billions from the Malaysian government's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund so he could party with Paris Hilton. We have nothing bad to say about him because frankly we're just in awe of this fella.

Today on Grubstakers, we're going to be talking about Malaysian billionaire Joe Lowe, who showed us how to succeed in business mostly by lying. So settle in, because it's Grubstakers time. I think we disproportionately stop whites too much. I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican.

You know, I went to a tough school in Queens, and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. In 5, 4, 3, 2... Hello, and welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm joined by... Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. And our good friend Yogi Paliwal is out this week. He is back in Seattle enjoying Thanksgiving weekend with his family

who have the capital in order to love him enough to spend vacations with their son. But we're very excited this week because... Very excited. We're here in the South Brooklyn Grubstaker studio, here in the sequel to Cat Person where we have an open litter box with shit in it as we're recording another one in the bathroom at least three cats two of which are visible this is Grubstakers B rent control edition but yes we're the the the steve and andy studio uh because uh yogi is gone and uh we're very

excited to do a special episode because we are thankful on this thanksgiving weekend for you the listener and we are thankful for a man named jolo oh i am so fucking thankful for this guy he like we started this podcast uh asking the question is there such thing as a good billionaire? And so far the answer has been no. But is there such thing as a perfect billionaire? Yes, it's Joe Lowe. This guy is so late stage. It's just so great.

He's like a harbinger of the proto-fascist socialist future to come. He's just the embodiment of everything that money becomes. You'll find out. Right. Well, so we read the book Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. They're Wall Street Journal reporters. And it's about this Malaysian financier, Joe Lowe. And the long and short of the story is that he stole about...

Financier is such a fancy title for this guy. The long and short of the story is he stole about $5 billion from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund that he convinced the government to set up, and then ran it through a series of shell companies and these sorts of things. And also got, you know, Goldman Sachs and all sorts of other financiers involved in just signing off on this outright theft. So you can make the argument that he was actually just making a statement about capitalism.

He was a performance artist. It was all so that he could hang out. He could pay Paris Hilton to hang out with him. My reading of this was it was a transgressive play. It was a play about capitalism. Right, yes. I would say the best way to describe the scheme would be it was a scheme in order to take money from Malaysian taxpayers and transfer it to presents

for Paris Hilton's 29th birthday party. If he ever gets caught, he'll be like, it was just a prank, bro. Social experiment. I mean, in the middle of it, he was funding The Wolf of Wall Street and potentially The Great Gatsby,

which are the two movies of the last decade that describe this guy perfectly i do like yes he put up like a hundred million of malaysian public money to make the wolf of wall street and at no point did he hire an editor to cut 30 minutes off that fucking movie i liked when they were crawling around on drugs well that was fine it was just too long. It was okay, though. You know what? It was worth it. The upcoming sovereign debt crisis for the state of Malaysia was worth... If there's a domino effect from Malaysia because of this crisis caused by a pudgy boy who wanted to be friends with Paris Hilton.

That's the future we deserve. One interesting thing from the book is that Scorsese and Wolf of Wall Street, they crash a real Lamborghini in the opening. And so usually the money people would be like, no, you have to do a model or something. But I guess you you should probably ask some questions when they're like yeah no take this school teacher money and uh go ahead

and crash a fucking lamborghini if it'll make the shot right um but so uh so just like before we kind of like go loosely chronological through jowe's life, interesting thing about this. We mentioned it's estimated he stole about $5 billion U.S. dollars. King. And part of that went to just paying off bribes to co-conspirators. A lot of it went to partying. Apparently, he left a $1 million tip at a poker or some sort of gambling. Baccarat.

Yeah, Baccarat. Yes, he plays Baccarat. The James Bond game that basically you lose most of the time. He basically funneled money into the casino and then tipped him a million dollars. There's other parts of that story we can get to later. Right. And he was enabled by the former prime minister of Malaysia, Najib, who's currently being indicted or charged criminally. Najib? Yes, Najib, who's currently being indicted or charged criminally.

Razak Najib? Yes, Najib. And so, Jho Low also bought a $27 million diamond necklace for the Prime Minister's wife, the former Prime Minister. And, like, this is in addition to millions and millions of others of jewelry and other fancy kinds of things. And just like one stat from the book that was meant to illustrate this, quote, 60% of Malaysian households live on less than 1600 US dollars a month. So, you know. And one other thing about like how this is going to be an albatross, again, quoting from the book, Moody's estimated the government of Malaysia

would be on the hook to repay about $7.5 billion of the fund's debt, which is equal to about 2.5% of Malaysia's economy. And about half of the fund's debt was denominated in U.S. dollars, which is just bad news. Yeah, they can't get their way out of that one. Foreign debt crisis left in his wake.

Maybe we should say what 1MDB is before we start. Right. I looked into this. I read it as, so the 1MDB scandal, I went to 1MDB.com and looked up scandal and says a former white house communications director from purdue pharma starts we're working hard to address the one mdb scandal sorry i used the roman numeral one so imdb.com this page for scandal it says a former white house communications director starts her own crisis management firm

only to realize her clients are not the only ones with secrets. It gets 7.8 out of 10. And it was a TV series from 2012 to 2018. Yeah. Well, even more basic than that, though. Let's tweet at the IMDb Twitter account and be like,

it's fucked up what you did to the Malaysian people. You monsters. Number one, it stands for One Malaysia Development Berhad. And it says a sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia set up by former Prime Minister Najib Razak. Yeah, and so the idea of a sovereign wealth fund is like, you know, Norway has one. And we'll get to, Jolo gets this idea from the United Arab Emirates, has a sovereign wealth fund as well.

And this is the idea that, you know, they can, say, borrow against oil wealth or other wealth in order to fund investments that theoretically create wealth for the state, wealth for the public. But it's also just a great way to get a giant pool of money and then divert through a series of shell companies. And again, he very much relied on the US, the international financial system, to make all this happen. And he relied on people being like, no, we need our fucking 2% or 10% commission on this huge huge pool of money so we're not going to ask too many questions but um i guess from there we can just kind of go through uh joe lowe and how he came to be because he was born

relatively rich but the only way this scheme works is if you have the connections to the rich people in power like there's there's no way unless you go to a private boarding school you'd be able to pull this off but it's it's pretty fascinating what he did and so basically inspiring is the word you're looking for uh so his grandfather um sold he sold opium in china until the british were like you can't do that because that's our thing and he basically got chased out of uh china and moved to malaysia um and so the basically the family was on pretty strong uh economic footing starting with his grandpa's opium trade and they were really relaxed too yeah um but yeah so his grandfather like the book says it's like alleged that he made his fortune in either opium or mining or something like that nobody really knows for sure but uh his grandfather

makes a decent chunk of change and then his father uh jolo's father is larry lowe he's born in thailand in 1952 um he goes uh to the l of Economics and University of California, Los Angeles. He makes like some stupid investments with his grandfather's wealth. But eventually in the early 90s, he invests in garment companies, which have like a huge resurgence as you know, the US and other countries outsource all of their garment manufacturing to countries like Malaysia. And then he's basically able to get in on a corrupt deal. I just want to quote from the book here because he has a stake in a garment company. And then in the 90s, he's involved in an acquisition of a Canadian technology firm.

And then quoting from the book, the deal overvalued the target firm and Larry arranged for some of the excess cash to go into an offshore bank account he controlled. Using such accounts, often owned by anonymous shell companies set up in places like the British Virgin Islands, which was common for Malaysian companies at the time. And basically the book says

that the kids learned from their father how shell companies work and how to set up shell companies and uh this would become very relevant later in life there's a just a phone call when this all comes out in ft in the wall street journal and his dad is like where did you where did you get this idea to use shell companies to hide money? I learned it from you, Dad. But so the book says Larry Lowe, this steak and a garment company which he sells is worth about 15 million U.S. dollars. So Joe Lowe grows up in a family worth somewhere in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars. It's funny, too, that they all have, like, despite being Malaysian, they all have the first names of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. It's like Joe and Larry.

But yes, so what Larry Lowe does is he sets up to network for his children. And so he makes this investment where he buys an apartment in london uh where they vacation with in an area of london that a lot of malaysia's elites live in so it's essentially through this it's a kensington green and through this kind of like apartment vacation home uh jolo the son jolo meets uh reza aziz who is the daughter or the son of the future malaysian first lady and this is going to be his connection to the prime minister of malaysia

so it's again just essentially through this elite connection that he is able to uh pull off the uh inspirational uh statement on capitalism of the century. But basically, in his early life, Joe Lowe is a shit poster on the internet. He goes, in 1998, he's 16 years old. He goes to Harrow, which is a... Let's take a second to talk about his internet posts. He would post that he was a handsome, muscly guy,

and then would ask... Well-muscled. Huh? Well-proportioned. Yeah, well-proportioned. that he was like a handsome muscly guy and then would ask well proportioned yeah well proportioned and then he would ask if anyone needs him for a modeling shoot uh he's if you haven't seen a picture of him he's just this pudgy like roly-poly guy who later in life accepted it and went by the nickname panda but at the time he like tried to i don't know how the people who wrote this book found that he did this but yeah he tried to see I don't know how the people who wrote this book found that he did this. But yeah, he tried to see if anyone would take him up on the modeling thing. And even though he typed all that out, no one...

I mean, he didn't have a picture, obviously. But yeah, so then he went to this private school. Now he has one MDB credits. So jokes on them. Sorry, Sean. So he goes to this private school he was like talking to somebody on the internet and like lied about his age and they're like never mind i'm not interested anymore i thought you were actually 16. uh but yeah so he uh he goes uh to harrow is a private English boarding school, which is a step below Eaton,

where, of course, David Cameron and the other English elites would go. Well, Harrow is where Winston Churchill went. And I think some other, the book mentions some other elite, but I don't remember their name. Corbin. Yeah. He went to some other elite place, though. Oh, really? Yeah, Corbin. Yeah. He went to some other elite place, though.

Oh, really? Yeah, Corbin did. Well, I assume Jolo took some classes where they're like, and this is how you starve the uppity colonies. I was gonna say. Yes, Churchill's education was a disaster for the people

of Bengal. And while he was at this private school um he he just told people that he was a malaysian prince and like apparently other malaysian students at the school thought it was hilarious but the like the aristocratic like british kids who were there just ate it up and completely believed him. Like he, he just lies about his status, like in every aspect of his life to the point where it's just adorable. But he did have a lot of muscles. He just lost them all. I'm just imagining him as like a swole steroided it out.

16 year old on the internet. He just like, it was so sad when he left home he let himself go and became a very round gentleman he's still got the puffy baby face and glasses but it's just ripped they go to arrest him and he just rips off his shirt nothing but muscles 12 pack abs you can just break the handcuffs by flexing his wrists he was the one who allegedly murdered that prosecutor looking into one mdb with his bare hands um but yeah so he goes to a private uh english boarding school he meets uh the son of the sultan of bernie one of the sons and he just

kind of falls in with like this crowd of elites, as we mentioned. And then he goes to a university of Pennsylvania college, UPenn college, uh, the Wharton school of business, uh, which of course, uh, Donald Trump is an alumni of, uh, uh, Ivanka Trump was there at the same time as him. And apparently like he would throw a lot of parties at wharton like he uh would have like big parties at clubs or strip clubs or stuff and uh they would also go to atlanta at the trump plaza hotel and casino uh and gamble there and apparently once he uh wrote ivanka trunk uh ivanka trump to invite her but she said she would never set foot in one of her father's, quote, skeevy casinos. Well, it looks like she walks into the White House now.

Got him. Yeah, at the time when he was, like, throwing those giant parties, he apparently, like, he would get, he would hand out flyers for his parties. He would rent a whole club he would convince sororities to go then he would list the sororities going to the parties along with his own name so it'd be like you know phi kappa gamma uh alpha delta delta joe low and his own category yeah and he he would just instead of really participating in the party like

he he had a lot of trouble talking to women like he wasn't there to get laid like he wasn't hitting on anyone he would make awkward small talk with women at the parties but uh mostly he would just watch the party and he got the nickname uh from his classmates as the Asian Great Gatsby, which I think the Asian part is more of a Philadelphia thing. They're like, we got to put race on everything. Like the Great Gatsby thing is very apt, but apparently like he would maintain this party demeanor while at the same

time in his private life, he would hang out with some friends in his dorm and he would just sit around in a track suit and obsess over paris hilton he went to house of wax multiple times in theaters uh and had like posters of her around um really not the uh first paris hilton movie i would say but yes no he was very like probably not the first one he saw you her second best acting performance uh but yes no and also yeah like andy was mentioning he was a very quiet person who like wasn't really conversational with women for the most part so he's simultaneously very shy yes but also loaded and seemed to recognize the importance of right well we mentioned his dad had at least you know uh more than 15 million dollars

so uh according to the book while at wharton uh jolo would receive regular wire transfers of tens of thousands of dollars from larry lowe to finance gambling trips to atlantic city and to pay for partying and uh yes he really did throw some uh dope parties Wharton, but it was just a taste of what was to come. Also, he then wouldn't pay them back and negotiate a much lower repayment to the clubs. The friendship with Ivanka Trump taught him about that. Also, while he was at Wharton, I'm again just quoting from the book here,

he wrote articles on stocks for the Wharton Journal, which is the business school's student newspaper. And then several of them were completely plagiarized word for word. One of them was like Enron's a great up and coming tech investment company. Dude, it's all part of the performance statement where he was mocking the capitalist analysts who predicted that Enron was a great investment by copying their words and passing them off. 2007 edition was like two words. Bear sterns. Bear sterns is going to make all the bears real stern.

That was a nerd-ass joke. But so, yes, he wrote a piece on Enron, which was copy-pasted from another analyst who urged people to buy Enron stock. And then he wrote many other such pieces, according to the book, copying most of them from analyst reports on Wall Street. Oh, yeah, he copied the Enron thing

from a Solomon Smith Barney report. But so basically, when he's at his final year at Wharton, he sets up a shell company. His first company, it's based in the british virgin islands and it's called the winton group uh which the name stood for quote win tons of money he told his friends uh who were unsure if it was a joke um but basically like the thing is like as we've kind of mentioned here, what Wharton, the education, it's not really so much that as it is just the connection with the future ambassador to the United States from the United Arab Emirates, a guy named Otaiba.

And Otaiba introduces him to another guy, Khaldun Khalifa al-Mubarak, who was at the time a 20-something running one of the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth funds. It's the sovereign wealth fund called Mubadala, which is a sovereign wealth fund set up by the United Arab Emirates in 2002. As we kind of mentioned, these sovereign wealth funds can raise money or reinvest oil profits or just, again, do capital raises based on assets such as oil or other things that they have in their area, and then they reinvest this money in real estate or whatever else you want to invest in to try and make some profit. But Jho Low meets this guy, the head of one of the UAE sovereign wealth funds,

and Jho Low kind of like bullshits his way into this meeting just through his connections at Warden. But he's talking like he's kind of like a big shot who has connections to Malaysia development. So he's talking to these people in the UAE about, hey, come invest in Malaysia. You know, I have all the connections over there, blah, blah, blah. And at first, nothing coming next tiger economy.

Yes. And at first, nothing really comes of it. But it's just like it's again a scheme that you could never pull off if you just didn't have these elite connections so essentially he gets his foot in the door with you know the people who can move huge amounts of money out of the united arab emirates and uh they think he's like some sort of uh very important uh businessman intermediary i saw your inner. Very, very contrarian. But yes, so that's, he graduates Wharton

and then he goes back to Malaysia. And it's interesting where it's like, in 2005, that's the end of his education there, he gets a degree in finance. And he goes back to malaysia and he bullshits his way into this like the most expensive office building in malaysia yeah it's the they're like essentially their world trade center and it was the building's taller than the old world trade center is this uh you've probably seen pictures of it i don't remember

the name of it stars yeah yeah towers he sets up offices in the Petronas Towers fresh out of college the tallest buildings in the world at the time the UAE is like we'll fix that yeah we've got more slaves than they do

but yeah so it's like he just gets a low he bullshits his way into a loan for this and then he gets kicked out after not paying rent for several months and it's just like essentially it's interesting where he's he's always scheming but the scheme evolves pretty quickly because his first idea is like he's going to set up offices and make connections with the malaysian government and then get his uh uae connections to come in and invest and then he'll take like a finder's fee or a broker's fee or something off of this what was hung up in his office is it pictures of himself i guess like paris hilton you know like shaking hands with people at a warden party party? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, for like to project an image? Oh, yeah. When you go in there, you're not like dealing with a company even. You're just dealing with Jolo. Yeah, yeah. All his Enron articles were hung up. Yeah, I was published in the prestigious Wharton Journal. But right, so he's like looking around for like high-rise condo

projects and these kinds of things uh but again as we mentioned he gets this office on loan it's apparently like one of the most expensive office setups in malaysia like he has like indoor waiting pool or something or i think it's like a pool for your feet just a it's a lazy river yeah and i mean it's like you know you can argue he he does to an extent understand how much of like image and presentation matters to these you know elite uh worthless bloodsuckers who control all the capital uh that would become necessary to his scheme but he uh he doesn't pay rent for several months and gets kicked out um and so what happens and this is 2005 he's kind of like well he what's probably most interesting about how he operates is he sets up a kind of a scam or a scheme or some of which are scams where it's just like

and then he as soon as that one starts to break down he's got another one in the works that's gonna like save him from the last one and that's basically how he operated until uh today which uh is which is really relatable to most millennials yeah well do you know the final scheme andy wolf of wall street 2's going to make everything right. It's going to win Leo another Oscar. And everything will be forgiven. I was going to say, and we'll get to it. You see Leo fighting those bears. That was a metaphor for how Jolo is going to bring back the world economy. We'll get to his party lifestyle in a minute but my biggest takeaway from this whale

book was uh the most loyal people in hollywood are alicia keys and swiss beats because all of his other celebrity friends abandoned him once it came out that he was stealing billions of dollars from the malaysian people but unlike fucking sissy leo who uh gets his uh his passion project financed with no creative restrictions and then just turns his back as soon as it comes out that the guy is a massive fraudster swiss beats and alicia keys stayed loyal to the guy all the way to the end are you saying that leonardo de capra is a fake friend i might go that far. Who act nice to your face, but talk shit behind your back?

Joe Lowe just hated fake people. Leo was method acting all the drugs he took for Wolf of Wall Street and just pretends he doesn't remember who Joe Lowe is. But so what happens, as we mentioned, 2005-06, he comes back to Malaysia. He gets kicked out of his offices, but he's got another couple schemes going. In 2007, he, again, using his UAE connections, he tries to broker a deal for Kuwait Finance to take over a Malaysian bank. It fails, but this connection is important because Kuwait finance would later go in on some of his other schemes. But it's late in 2007, Jho Low

hears that the existing Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called Kazana is looking for partners in a giant construction project in the southern state of Malaysia, right on the border with Singapore. And they're trying to create like a giant finance lifestyle center it's according to the whale book again but basically singapore does a lot of money laundering in addition to other things but you know just general finance uh offshore money types of stuff so the idea is malaysia's development fund wanted to build kind of a city that would be a major hub right on the border with Singapore. So Jho Low gets the tip off that this is coming. And now he's like, trying to get his contacts in UAE to go in on this. He suggests that the UAE sovereign wealth fund invest in this project. He suggests that Kuwait Finance House invest too. And the UAE Sovereign Wealth Fund does sign a contract to invest half a billion dollars in this project of, you know, five-store hotels, residences, a, quote, golf village.

And then Jolo is initially disappointed because he expects a broker's fee or a finder's fee, but nobody will really, like, give him. So he actually comes up with an even more brilliant scheme to get paid on this which is essentially he buys up two construction companies uh so yes the again quoting from the whale book he didn't get his broker's fee so around this time uh he hears about two malaysian construction companies that were for sale. Perhaps he could buy them cheaply and win contracts on the development. To finance the multi-million dollar purchase,

he needed more loans. And so he goes around... Yeah, so he... Is this one where he, like, creates companies, then gives stocks to his connections? This is a brilliant move. So basically he sets up another shell company with a name that's almost identical

to an existing UAE development fund. And then he gives stock to the previously mentioned Ambassador Otaiba and some other aristocrats in Kuwait and Malaysia. He gives them free stock and he puts them on the board of this company that has an almost identical name to an existing UAE wealth fund. And then, so of course, people assume that these people are backing his loan application and lent him money. So yes, he, with, you know, this kind of like fake shell company behind him, he's able to get Malaysian banks to lend him

tens of millions of dollars, which he uses to buy up these construction companies, which in turn he resells to a corrupt minister, a chief minister of a Malaysian province, for about $110 million

in profit. Your move, Tiber. But yeah, so he buys up these two construction companies and then he sells them to a holding company controlled by Chief Minister Taib. Again, a chief minister in a Malaysian state in return for cash and shares uh and then basically he he gets about 110 million dollars in profits through this sale so he's 27 years old and he's

just like pulled off this window and it's interesting where it's like he he he sells this to taib overvalued so later when he sets up 1mdb he has to pay back taib to like keep him happy as we mentioned a lot of the money goes to just bribes to keep people happy at different uh different parts of the scheme but this is the first big uh heist he comes upon which is again 110 million dollar profit at 27 years old uh and he's done this entirely through bullshitting and connections because of course he added no value to the project i mean he he's the linkedin billionaire he knows how to network uh just think of what you were doing at age 27 it was uh my scam was like not paying my electric bill one time yeah i remember when i thought uh

27 that i was a genius for sending in the five dollar rebate coupon that came with the pack of beer i just bought joel is just like uh he's just like that is why no one will remember your name we're like joel we feel sorry for you. And he's like, I don't think about you. But yes, Jolo has an open invite to Skype in from whatever Chinese province he's hiding out in and be on the podcast at any time. Yeah, please come on our podcast, Jolo.

But yes, so after this, he trades in his E-series mercedes for a black colored ferrari uh taking his uh car around for joy rides around malaysia but again you know 27 years old he's just made 110 million dollars but he's focused on the next thing and the next heist is like again like arguably the biggest financial crime in history i mean like at least in terms of money pilfered uh right in terms of like liquid assets right yeah so uh as we mentioned he kind of like overvalues these assets and sells it to a powerful minister in malaysia powerful and corrupt minister so So he does need money to pay this guy back and keep everything cool.

So he comes up with, he talks to one of, Malaysia has nine sultans. And he convinces one of the nine sultans. They oversee different areas. One of them oversees an area with a particular amount of oil wealth. Jolo convinces one of these nine Sultans to set up a sovereign wealth fund, again, based on what he's seen with the UAE's sovereign wealth fund. And the idea is this sovereign

wealth fund will borrow money against the state oil wealth. And then Goldman Sachs will advise, which we'll get to in a second. Now, you can say this guy is just some dumb scammer, but you really... It really comes down to... It takes a lot of skill to know which Sultan to go to to make money. Jafar.

Yeah. You got to avoid Jafar because he's unless you can like play play to his power ego thing like he's not going to help you. But so the Sultan actually gets Cole's feet because like uh jolo's already skimming from like cooling pool from his warming pool went cold from like the initial bond issue like they start to do the bond issue and then it becomes clear that jolo is stealing money from this like he's skimming off the top so uh the sultan becomes aware of this and he backs out but what happens he doesn't do anything he's just like yeah i don't know i'm not gonna report you but i'm resigned yeah of course yeah look everybody expects a little bit of scamming but but yeah so what happens in 2009 is Najib, the previously mentioned former prime minister of Malaysia, becomes the prime minister of Malaysia in 2009.

And so what happens is that Jho Low... His first order of business is to make it rain. We've mentioned Jolo has this connection to the prime minister's stepson through the prime minister's wife. So Jolo's idea, and at this point the prime minister, he doesn't have a relationship with Jolo. But Jolo sees the prime minister is sworn in, you know, 2009, the sultan backed out of the local deal. So Jolo says, why don't we take this one level higher and his whole insight is to approach the prime minister and say hey i can get um you know uae and these other people to put in i think one billion dollars yes uh so oh no he also gets petro saudi which is like one of the 20 minor Saudi Arabian princes,

runs this like backwards graft company that Westerners will do deals with just to get access, to try and get access to Saudi Arabia. It doesn't really have many assets, doesn't do much of anything. It doesn't really like pump oil. It's kind of just a bank account or a spending account for like, you know, the Saudi prince who's never going to make it to king but essentially through this connection with petro saudi uh jolo's able to like set up a meeting between uh nijab and uh the saudi king najib and the saudi king at the time

um and so basically what uh he's able to do is jolo says to the uh prime minister of malaysia hey i'll set hey, I'll set up all this foreign money to come into your development fund, which you can use for X, Y, and Z, and you'll get all the credit for it, and then I run it. And that's basically the deal.

And the idea was that they would take some money and use it to build houses in regions, or like build housing for the poor in regions that would tend to vote for that prime minister's party. Right. And that was like,

but it was going to be like a small amount of the money and the rest was just going to be pure graft. Right. So like they would have profits from 1MDB would allow the prime minister Najib to pay off political supporters and voters, but also they would do what was called, quote, corporate social responsibility, which would essentially be like charities, you know, having scholarships, affordable housing,

but they would do it exclusively in areas that they were trying to influence electorally. Yeah, there's like a long history of this in Malaysia. It's not uncommon on the campaign trail for them to literally just say, I'll send you a check, basically, if you vote for me. I mean, it's a good thing we don't do it here where the richest neighborhoods with the most political donors have the best anemones.

But so we mentioned, so it's a joint deal with Petro saudi and petro saudi for their part they pledged some oil rights in turkmenistan that they had these are like highly overvalued uh intentionally of course um but so in september 30 2009 this thing launches and 1MDB at this point puts $1 billion. Well, it's supposed to have an initial kickoff of $1 billion. And $300 million of this ends up in a joint Swiss bank account, which is controlled by both Petro Saudi and 1MDB, the board. But $700 million ends up in a personal Swiss bank bank account which is entirely controlled by jolo i mean it's controlled by a shell company that jolo set up i believe

good star ltd uh and so jolo like had his like personal crony gold star a good star ltd is owned by petros audi so he's able to say like this 700 million is going to pay back uh petro saudi for initial investments or these kinds of things but in reality 700 million is siphoned off immediately into his personal bank account and as soon as like someone on the board starts asking questions he's like no you see it's to pay back a loan against petrol saudi and at the same time like he's going out to vegas hiring playboy bunnies to hang out with him and his friends while they play baccarat with leonardo dicaprio who's just trying to like sweeten him up to get like a movie deal and he's just like throwing just insane amounts of people people said he would like just throw a quarter million,

bet a quarter million dollars per like round of Baccarat just for the, and usually would lose. Right. Yeah. So his party lifestyle really goes into overdrive here, but yeah, like, and we've mentioned like,

again, we don't have time to get into all of this. The book is very fascinating. If you like this kind of stuff, I read right through it in two days, but so basically we mentioned how he played off the pillars of capitalism so what happens is like we we talked about the the turkmenistan oil wealth so uh i'm just going to quote from the book here uh one of the petro saudi guys a guy named patrick mahoney currently being

investigated on criminal charges he reaches out to a connection named Edward Morsey, who was a former senior U.S. State Department official and energy analyst at Lehman Brothers, and he wants them to conduct a, quote, independent valuation of Petro-Saudi's assets. Again, this is to, like, beef up the numbers so that they can borrow more or, you know, justify some of the spending that's going on.

The 1MDB's board had requested this valuation of Petro Saudi's assets before 1MDB sent the previously mentioned $1 billion. 1MDB was sending that against collateral from Petro Saudi, so they wanted some sort of valuation of this. But so Patrick Mahoney at uh one um at petro saudi reaches out to this former state department official lehman banker uh and he says to uh this guy edward morsey he basically writes him directly and says he tells morsey that he was seeking a valuation of 2.5 billion dollars on petro saudi's assets okay got, got it, Morsi replied. Only two days later, Morsi was done with his report, a technical analysis of the reserves and prices

based on numbers that Petro Saudi had provided. I think you won't be displeased with our conclusions either on Turkmenistan or Argentina, you know, the oil reserves held in those areas. His valuation went up to $3.6 billion. He was paid $100,000 for his work. So again, it's just like you write this guy, your connection at Lehman Brothers, former State Department official, you say, hey, I'm looking to get my assets valued at $2.5 billion

so that I can get access to this other billion dollars. You say, I'll pay you six figures to do it. And he goes, yeah, sure. And he gives you a $3.6 billion valuation. So again, you just, we'll get to the Goldman thing in one second. But you see throughout this book, again and again and again, people are reliant on these fees and they just kind of like look the other way or say, or like even like Edward Morsi in the report, he says, I'm only valuing the oil assets themselves. I'm not like looking at, you know, they just have all this kind of like cover your ass stuff

when it's like, you know exactly what you're doing, dude. Oh, yeah. They ended up giving him a little extra. Yeah. For his trouble. But so Malaysia sends out the initial $1 billion, at least $700 million of which is pilfered by Jolo to immediately go on his party spree.

We mentioned Paris Hilton's 29th birthday. He gets her some expensive car and also $250,000 worth of gambling chips. And he would pay her $100,000 just to hang out with him each time she hung out with him because he was so obsessed with her like he kind of saw people just as you know like he saw paris hilton as like his own personal toy um and so he would just keep giving her money and then apparently there's like this whole um cottage industry for celebrities where they just get

appearance fees so he would just pay all these celebrities to like come out and do things and they you know they had to kiss his boots beats right uh swiss beats but even like uh like the book starts out with this story about his um this massive birthday party he throws and like vegas in vegas and like britney spears sing some happy birthday and she got a million dollars for that nice and like it's just full of all these celebrities and at the same time celebrities one thing one reason like I'm like oh I'm so glad I don't work in the film industry is like celebrities kind of have to kiss ass to finance years uh on a regular basis and even Dasha on Red Scare talked about like um when the Harvey Weinstein thing came out, she was like, yeah, as an actress, the worst I've been treated is when I have to suck up to financiers and they'll just do disgusting or say disgusting things and there's not much you can do because you need their money.

You're misquoting her. She said the word retarded at least three times in that sentence um but so yeah and so it's interesting where we we mentioned these big vegas parties like leonardo dicaprio around this time becomes friends with joe low leonardo dicaprio is another guy who takes like appearance fees you know yeah he is he is a slut from what i can tell in this book just really like sticking it out there for cash. But yeah, like around 2007, like right when he becomes,

you know, 700 million, it's, so it's interesting. Like what, what'll happen is because he's like making it rain at all these clubs where he'll just like do, um,

you know, champagne bottle, what are they called? Bottle parades or something where they'll just like keep bringing out, you know, like, uh, X $10,000 bottles of Cristal or whatever and um and so through this he meets

like club promoters and club promoters of course know celebrities because they pay these celebrities the appearance fees and through this he meets you know leonardo di caprio paris hilton and he's later able to actually leverage these contacts because you know some of his Middle Eastern uh partners are interested in hanging out and celeb with celebrities and so it's like it is sort of profitable for him but it is all just like this two-way thing where he's using it to network but it's also he's networking to get money to be able to hang out with celebrities yeah it's a business expense it's a business expense but it's also like a personal thing it's just like his weird psyche where that's the way he decided he had to do it right but it's also what he wants so badly even with those parties from what i read anyway and what in the whale book

uh it sounds like that's he still has an insane return on his investment even with the party so yeah yeah yeah but yeah so like and i'm sorry i got the date wrong it's by late 2009 because he gets his initial cash infusion 2007 but it really kicks into gear when he has a 700 million dollar personal account and then in uh so 2009 is the initial fundraise and then 2010 the state of malaysia commits another 800 million to this so you know he's already a billionaire by 2010 um and it's interesting where it's like you see kind of a similar thing happens in the financial crisis which is and you know other uh frauds which is a problem with private accounting is you know kpmG and the other big four accountants. Initially, 1MDB has Ernst & Young doing the books, but Ernst & Young won't sign off on their financials. So they just fire them and

hire KPMG and say, hey, we'll give you this money if you sign off on our books. So of course, KPMG does. And that's essentially what the problem with private accounting is you can just shop around and eventually you'll find someone who will take your money to say, yeah, sure, these books look fine. And then later they'd have to fire KPMG and get another person to sign off on their books when they just really cooked. But he's a billionaire. By late 2009, he has his Vegas birthday party with DiCaprio and other celebrities. He's going around France. At one club in France,

he spends 2 million euros on champagne. And this was entirely to outdo another billionaire who was there spending like only a million dollars on champagne. Oh my God. I think they said in the book that it wouldn't be possible for the people there to drink that much champagne if they just drank consecutively for a month.

She's like individually responsible for the CPI of EU increasing like 0.2. I feel like Chris Dahl has like a very understated role in financial crises. If you want to fight inflation, learn more about jay about j-lo uh just quoting from the book days after that two million uh euro champagne party days later him and paris hilton were in another club in europe with yet another bottle parade as the champagne came out with sparklers attached the theme music from rocky and star wars was blaring low took control handed a microphone he directed waiters to ensure everyone in the club got a bottle saudi arabia in the house he yelled as paris hilton danced and embraced him from behind

she was so drunk that other party goers had to support yeah apparently at other parties too he would yell malaysia in the house he was like between that and not and just watching people party and not talking to anyone so he doesn't have actual conversations yeah except about uh the wolf of wall street yeah saudi arabia in the house is also the last thing heard by thousands of Yemeni farmers. They just blur it from their F-16s. Yeah, like Ride of the Valkyries. Yeah. They just got the Jolo drop.

Oh, yeah. So, again, according to the book, between October 2009 and June 2010, a period of only eight months, Lowe and his entourage spent $85 million on alcohol, gambling in Vegas, private gents, renting super yachts, and to pay playmates and Hollywood celebrities to hang out with them. And, you know, he buys like, he sets himself up at 230 West 56th Street, New York. It's like a $38,000 a month apartment. He also starts buying a bunch of properties for the prime minister. He passes them to the prime minister's son, Aziz, who we'll get back to in a second. He runs up a $160,000 bar bill at Avenue, a club in Chelsea.

He sends three bottles. He sent 23 bottles of Cristal to actress Lindsay Lohan's table, single-handedly causing her to relapse. But, yeah. heard her relapse um but yes so uh and of course he you know he attends paris hilton's 29th birthday in uh 2010 where the aforementioned gifts from the malaysian taxpayers are given and also what is the gdp of jlo at this point uh and so also in this period you know leonardo dicaprio owns the rights to the wolf of wall street based on the book by Jordan Belfort, but the studio is hesitant to fund it. So Leo is also interested in getting Jolo to fund the thing entirely and let them avoid the studio process, which would eventually happen. but uh so essentially after 2010 they have another huge capital raise which is again we we said about five billion dollars would be the total amount diverted uh to jolo and this is like where

goldman sachs comes in there's a goldman sachs banker named uh tim leisner who's uh since pleaded guilty to federal money laundering charges just this month november 2018. And he's also alleged that, wouldn't you know, other people at Goldman Sachs were aware of his criminal dealings. And, you know, there's a culture of corruption at Goldman Sachs and all these other things that would just be hugely shocking

to any American familiar with Goldman Sachs. But so- Yeah, part of the reason we picked him is because like right now, all over the business papers, they're like new Goldman Sachs person convicted in one MDB scandal. It was like very surprising for the editors like Goldman Sachs person convicted. I don't know if we can write this. Are you sure about this?

So like he's paying like two million dollars like it's but so tim leisner and another thing about like tim leisner is so he's an investment banker in asia for goldman sachs and you know you hear like banker and you probably think they do like math or these kinds of things but investment banking is all about relationships essentially it's just glad handing yeah being a relationship banker. Yeah. He's a relationship. Creating value. Yes. For the economy. Glad handing corrupt despots. And in Tim Leisner's case,

he basically just fucked half of Malaysia in order to get this deal done. Like, so again, quoting from the book in 2010, he organized the 25 year old daughter of Malaysia's ambassador to the United States to undertake a short internship at goldman sachs in singapore and also started an affair with her and apparently he was like hooking up with some other i think daughter of a powerful malaysian person uh and so the internship

was risky because that's like technically a bribe which again is illegal under the u.s foreign corrupt practices act uh and i believe he pled guilty to Foreign Corrupt Practice Act violations as well. But so he sets up, you know, these influential Malaysians with, you know, internships with Goldman and all these other connections. And he becomes close to Joe Lowe at this time. And the entire reason that he's doing this, oh, and it should be noted, Tim Leisner is one of 100, he's made partner at Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has at this time in 2006 that he's made partner at goldman sachs goldman sachs has at this time in 2006 that

he's made partner goldman sachs is 115 partners so you know that's like 30 000 some employees only 115 partners so he is one of the most senior people at goldman sachs and so the entire reason that he's buttering up the malaysian government also apparently he would keep like breaking goldman sachs internal rules and potentially the law and would just get slaps on the wrist because he was like bringing in so much money for them. It's like one of those movies about like a detective who always breaks the rules, but gets the job done.

But it's just about like bribery. Yeah. David Lister. Those people's monies belong to us, chief. You're a loose cannon, but you're a television. Damn it, you get us the Malaysian peasant money. Give me your Davos badge and your secret key for the orgies. But so, yes, what happens is he's buttering up Jho Low and the Malaysian state employees because they want to do a capital raise for 1MDB.

And according to Reuters, what eventually happens is Goldman raises $6.5 billion in three bond sales for 1MDB between 2012 and 2013 uh again 6.5 billion dollars the majority of which would be funneled into jolo's private accounts overseas uh and goldman sachs has paid 600 million dollars for its advisory on this which is apparently like vastly more than typical industry fees like industry fees are usually 0.2 percent all pay for quality. Yeah. This is 10%? Yeah. It was like 10% is what they were paid, which is, again, like usually 0.2% all the way up to a max of 2% is what's typically paid. But it's entirely to go to kickbacks. fact that they are very aware at this point that um there's a lot of skimming going on which again is illegal for goldman sachs under the the u.s foreign corrupt practices act you can't be a u.s

company and engage in bribery it's just why they need 600 million in order to cover the 60 60 million dollar fine yes they're already assuming they'll get but uh like well we do need to cover our slap on the risk costs. Yeah. Yes. And another thing that just came out this month that, was not actually in the book is that, uh,

uh, outgoing Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, who of course lied to Congress about the financial crisis, uh, and sold, you know, a toxic,

a fraudulent mortgage backed securities among other things. Uh, he met with Joee low personally at least three times 2009 2012 2013 goldman sachs for their part have admitted the 2009 and 2012 meeting but uh they are denying the 2013 meeting and that's according to u.S. prosecutors. So it's like, you know, I mean, like just based on the history of U.S. financial prosecution, I don't expect this to go too far up the chain, but for his part, Tim Leisner is alleging

that like other senior people at Goldman Sachs were aware this deal had to go through like five compliance committees. Gary Cohn was the president of Goldman Sachs at the time, later went on to be an advisor to Trump for about a year. And he kind of like protected this thing where, you know, these compliance committees would say like, this is ridiculous. There's, you know, fraud going on here. These assets are not worth that much. Why are we taking such a huge fee? All these other questions. And Gary Cohn would be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So he just kind of shepherded this through. uh it'd be wonderful if you know him or uh lloyd blankfein faced some sort of

criminal accountability for uh the large criminal organization they run known as goldman sachs um but just one other thing i found from here was uh basically lloyd blank fine uh he was like really excited about what they did there as we mentioned he met with joe lowe three times and the book quotes him as saying look at what tim the the banker tim leisner and andrea was the guy who did the math for it uh those were the two bankers at goldman who ran this deal uh look at what tim and andrea did in malaysia blank fine told a meeting in new york on how to build business and growth markets rather than the increasingly heavily regulated US. We have to do more of that.

So Blankfein himself would like Goldman Sachs to do more fraud. But yeah, so it's like, it's just something where we'll see how this shakes out at Goldman if it goes up the chain at all. Based on past experiences, I expect it'll just be a fine and move on. But Goldman Sachs is down, I think the stock's down like 14% on the month because people are thinking the US government will maybe do something about this. Again, based on the history, people are thinking, you know, the U S government will maybe do something about this again, based on the history.

We don't expect it to, but I'd say, I'd say it's time to buy then the new, well, maybe the news about Lloyd blank fine is like very recent. Like a lot of it is not covered in the book. Yeah. Right.

Right. Like a lot of, um, it hit the business press in like August. I want to say, yeah okay so the um the the bribes right uh so the way he he would bribe the uh malaysian prime minister is he would buy all these properties uh through shell llcs and um places, you know, Manhattan, but also in Paris or England. The Paris one, I think, was near the prime minister's wife's favorite shopping area.

And then he would just sell it to them for cheap and also just lavish them with gifts. And so like you've got these public servants who are just, like, they would go on foreign trips. And there was one instance where the prime minister's wife had to order the staff to get her a bigger van so that she could fit everything that she'd bought on her shopping trip while they were getting into their private jet. And I think people started asking questions after that one so before we get to the repercussions for the government i do just want to mention red granite productions and also emi music company uh there was a music company so basically jolo sets up this film company which is what they do wolf of wall street with they do the movie friends with kids wolf of wall street dumb and dumber too, which is actually not bad.

I know it got trashed in the reviews, but I laughed. I watched it before, like three days ago. They did the movie Daddy's Home. And I do just like that all of those movies were unknowingly public projects of the nation of Malaysia.

But so they put, Jho Low puts the aforementioned son of the first lady of Malaysia in charge of this production company. He also puts all these properties in his name. So it's kind of his way to kick back to the ruling family of Malaysia. And then another interesting anecdote.

So he meets Swiss Beats, Joe Lowe does through, again, all his celebrity connections. He sets up a music production company. He takes a stake in EMI. And then as part of the production deal, Swiss Beats rapper Lil Jon and Joe Lowe

recorded a song entitled V at a studio in the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, a kind of party anthem. Lowe's contribution was to repeat the words very hot over and over again in the background. And if we can find that recording, we'll work it into this.

But apparently it is buried in the archives. Yeah, someone please find it. Yeah, please find it and send it to us but so and then like just one other thing before we kind of get to the fallout of this what i thought was fascinating is like you know maybe uh you have what edward saeed called the orientalist mindset where you think this just happens in malaysia because it's backwards corrupt eastern whatever you want to call it uh so the other part is Jolo is able to use his money to set up meetings with Obama because Jolo meets a guy named Frank White, who's a super bundler

for Obama in the 2012 campaign. And again, this is the problem with money in elections. Frank White raises like $10 million for Obama through network of donors, these kinds of things. And because he has this connection, he's able to get people meetings with barack obama so uh low uh uh sends like through yes he sent 20 million dollars through an offshore company that would eventually wash up into super PAC supporting obama in 2012 he sends another 10 million directly to Frank White's company. And so in exchange for like this massive infusion of cash, Joe Lowe is able to,

yes, Joe Lowe attends the president's holiday party after the 2012 election. And he's also able to, Frank White sets up a meeting between Obama and the then prime minister, Nijab. And so like, oh, and also the other part of it is DiCaprio and Scorsese visit the White House to hand over a DVD copy of The Wolf of Wall Street to Obama.

And this was also arranged through his connection with Frank White, the financier. And so it's just interesting where like Frank White himself is like stealing tens of millions of dollars or receiving tens of millions in stolen money from Malaysia. And then because he's like a big bundler for Obama, he's able to make these introductions. And ultimately, Jolo wasn't really able to make much money off of his Obama introduction, but it does like cement his relationship with the PM

because he's the conduit through which the PM talks to Barack Obama. So like when the PM arrived, Obama would be like, I would like to be perfectly clear. Malaysia is in the house. Oh, and then one other thing. Very hot. Yeah. In 2014, Obama visits Malaysia. Just days before Obama arrived, 1Mb signed a multi-million dollar deal

with frank white's company dusable capital to develop a solar electricity plant in malaysia only months later the solar deal was scrapped and 1mdb eventually paid 69 million dollars to buy out dusable's shares in the joint venture so this is like at least 79 million dollars directly to this guy from malaysian taxpayers and that's how you get a meeting with barack obama um but yeah so i guess we could just kind of talk about the the fallout because eventually as we mentioned kpmg leaves they have to find another um it's interesting where it's like it's not really like the bernie madoff scheme where he had he spent you know decades just constantly finding new investors whereas jolo

was constantly trying to get new capital raises because it's like it's interesting where he probably could have kept this going a lot longer if he just grafted much less of the money but because so much of it went into his own personal accounts he constantly had holes that he had to fill so he was constantly trying to do capital raises like after the uh goldman sachs money raise in 2012 2013 they're like trying to go to deutsch bank and some other people uh deutsch bank sends them like i think a 500 million dollar loan and then like uh which was like conditional on them like sending financial statements and stuff. It's like, hey, maybe Malaysia for once should be in the apartment.

It was conditional on them, like sending financial statements. And then one MDB's board is just like, no, we're not going to send any financial statements because Deutsche Bank wanted to do the next capital raise. But so it's like, you know, by 2014, the books are just falling apart. You know, they're completely on fire. And what eventually happens is a Petro Saudi, a former employee of Petro Saudi, steals the hard drives from Petro Saudi or steals the data, the internal servers, excuse me. And he puts it on a hard drive and then he's trying to sell it to somebody for like $2 million. Eventually, a wealthy journalist within Malaysia agrees to buy the contents of the hard drive, and this is splashed across the internet in 2015.

New York Times, Wall Street Journal start reporting on it. So 2015, the story breaks. Now, before this, didn't he try to patch up the books with an IPO? Yes, they had a couple different ideas where they wanted to launch an IPO of 1MDB's oil assets and some other assets. They also wanted to do

another capital raise. And again, they were like, that's how they got Deutsche Bank to extend them more money and keep this going because Deutsche Bank wanted the fees that Goldman was getting. So they put on them for suckering. So the idea would be like to put out some stocks, have a bunch of people buy it,

invest that money into the debts, and then later it's like revealed to the companies and solve it and all the stocks are worthless. Right. Well, like it's interesting where the book kind of speculates if Joe Lowe knew this would collapse or if he just thought he would eventually like be able to fill like I think a $2.7 billion hole.

Because he like, he did actually make like 300 million on the wolf of wall street he made some money on his emi stake he was like involved in a luxury development in manhattan that he actually sold his stake in for a healthy profit so it's like he was making money at a few different places but it was just like again stealing five billion dollars it's just you can't really make up that shortfall um and eventually in 2015 this comes to light and the prime minister at the time uh his response is to do a massive crackdown uh using uh colonial error sedition laws to arrest opposition figures uh he fires basically

every prosecutor looking into this such as malaysia's attorney general at the time was like was going to indict the prime minister and then he was fired and locked out of his office all of his documents were taken and then one prosecutor was murdered he was like on his way to the office he was run off the road kidnapped uh later strangled and left uh his body like cemented in a barrel that was thrown somewhere um like some some minor patsies went to jail for this but it's alleged that the prime minister was involved who fucking knows but maybe this will come out in the upcoming uh uh investigations i wonder if there's like some kind of culturally specific malaysian symbolism to

being in concrete in a barrel that just doesn't translate. It's like, oh, you're gonna barrel us? Well, it's like, that doesn't make sense. If you speak Malaysian, it's actually a huge family insult. But, oh, and then like, so 2015,

the Prime Minister of Malaysia tells Jho Low don't come back to Malaysia. So Jho Low has, at this point a giant yacht which has since been seized by malaysian authorities costing malaysian uh the public more money because they have to pay hundreds of thousands in maintenance fees on this giant lot that they're trying yacht that they're trying to sell but so uh jolo starts hanging out in his yacht uh in bangkok and shanghai china um but so the prime minister tells him don't come back to malaysia So Jho Low starts hanging out in his yacht in Bangkok and Shanghai, China. But so the prime minister tells him, don't come back to Malaysia.

But the prime minister is still in charge. He's like cracking down on dissent. And like aiding and abetting a fugitive. So basically, Jho Low at this point in 2015, he'd actually bought a ton of art. That was the other thing. And this was actually a smart investment for a fugitive because when the fbi starts looking into this in 2015 he starts selling off all his art and this gives him like as we've kind of mentioned on our previous episode art auctions they don't check the buyer there's very little transparency so it's a great way if

you're like a fugitive and you need hundreds of millions of dollars so he sells off much of his art collection and he's able to like, we don't know how much money he still has squirreled away, but it's very possible he's still a billionaire just through his foreign accounts and what hasn't been frozen. But in 2016, the US government freezes about $1 billion worth of assets, including future profits from the Wolf of wall street the u.s government wants the cut of that very sad um but yes so uh the u.s government in 2016 says the jig is up they freeze all these assets um initially the prime minister is able to like meet with trump

and talk about trade and stuff and like there's speculation that maybe he'll be able to set things right but he loses an election yeah so they held a general election in 2018 that was pretty much like in light of one mdb and uh there's a political coalition was formed in may of that year just before the elections elections it's like specifically to oust uh najib razik and they did so and they did so in like really really spectacular fashion so it like this coalition had only been around for a few months of a couple different parties like the opposition parties um ended up garnering 48% of the vote. And yeah, they got a majority formed a government and they're one of the old PMs Mahadir

Mohammed, who's 92 years old, had to come out of retirement basically. He's a former Prime Minister, very popular. He used to be in Najib's party and he used to be one of najib's like biggest supporters back in the day najib's party was like also the predominant party in malaysia yeah for the entirety of its yeah hosted on his yacht yeah barisan national was

najib's party and pakistan harapan prominent party in mal in Malaysia with 2 million euros worth of champagne bottles. Yeah, that's how they measure it. Well, anyway, the coalition called Pakatan Harapan, which is only like four months old, ousted this party that had been in control for decades. And the plan right now with him, with Mahathir

Mohammed, the Prime Minister right now, is that he was kind of just there to galvanize support against surviving an iron lung again yeah number one is to like live long enough yeah for this to for this to complete the iron but he was kind of just like a kinsberg he was just trying to be like a caretaker prime minister until the leader of the like the main opposition party within the coalition can take the reins and hopefully they do plan to

indict Najeeb and have like a criminal trial for him. Yeah, I know he's been like charged, I think. Najeeb has. And I think like as the writing of the book, the First Lady had not been charged, but it's expected that she will be

as well. But yeah, so as soon as the Prime Minister loses, Jolo falls off the map. He likely has hundreds of millions of dollars in secret accounts. In fact, we literally, the day that we were recording this episode, we found out that Jolo's name was largely scrubbed from the final audit report of of one mdb he's making a comeback yeah he might be back uh joe might be back in business

but uh he's still a fugitive though yeah and dumber three we mentioned the u.s government seizing assets another part of that is that the U.S. government has demanded that Leonardo DiCaprio give back $13 million in art that Jolo gave him. He voluntarily gave that back. And interestingly enough, Jolo was for a time dating

Australian supermodel Miranda Keir. He gave her $8 million worth of jewelry, which the US government also sees. Both DiCaprio and Miranda gave them back voluntarily. But random fact about Miranda Keir, she has since married the billionaire Snapchat founder.

So we will return to her on a future episode. Yeah, man, she's gonna be like the queen of getting your assets repossessed repossessing is the hardest part of our job she's really good at marrying into crumbling multi-billion dollar enterprises um but yeah so that's so now jolo uh walks the land in solitude uh i think crystallizing his place as a folk hero, Stephen and I were talking about this before the episode, that you can write a song about him like,

Old Joe Lowe, where did you go? Stealing from the poor, giving to casinos. Where are the pensions the teachers want to know go on your way old joe low yeah the uh the book closes with joe low the wall street journal reporters trying to figure out where this massive party joe low is throwing is going to be because this is when he still had his yacht and he had to keep a low profile but he was just like so addicted to the party lifestyle that uh he actually got nelly i believe to come out and some other celebrities well he's a fugitive for justice you know and take like a hundred thousand dollars to perform for an hour at his party wait he really did that

yeah as a fugitive he got nelly to come out yes he did i like i don't think he'd been indicted at that time but he had been like revealed in press accounts and uh at this point the u.s government was like holding its fire they kind of waited till he got sloppy and then docked his yacht somewhere and then the u.s government seized it uh so they like didn't give him warning that he was gonna have his assets seized but they were trying to like lure him into complacency but during this period nelly comes out for a party. And then since then, you can, you can tell how far he's falling.

Cause like he can only afford second rate aughts celebrities. I mean, I guess at his peak, he was only really buying into second rate aughts celebrities, but they're not going to be able to take him alive because Joe Lowe knows what happened to people on that Malaysia airline flight. Yeah. He knows what happened.

What did he know? The mysterious airline full of people who have insider knowledge of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti. Yeah. Oddly disappearing. The inability of the Malaysian government to find it immediately after it disappeared didn't have to do with the fact that all of its money was being pilfered into baccarat tables in las vegas it's because they knew the truth

but jolo we hope you're somewhere out there listening we hope the crystal is flowing we hope you're not too lonely um we hope that uh you're not making small talk with women because that's difficult for you and we hope Paris is still responding to your texts and you know what if you want to Skype in anytime we'll disguise your location

yeah this podcast is a firm no snitching policy that we will not break for anyone so you're welcome to come and you know Leo you're in New York. You want to come on too? Let's talk Wolf of Wall Street sequel. Yeah.

But anyways, any closing thoughts on Joe Lowe? King. The only good billionaire. He did it the right way, people. Don't pretend that you're creating value with your shitty Snapchat scam. Yeah. Pour champagne on celebrities.

Well, with that, I think we're all going to sit down and enjoy a fine film called House of Wax starring Paris Hilton. I got it all ready to fire up. Spend two million euro on champagne. The only way to truly appreciate the film is after you have spent two million euro on champagne. The only way to truly appreciate the film is after you have spent two million euro on champagne, after Swiss Beats has closed out his one-hour-long set at your birthday party.

Alicia Keys, Swiss Beats, only people to attend Jolo, only major celebrities to attend Jolo's 34th birthday party. Leo and all the other fake friends had abandoned him. But you know what? This episode. Friendship ended with Leo. This episode is dedicated to Swiss Beats and Alicia Keys because that's day one.

You know, it's easy to stick by a Malaysian guy stealing from a pension fund. Don't believe Leo when he says you'll never let go. But you know what? It takes some real... You have to be valuing more than money when you stick by somebody in their darkest hour. And we hope Joe Lowe has a speedy return to grace and is successful corrupting a new government. Come back, Joe.

Say it ain't so. You know, apparently he's been able to get in with some Chinese sovereign wealth funds. Hell yeah. You know, apparently he's been able to get in with like some Chinese sovereign wealth funds. Hell yeah. You know, the man capitalism allocates resources efficiently. He is good at influencing sovereign

wealth funds is a skill and it's bankable. Alright. But we hope you've had as much fun as we have learning about Joe Lowe and we'll be back next week with another billionaire. Toodles. Alright, goodnight.