Grubstakers - Episode 44: Ananda Krishnan

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

This week's episode follows the foibles of adorably corrupt leech on the state Ananda Krishnan. Hear all about how he was able to fund the 1985 Live Aid concert by jumping in bed with kleptocratic regimes in Indonesia and the Philippines, how he became a billionaire through the hard work of getting a monopoly gambling license from Malaysia, and how his friendship with the current Prime Minister makes it unlikely he'll be charged for his role in the 1MDB fraud. CORRECTIONS: There is no evidence Ananda Krishnan was divorced. Also Tim Leissner/Goldman Sachs did the IPOs for Maxis, Ananda's cellular company, in 2002 and Astro, Ananda's satellite company, in 2003. In the episode we mix up the two companies when discussing Tim's role.

In five, four, three, two. I really enjoyed you guys doing that together on the last one. Oh, yes. It was very fun. It should start from 50. Yeah. Really let the audience. Build attention.

Yeah. Behind the process. In 50. It's like whirring noise the whole time. 49. 48. How to succeed in business mostly by lying. In 1, 49, 48. How to succeed in business mostly by lying.

In 1,000, 999, 998, 997. There's a week-long timer. Yeah. When to next gross to you. Yeah, before Yogi starts to count down for this episode, we start counting down for the next episode. All right. I should probably just start from five, though. 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 four three two one hello welcome back to grub stakers the podcast about In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. Sean P. McCarthy here, joined as always by my friends. Yogi Poliwal.

Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. And we've got a very special episode for you this week. We're taking a look at Ananda Krishnan, another billionaire who is also involved in the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia that we talked about last week. Because we read this book, Billion Dollar Whale. We did our previous episode on it. And if we're going to read an entire book, we should get at least two episodes out of it. I think so. But first, we want to send our condolences to the Carlyle Group for losing their Employee of the Month.

Yes. Just yesterday, we received the tragic news that former president george hw bush was thrown out of his baby incubator by saddam hussein's forces that's right that's right and he uh is uh is no longer with us he has passed away he is squeezing angels asses in his heavenly mobility scooter they've got scooters up there they can't get the legs fixed to heaven no he's still shitting himself in heaven george hw bush gets to hell and he goes hey where's noriega and they point upwards noriega was a saint noriega and saddam are both laughing at him from a cloud

who knew god hated Kurds? It's like you have to look at the entirety of a person's life. And you know, no one brought more stability to the Middle East. That's right. St. Peter's like arguing with George H.W. Bush like, look, if Saddam was there,

there would be no ISIS so you're going to hell and he's staying here but yeah no we're all looking forward to the think pieces like just this morning on the radio I heard some tribute to talk about like his inspiring work on the civil

rights legislation for the disabled the Americans with Disability Act I am interested in seeing how much of that woke take gets going. Yeah, yeah. That George H.W. Bush was our first president to truly fight for the disabled. I can't wait till his hologram's touring. Coachella first, then Lollapalooza.

Let's get H.W. out there. It'll be the first hologram to grope staffers. But not the last. To truly work for the disabled that were made by the Contras. But yes, I guess RIP to George H.W. Bush. But this week we're here to talk about Ananda Krishnan. And Ananda Krishnan is a Malaysian

billionaire and not actually a love interest from an Austin Powers movie. What? I just thought that was interesting. He's got an interesting name from my white western perspective. Yeah that sounds about right. What sex act is that? Ananda Krishnan. Do you know his first name? The T? Do you know what that is? Oh, yeah, yeah. What is the deal with that?

I kept seeing that. So, apparently, Krishnan, it's like a patriarchal, P-A-T-R-C-I-O-C-A-H, something, something. And so, that last name is his dad's first name. It's what a true surname is, I think. Does that make any sense at all? No one's got anything to say about what I just said.

I got literally nothing. I got fucking six eyeballs saying nothing to me. I'm still trying to figure out what sack sack that is. Two, actually. But he goes by Tack. He goes, I'm a non Krishnan, Roger Marcos. Well, maybe later. And straightens his tie and walks away.

Ananda Krishnan is when you don't do missionary position. Because you're not a Christian. Oh, there we are. But so, I do want to say, just up top, before we kind of get into the meat of the episode uh we've done 40 some episodes uh i think we can all safely say there has never been an episode about a guy that was harder to do research on than ananda krishnan yeah there's not much more of a lower profile billionaire than this cat which is interesting like just doing research because like the longer i google with like no result the more nervous I get the more I'm like yeah I'm not supposed

to see any of this like my life is in danger the deeper I am going into Google right well do the same picture with Jolo we actually had to. We found the perfect drop for Jolo a week too late. Speaking of which, Jolo.com. Where did you come from? All right, wait a minute, wait a minute. Joe-lo.com is Jolo's official website where he's released one statement, but he's going to offer the truth

about what really happened to one mdb there and there is a contact form and i would just like to say that grubstakers podcast has reached out to get jillow as a guest on a future episode that's right and we will update you the listener unfortunately he's not going to reply unless you email fat eric that was a running thing in his his book is that he's got a friend named fat eric that everyone calls him fat eric and he will use him he he emails people as fat eric on his like email account just so he can hide himself wait really yeah yeah i didn't read this book that all of us are talking about but uh I love this Fat Eric play. This is great.

Yeah. Because you know there must have been a thin Eric who was like, thank God I'm not Fat Eric. It was pretty great. We had to take the extreme step of buying one book in order to talk about Jolo. I've been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go?

Where did you come from? Cutting out jokes. But yes, Fat Eric, he kept pretending to be Fat Eric, and Fat Eric would sign off on this while Jolo would keep doing things, Fat Eric, he kept pretending to be Fat Eric, and Fat Eric would sign off on this while Joe Lowe would keep doing things as Fat Eric that were extremely criminal. So Fat Eric was just unknowingly exposing himself to serious legal danger

by allowing Joe Lowe to use his name for all of his fraudulent transactions. That's fucking great. Yeah. Basically, if you're a friend or a cousin of a billionaire, your name's going to be on 30 different LLCs buying a property in Midtown. But so just one quote from Ananda Krishnan, who this kind of illustrates the problem we've said.

He says, quote, I have heard some people say I have a low profile. Why should somebody be high profile anyway? I am just doing my job. And that's a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald. They quoted it from some other interview he did. But the point is, essentially, this guy is, according to Forbes, as of right now, he's worth about $5.4 billion US dollars.

He was worth about $10 billion at one point, but he had a disastrous investment in India with criminal allegations that we'll get back to in a second but hey read that quote you just did of his but as a mob boss i've heard some people say i have a low profile why should somebody be high profile anyways i'm just doing my job as you hear gunshots in the background but i mean yeah it's like and so we'll kind of get into it like eventually you do enough research and i found a couple sources he became a billionaire entirely through contacts with the malaysian state that are all like you know graft uh certainly unethical if not outright illegal in many cases so it's like of course you would probably keep a low profile if if you're smart

and you're engaging in criminal activity because you know the actually smart criminals are the ones we don't hear about right right that's always an interesting thing to me is like people assume like criminals are like dumb you know because you like hear about like what el chapo getting caught because he wants to fuck some uh soap opera actress or something but But it's like, no, the very smart criminals don't have Wikipedia articles. They're just there. Right. And if anyone from the Sinaloa is listening, I am not impugning the intelligence

of El Chapo. And we'll be happy to do an episode. I think you are, Sean. Social security number 782. Please do not cut me limb from limb with a chainsaw Or That would have been it

But That would be a fun bonding activity for the rest of us Watching Sean get butchered by the Sinaloa cartel Hey the Patreon would be set up by then Receiving The other three members of the podcast update every week on which body parts

of mine they have received in the mail. Well, we got Sean's pinky this week. This one's either his thumb or his cock. We're not sure yet. You have $10 on the Patreon and you too can have part of Sean. You guys do like a GoFundMe to pay my ransom, but then just launder it.

Just go on like a Jolo fucking party spree. But so getting back to the subject at hand, who will, again, there's not as much information on this guy, but I've been able to put through like a basic biography. There's gaps about like where he got his capital from and these kinds of things. But I think it's all pretty damning and indicative of corruption that he was able to build his fortune. The interesting thing is that if you listen to our previous episode, we talked about this year in Malaysia, a guy named Mathahir Mohamed is a former prime minister of Malaysia who was just swept back into power. He was prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003.

And because the previous prime minister, Najib, who was so close to Joe Lowe, extremely corrupt, so this guy ran against him and was swept to power in a landslide this year. Joe only lived once. And so he's elected to clean up the corruption in Malaysia. And we kind of have some bad news, which is that the entire time this guy was prime minister from 1981 to 2003, he was extremely corrupt. Oh, really? And really the reason Ananda Krishnan became a billionaire was because he was extremely close to this prime minister, Mata Hir Mohamad. They were lovers.

Well, Ananda Krishnan, in addition to they would go on vacation together, Ananda Krishnan would actually watch his children. Ananda Krishnan has like... That's illegal in Malaysia. To watch people's children. Gentlemen cannot be lovers. That's...

If you do that, you will be thrown in jail and not just because you're an enemy of the Empower political party. Well, everyone knows Malaysia translating Spanish is bad Asia.

I felt bad about my Austin Powers joke, but now I feel okay about it. Good, you should. I've been shot like you. I've been married a long time ago. All right, all right. It's the only drop he's played so far.

We've got so many other drops, Andy. Yeah, but I'm only 26 seconds into the song. I got three minutes and 13 seconds left. That's how drops work. We'll get back to the connection with Mata Hir Mohamed and how Mata Hir Mohamed helped Ananda Krishnan build his multi-billion dollar fortune. But it is just an interesting thing

where another thing we will get to is Ananda Krishnan is in at least some way involved in the 1MDB scandal and fraud and theft of billions of dollars from the people of malaysia that we talked about on the previous episode but because this guy matthew mohammed just came back into power and has a very close relationship with ananda krishnan ananda krishnan vacations with him he uh watched his kids he would apparently like make his guest properties he uh ananda krishnan has properties in like uh switzerland france and he would make these available to the children of uh matahir muhammad as well as other politicians in malaysia so it's like because of this close

relationship it's really an open question if they're going to kind of sweep under the rug ananda krishnan's um role in the one mdb scandal and then also currently there's really cute how they work together though like you can't be corrupt alone you have to have friends no of course you can't there's no such thing as a lone wolf corruptor anymore i mean it's it's all about uh collaboration yeah there's no such thing as a self-made billionaire you gotta you gotta have connections to the prime minister that's your money from the people of the country. And occasionally have sex with them. Yeah. Yeah, actually that Beatles song, Need a Little Help From My Friends, is actually about how to become a billionaire in Malaysia.

Yeah. As is that classic song. From where did you go? Where did you come from? God knows. All right. But so we will get back to that. And then as I think we mentioned, Anandakrishnan has an arrest warrant for him

from the government of India. But currently both the previous and the current prime minister of Malaysia are protecting him from being extradited for this. Because they were lovers. And so just quickly about Anandakrishnan. He is the majority owner of Maxis Telecom, which is the largest telecom service provider in Malaysia.

He originally got his money through oil, but he's since diversified oil and gambling. He's an oil man? Yeah. He also made SimCity. He drank your money. There's an air company called Max's. Oh, wait.

I should have said, yeah. Yeah, it's a very... Wait, is it an EA? The only company that makes SimCity? He did challenge everything. But, yeah, so Max's Telecom, the largest telecom service provider in Malaysia, so he, like, gets a lot of cell phone revenue.

And this we'll get back to in India is where he tried to expand and failed. But he also runs Astro, which is the first and only satellite TV provider in Malaysia. And again, this is where the connection with the former Prime Minister, Mata Hir Mohamad, comes in because he was able to get some government help to launch a satellite, Anandakrishnan was. So, you know, when business and government work together, good things happen. But I just want to kind of start from the beginning, and what we know, again, there will be gaps. We know Anandakrishnan was born in 1938, and according to one thing I read, his grandparents were moved from Sri Lanka to Malaysia by British colonial rulers because they were civil servants.

So apparently this is from the Sunday times. Jaffna in Sri Lanka produced some of the most educated people in the, the country, Sri Lanka. So according to the Sunday times, both of Ananda Krishnan's grandparents were moved to malaysia by british colonial authorities in order that they could be civil servants in malaysia i don't know if the the indian government's still trying to arrest this guy

sean all the reports i see are from like 2016 2017 but um i think some of them are like no i mean like he's avoiding them if he wasn't a billionaire, he would be arrested. But I think he's obviously fighting them. They call him an absconder, which is, I love the, like, British influence in Indian media. Yeah, see, without colonial rule, we wouldn't have cool words like that. British education system. What are you going to do? It does work.

But so, according to this report in the Sunday Times, both of his grandfathers, Ananda Krishnan's grandfathers, were brought from Jaffna in Sri Lanka to work in the civil service for Malaysia, which is why his father, Ananda Krishnan's

father, was a senior civil servant in the government of Malaysia. And so, Ananda Krishnan was born 1938 in Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur, which apparently Brickfields is known as like a little India or a small India within Kuala Lumpur. It's like an Indian area. And apparently he had a stutter as a child. I just grabbed that somewhere from Wikipedia. Really? Yeah. The that somewhere from Wikipedia. Really?

Yeah. The Malay language, Wikipedia. Malay, if you will. Malay for the lay person. In some circles. We know very little about his early life. You would assume senior civil servant. He was probably upper middle class. But we do know he gets a scholarship to study at Melbourne University in Australia.

And he was apparently there introduced to horses by his college mates. Apparently, the only sport he cares about is like horse racing, horse betting, would later get a monopoly on horse racing within Malaysiaaysia from the government but apparently all of his friends fathers there bred horses in his college at melbourne australia and this is from network malaysia.com and it is said his first business venture while still a student at the university was a small betting operation oh he also worked at the radio station and edited the college paper. That's exactly what his future holds.

Media as well as horses. He also acted in a play including The Merchant of Venice, which is where he learned about the Shylock people. I don't follow.

Who are the Shylock people, Sean? The ones who caused the Asian financial crisis, such as Mr. George Soros. The ones who will get a call before the Petronas Tower 9-11 happens. He got the inspiration for that from the Merchant of Venice play. And so basically he gets a BA with honors from Melbourne, and then he moves to Harvard Business School. He gets an MBA from Harvard in 1964.

And again, we don't have much details on this, but we do know that it's at Harvard he makes connections with the Saudi royal family or like somebody linked to the Saudi royal family, and this is how he's able to become an oil man, which is where his first millions come from. By the way, there were like 2,000 Saudi princes. Just in case people are wondering like how hard it is to get in contact

with a member of the Saudi royal family, there's like 2,000 of them. They're not a rarefied group of people. They're all like descendants from the first Saudi king, I'd say, or something like that who was like four generations back and they fucked like crazy. If you get an email from a Saudi prince, don't just delete it.

Yeah, it's like the difficulty is figuring out which of them actually have any connection to power in Saudi Arabia and which of them are just like layabouts who like expect to have everything paid by people who want lucrative contracts with their government.

But so I do want to quote. I did find a book called Asian Godfathers by Joe Studwell. And this kind of talk is written in 2008. It talks about a few different billionaires in Asia. And he does have the most... No, Sean. Yes. You know how you did... No, Sean. Yes.

You know how you did a mob voice earlier? Yes. Asian Godfather. We need you to do the same thing. Let's hear you build on that. Yes, and the situation, Sean. So I got to do the Godfather voice, but racist Asian accent.

Yeah, yeah. I think so. Basically, that's exactly what I was telling you to do. Yeah. I'm gonna throw this one off to Yogi. I've never seen The Godfather so this is all unusual. But I do want to quote from this Asian Godfather's book here because

this kind of explains, again, this guy has the most information that I was able to find. I can't refuse. I'm making it an offer you can't refuse. Oh, God almighty. I'm sorry.

Anyway, so Krishna... You're not sorry. This is literally everything you ever dreamed of, Sean. Hey, Sean, thousands of people want to hear your racist Asian godfather's impression. Come on. Don't let them down.

Don't make that Comptown money, Sean. Krishnan obtained an MBA. This is, again, from the book. Krishnan obtained an MBA from Harvard and made his first millions in oil trading, leveraging Harvard Business School-derived friendships with the Saudi royal family, as well as with Filipino politician Roberto Ongpin, and doing business with the regimes of Suharto in Indonesia, and Ferdinand Marcus

in the Philippines. Christians whose first jobs were with international consultancies advised on the structuring of Malaysia's oil and gas industry and managed to forge lasting friendships with both Tengku Hazma and arch rival Mathahir Mohammed. Under Mathahir, Krishnan received various streams of valuable government concessions for horse racing and numbers betting, mobile telephone, broadcasting and satellites, and developed the Patronus Towers. Very long time ago, where did you come from, where did you go, where did you come from,

Captain Ado? All right. So basically, he makes these connections at Harvard, and then from what we know, he sets up a consultancy company. In 1964, he moves back to Malaysia he sets up a consultancy company. In 1964, he moves back to Malaysia, sets up this consultancy company. He runs a number of ventures with an Australian mining engineer who founds a company called Minsect. But in 1968, Ananda Krishnan sets up Ex Oil Trading, an oil trading company. And as just mentioned from the excerpt, he's doing business

with Soeharto in Indonesia, famously corrupt. Same with Ferdinand Marcus in the Philippines, also famously corrupt. So he has experience dealing with corrupt regimes that expect kickbacks and these kinds of things. And it's during this time he meets, and in the 60s and through the 70s, he's a close friend and business partner of Tangku Hamzah, who would become the finance minister of Malaysia in the 70s. And through Tangku Hamzah, he meets Mothahir Muhammad, who would go on to become the prime minister. He meets Mothahir Muhammad, who would go on to become the prime minister. He meets Mata Hir Mohamed through him in the 1970s. And these two would become political rivals later, but Ananda Krishnan is smart. He manages to stay close to both of them. As we mentioned, he watches Mata Hir Mohamed's kids at various points. He takes holidays with both of them. And interestingly,

these two have like a falling out. They become political rivals. But then Ananda Krishnan makes them squash the beef. In 1996, they both meet at his house to sit down and work things out. And they come back to the same political party after splitting previously. So this is a guy who like very much has close connections to the government of Malaysia through the finance minister and later through the prime minister. Who he's making love to. Yes. And so he becomes a millionaire off oil money, as we mentioned.

Like, there's very little detail about where he got the startup capital, what his early business operations were, but we know he was dealing with these two corrupt regimes we just mentioned. You know what I think it was? What? Pure hard work. Yeah? Yeah. He worked really hard. Mm- what I think it was? What? Pure hard work. Yeah? Yeah.

He worked really hard. Mm-hmm. And it paid off. I mean, this is how I found the billionaires really seem to accomplish most of their goals. The work they do, they do it hard.

Yeah. Work hard, fuck hard. So it separates them from us. Mm-hmm. He did sodomy really hard in order to become a billionaire it's actually part of the law in malaysia they're anti-sodomy laws it's like if you're a billionaire you get a pass what if that's the reason he keeps a low profile it's nothing sinister he just knows

sodomy is illegal in malaysia he was willing to put in the emotional labor in order to make these relationships and network of power work. That is, that'd be a great woke take is like the corruption is actually emotional labor. So it's okay that they get paid for it. What's more emotional labor, topping or bottoming? I mean, doing both is the most emotional labor, you know. That's true. Being a switch. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. I did forget to mention, this is another BOC episode, so we should be more respectful to our billionaires of color. Yeah, but how respectful? I think we're giving him the respect he needs. He's no Jolo.

But so... All right. 1968, he sets up Exoil Oil Trading Company. But 1969, he's able to buy an Indonesian offshore oil concession after there was an oil strike there. And so we previously mentioned Soeharto in Indonesia, again, famously corrupt regime. So he's able to get the Indonesian government to allow him to buy a stake in an oil concession so again we don't know for sure that there were kickbacks but you have to assume something was going on here but it's from these oil concession that he's able to become a millionaire

in the 70s and uh he in 71 actually marries a woman who is like a Thai princess, which is where his three children are all from this marriage. They've since separated. Oh, really? I didn't know they were separated. I'm pretty sure, yeah. I think he's on his second wife now. Really?

You've got to keep them separated. I play that song, but I don't want to lose my place and cut my joke. Don't worry. I'll cut it in, Andy. Andy's doing the essential work of providing the one drop that people have heard 100,000 times in their lives. I want to make it so that you can recut this episode and get the entirety of Cotton Eye Joe.

What? what is this what is this remix what that's that's how the rednecks do it that's the that's the song listen you want sex and violins you get sex and violins it's a good thing we're not trying to upload this episode to youtube or anything any platform that notoriously pulls down copyrighted material. How much of the song is left? We got 3 minutes 13 seconds. Oh wait, no, that's the length of the song. Sorry, we got about

2 minutes Too long, Steven. I'm just imagining somebody sitting down and taking the time to edit out four idiots talking just so that they could get a song they could have just gone to Spotify and gotten immediately. Yeah, but this is commercial free. The cut and I joke, mega cut. The Billionaire's Podcast is a front for our commercial free streaming music network.

Every episode has one song you can recut. Commercial free. If you are willing to do the labor. I'm putting $10 a month or whatever it is into Spotify so you can get four songs a month. Commercial free. The premium episodes have two songs. But so, in 69, we mentioned Ananda Krishnan gets a stake in an offshore oil concession. But in 74, this is where he really becomes a big shot.

Because in 1974, Indonesia sets up the national oil company Patronus and Patronus is like extremely corrupt I mean it's again it's a state oil company it's uh we're going to get to its role in the Patronus towers um but so Patronus he uh Ananda Krishnan advises the uh minister of finance uh Tengku Hamza on creating the National Oil Company. Anandakrishnan is initially like is an advisor to it. He's actually the director of this Patronus from 1984 to 1986. But essentially, he's has a big role in the state oil company, you know, the National Oil Company, while also being a private, you know, oil producer and all these things so again you just get a lot of information about you know what's going on with state policy regarding oil you're able to um he eventually becomes what's called an independent power

producer an ipp wait wait this one's this one's for our nerd listeners uh when you're in malaysia the people with patronuses are the Death Eaters. Huh? Huh? Come on, Harry Potter. Come on. You all listened to it. You all read it. I only thought that joke and then it was like, you know, we don't have to.

Well, someone has to say it. All I know is. Andy, that's not funny. Just yesterday, George H.W. Bush ran into a Death Eater. What were you saying, Yogi? All I is sean said uh he's down with ipp yeah you know me um but so also 1976 this is interesting he advises the government on the takeover of london tin the government nationalizes tin mining and this is interesting because as we mentioned he's like work working with an australian engineer uh in the mining sector so it's just another thing where it's like there's very little information about it but you have to imagine this guy made at least some money on his work advising the government about its takeover of a tin mining operation that's not

a takeover this is a takeover. This is a takeover. Oh, and also... So, by the 1980s we know he's become a multi-millionaire because he's actually... And this was interesting. The coke consumption in Malaysia went up. The Freddie Mercury

movie just came out and somebody who knows Ananda Krishnan is trying to launder his bad deeds through philanthropy and put it out there that Ananda Krishnan was, quote, the brains and money behind the Live Aid concert in 1985 where Freddie Mercury famously performed. Wait, is that true? Yeah.

I mean, well, the part about the money is true. The brains, I don't really think so. But so yes, in 1985, Anand Akrishnan puts up several million dollars to do the Live Aid charity concert. And this is like... Most of that went into mic stands. Fred would run through those mic stands. But yes, it is just something where it's like,

Anand Akrish keeps keeps a very low profile but that is the one piece of information that is very easy to find about him it's like yeah he was involved in this uh charitable thing that is now featured in a freddie mercury biography movie um so in 1985 or sorry 1984 to 1986 he is the director of the Patronus Board, again, the national oil company. But by the 80s, he's a multimillionaire off oil wealth. However, it's in the late 80s that he becomes a billionaire.

I also found that between 1982 and 87, he sold his power company, Taichung Energy, to 1MDB in 2020. Well, I'm sorry. I'm rambling. Yeah, we'll get to that. But yes, he does.

He's involved in selling power assets to 1M sorry. I'm rambling. Never mind. We'll get to that. But yes, he does. He's involved in selling power assets to 1MDB in a very shady transaction that we're about to get to. Wait, let me think of that again. Yes. He was a founding director

of state oil giant Patronus and was a low-profile... I'm so sorry. He was a low-profile director of a central bank, Bank Negara, between 1982 and 1987. Yes, you're right.

He was actually... I tried to say that sentence Bank Negara between 1982 and 1987. Yes, you're right. He was actually... I try to say that sentence eight times, audience. All of them failed. You're going to get like seven cuts of Yogi like moving from word to word. Right, right, right, right. The state director...

Central Bank. But yes, he was also the director of the central bank, which is like, I mean, it's another thing where it's like, there's a lot of revolving door corruption going on here where he's like director of the central bank, you said 82 to 87, and then he goes on to become a billionaire, so it's like if fucking Alan Greenspan or whoever,

if they became billionaires instead of just millionaires when they left government. Yeah. But so what happens in 1988... That's why America's better, is that our leaders are much more reserved with their corruption. The American billionaires seem to be the only ones

with any restraint when it comes to money. Yeah, they don't get greedy. So Motha here I do like that like we like launder our corruption through like this is the proper way to do it you just go to Washington DC and you set up a private equity group called the Carlisle group which launders its connections to government officials and former government officials and for some reason that's not illegal so just do the not illegal version and then that's how you have a less corrupt nation like we have

i mean that's that's kind of what separates us from the uh less developed countries is we've got like four more steps in between public officials those steps are so important to ensuring a responsive government our founding fathers put all those steps in the constitution. But so, we mentioned Mata Hir Mohamed, again, just became the prime minister of Malaysia again, but he becomes prime minister for the first time in 1981. He has a very close connection with Ananda Krishnan, and again, he becomes prime minister in 1981, and in 1988, he essentially makes Ananda Krishnanration a billionaire which is what he does is he gives an adecration monopoly to run the nationwide lottery for malaysia uh malaysia is um is majority muslim or yeah it's majority muslim nation so gambling is kind of a taboo thing there

so an adecration has monopoly to run the state lottery. And also in 1988, he gets a monopoly to run numbers gambling and horse race betting. Right. So essentially, he is all of the gambling for Malaysia is like going into his pocket in 1988. And this is entirely a concession from the government. Ironically, there's a competitive license to sell the board game monopoly in Malaysia. It's not just assigned randomly yeah no anyone can sell a copy of the board game monopoly oh and i did want to quote uh ananda krishnan one more time uh this is from the sydney morning herald ananda krishnan says quote in asia personal relationships are important but you cannot personalize diplomacy.

Ooh. So these are the kinds of words of wisdom about how he was able to build a billion dollars through sheer corruption and government relations. All right. So basically... I hate this so much, by the way. I just want multiple drops, Andy.

It's not that hard. We just want Floyd Mayweather talking. Yes! With brain damage. There's multiple drops. The tone of this song changes from beat to beat. I hate you so much right now. But so, basically, 88, he gets this guaranteed revenue stream from gambling.

Apparently, a lot of people would come from China and other places to gamble in Malaysia due to various government restrictions. So this is like free money. This is where we introduce our new sponsor, BetDSI.com. According to the Comptown Reddit, that thing's a huge scam, and you can't get your money out if you win anything. I'm pretty sure, yeah, those things go through the Caribbean. You have to, most gambling

websites go through all these really shady Caribbean shell companies. Malaysia has a bunch of rules about at least for real estate, if you're a foreigner and you sell real estate in Malaysia, you have to bank, it has to stay, the proceeds have to stay in Malaysia.

It's very difficult to get money out of it. The money you make in Malaysia stays in Malaysia. And it may be that way for gambling, too. I don't know. But so, 88, he gets this huge windfall from gambling. He gets the government to sign off on giving him the right to gambling revenues. And then he reinvests this into, essentially, the Petron patronus towers and uh this whole thing's kind of ridiculous to me so i just want to take like kind of a long quote from the aforementioned asian godfather's book um so he

get a quote with the voice no he identifies uh a 39 hectareectare site in downtown... Oh, nice. Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. I have since improved from our Pinochet Sun episode. In downtown Kuala Lumpur, for a gargantuan real estate development, he went to an Argentinian-American architect

with a remit that Maha Thir, the then prime minister in 1992, would find irresistible. The tallest building in the world. Ooh. Two of them. Which was lined up with Maha Thir had the Vision 2020, which was the

idea to make Malaysia a developed nation by 2020. Oops. And then Joe Lowe had other ideas. Where did you come from? Where did other ideas. Where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from? Cut and I do. Jolo's like, instead of making Malaysia a developed nation, why don't we make it the

coolest nation? The nation that pops the most bottles per capita. You know what's cooler than one world's tallest tower? Two world's tallest towers. But so basically, yes, Anand Akrishnan goes to the prime minister and as part of this vision 2020, he's like, hey, let's make the tallest building in the world.

He also says the building will, the design will incorporate elements of Islamic architecture. Again, quoting from the book, Mahathir was sold and to this day retains a vast fish bowl shaped private office at the top of one of the towers so part of signing off on this is he gets a giant office near the top of one of those towers and it's blatant corruption fish bowl shaped yes so odd and oh we mentioned previously on the joe low episode when joe like to imagine

has a little castle and the ground's covered in little rocks. Right, right, right. Little pebbles, yeah. But so we mentioned on the previous episode Jho Low, when he was first starting out in Malaysia, like audaciously set up his offices here in the Petronas Towers just to like look exclusive and stuff. But so it's interesting where they make the Petronas Towers. Petronas, the state oil company, also buys offices there almost immediately. Again, it's just like kickback to Ananda Krishnan.

Again, quoting from the book, Krishnan obtained the project site at a total cost of the ringgit, is the currency there, I think. So 378 million ringgit, but private appraisers immediately valued the site at over 1 billion ringgit he was able to borrow so he was able to borrow against the independent valuations and with maha thir support bring in patronus as a cash cash investor and anchor

tenant you know original tenant right the upshot was that the godfather or uh that krishnan obtained 48 of a real estate development that was capitalized at 1.3 billion ringgit without ever having to use his own money wow he then called in japanese and korean construction companies to put it up and so it's pretty interesting where as we just mentioned he's able to buy it vastly undervalued state land undervalued he's able to get the state oil company to come in and set up and pay himued he's able to get the state oil company to come in and set up and pay him rent he's able to give the prime minister a private office there and then what happens is the patronus towers start 1992 they're completed 1998 right when the asian

financial crisis hits so the other thing that happens in 1998 because he's like heavily exposed to the asian financial crisis because he has like foreign holdings he gets the prime minister to uh buy uh the the patronus buys out his stake right when the asian financial crisis hits and frees up all his capital what luck okay this part i do like I've been married a long time ago. Where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from? Captain I do. Okay, this part I do like. All right. But so moving on.

So 1998, you know, he sells his stake back to the state of Malaysia. Again, he makes a very healthy profit on this. And he's also bailed out of his foreign currency holdings during the asian financial crisis but he takes his money that he made from these patronus towers and then goes into um the satellite and the telecom um industry so basically uh what what happens is he gets he again panders to maha maha the uh then prime minister of malays, the fantasy is about developing Asian Malaysia, the media industry. So, again, quoting from the book, assisted by government subsidies, Ananda Krishnan

put Malaysia's first satellites into orbit. He set up production companies to make wholesome Malay language programming devoid of, quote, Western influence, but mixed in with these high-tech, morally wholesome undertakings were businesses yielding great profits. Nice. Chinese population, and he received further cash investments from government companies. State investment agency Kazanah National put up US $260 million for 15% of his satellite business. So,

essentially, through government subsidies and licenses, he's able to launch what is still Malaysia's only satellite TV network, Malaysia's only satellites, and also gets his cellular telephone operation going. I'm hearing hard work, Sean. All I'm hearing is this man is a hustler.

This man gets it done. And so I guess we can kind of circle back to IMDb here now. I mean, 1MDB. To his biggest credits. 1MDB credits. I'm giving that transition one star. So we've mentioned a fair bit on the previous episode. Tim Leisner is a Goldman Sachs banker.

He's pleaded guilty to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, money laundering. He will be sentenced in January 2019. We will see if they kind of like make him a patsy for all of Goldman Sachs or if he actually goes up the chain and hopefully gets Gary Cohn or one of these people. But we'll see on that.

But so Tim Leisner, the Goldman Sachs banker, before he met Jho Low, actually had a very close relationship with Ananda Krishnan. So in 2000, I'm quoting from the whale book, A Billion Dollar Whale. In 2002, Goldman Sachs sold shares for a Malaysian cell phone company owned by Ananda Krishnan. The $800 million IPO was the largest offering in Asia that year. So, he runs the IPO for Ananda Krishnan's cell phone

company, again, enabled by subsidies and licenses from the Malaysian government. But the one other thing from this book, which we kind of mentioned previously, is Tim Leisner is a relationship banker who was having sex with the country of Malaysia. Relationship banking. Yes, a relationship banker. Not sodomy, though, because that would be illegal.

Stores it away. I like the idea of like compliance officers of goldman sachs in malaysia being like uh yeah no foreign corrupt practices act violations and uh no sodomy uh don't talk about sodomy over email you have to talk about it in person because we could get subpoenaed but again quoting from quoting from the book, during the IPO for this Astro, Tim Leisner had begun a romantic liaison with the chief financial officer of Astro during negotiations for the IPO. The relationship, which was not hidden, led rival bankers to complain to Astro's chief executive that it gave Goldman Sachs an unfair advantage. After an internal

complaint, Goldman launched an investigation, but Leisner denied any involvement with the woman and Goldman dropped the matter. So again, how he was able to get the Astro IPO was relationship banking.

Actually fucking the CFO of Astro in order to get an $800 million IPO. Looks like this Goldman Sachs needs to go to Sachs Fifth Avenue. Needs to buy a purse. I don't know. I was trying to do like a relationship banker fit. It didn't really work out.

Buy it for the First Lady of Malaysia, which you would eventually do. So Tim Leisner has this existing relationship with Ananda Krishnan. Tim Leisner then meets Joe Lowe and is the one who wants to do this bond raise for 1MDB where there's corruption and kickbacks that he has just pleaded guilty to. So Tim Leisner, you know, probably puts the two of them in contact, Joe Lowe and Ananda Krishnan, or is at least an intermediary because of his relationship with both of them. But what happens is 1MDB around 2012, right around the time they do this bond raise with Goldman Sachs, Ananda Krishnan, 1MDB buys $2.7 billion. Well, they pay $2.7 billion for power plants owned by Ananda Krishnan in 2012. These are like heavily overvalued. But then the weirdest thing happened,

and this is from the Sarawak report, is a, you know, the Sarawak report is a independent journalist who writes about corruption in Malaysia. And she writes this article that basically points out that what happened is they, 1MDB buys these overvalued power plants from Anand Akrishnan. They overpaid by as much as 2.5 billion ringgit. But just four days later, Anand Akrishnan transfers a comparable amount of money right back to 1MDB in secret accounts. So they overpay by several $2 billion. And then four days later,

receive that two billion dollars back from him so it's like clearly there's money laundering or corruption or something going on here where it's like what the fuck is is happening yeah but we've kind of mentioned where we might not get to know because this guy matahir muhammad has just become prime minister again and he's in charge of the 1MDB investigation. So there's a question of where it will stop, if they'll actually look at Anand Krishna's role in this graft. But yes, it's just kind of like a very weird story

as to why they overpaid for these assets and then got the money right back from him. Yeah, that's nuts. That doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah. And the other thing that happened is uh according to the whale book uh not be dick billion dollar whale uh in return companies linked to a non-decretion secretly made donations of 170 million u.s dollars to one mdb's charity arm we mentioned this on the previous episode one mdb's charity arm was mainly a vote buying operation for the Prime Minister Najib, where essentially they would just do projects in order to get votes in various regions. So after this deal where

there's like the overvaluation and the overpay, which he secretly transfers back for some mysterious reason, he also makes a big contribution to 1MDB's very corrupt vote-buying charitable arm. Again, used to not only do projects to get votes, but just simply to pay off kickbacks to politicians in Malaysia. So it is just something where we will see if any more comes out to light. But the fact that his friend, the prime minister, is in charge of this investigation leads you to think that maybe this will just kind of stop without engulfing him. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Low-key billionaire continues to make money off corruption. Doesn't get stopped because no one knows where he's staying currently. And then the one other thing that happens is in 2016, Anandakrishnan makes a strange loan, a large loan to 1MDB to keep it afloat as it's like right about to collapse. And there's questions like, because at this point, I believe India had an arrest warrant from him. If he was like talking to Najib or whoever in the government and being like, hey, I'll help you out with 1MDB, but you have to protect me from this india case this uh prosecution there right and in 2018 um one mdb even though it is like completely insolvent paid back his loan so it's it's just kind of weird we don't really yeah i mean we don't know what's going on but uh we we do know they're fucking us somehow they're they they figured out how to fuck over the malaysian

population and parts of the india, and they're doing it. It's pretty obvious. The information's not there because they're hiding it from us. But, Yogi, you read a little bit about this AirSell Maxis. Because basically, from what I know, is that Anand Akrishnan, he made a bunch of money in cell phones in Malaysia. And then he was one of the people who wanted to go into India and, you make a bunch of money serving cell phones to the the one billion people there and then he got caught up in like a corruption scandal and he lost a bunch of money and is being investigated or charged criminally yeah so uh in India they have a handful of mobile operators and one of the largest one is

Airtel which is a different one than the one we've been talking about currently, but it is run by, it's one of the biggest ones and it's run by the Mittal people, which is the iron. The Mittal family is like one of the richest Indian families. We'll do an episode about them eventually,

but they run a lot of iron. But anyway, so the company we're talking about today is Aircel. So they're just a blade knockoff of Airtel. It's India's cricket wireless, if you will. And our billionaire... Was that also introduced by British colonialists? Right, right, right. Being a hack was introduced by the Brits.

So the Aircel Maxis case, the company that's run by Ananda is Maxis, and they bought a 74% share of Aircel, essentially acquiring it in 2006. But then the CEO of Aircel in 2011 complained to the CBI, which is like India's CIA, that his arm was twisted to sell his stake to maxis and so the indian government then was like all right we got to figure out what's going on here and so this court case has been going on since 2011 and it's i mean the thing is is that it's such a high profile case because it's something where the corruption is literally involving uh billions of rupees so it's

not a you know that guy said that guy fucked me over it go get his money tomorrow so that's why it's been taking so long but essentially um our billionaire can just jet set and enjoy his life without threat of the indian government uh arresting him because he just has enough money to just say fuck y'all I don't give a shit. But he did lose like five billion, something US in this, because like AirSell went bankrupt, I guess, because he was saying there's like so many cell phone providers in India that people who are just like giving shit away for free or basically. Yeah, I mean, essentially to become the biggest cell phone operator of a billion people is

a lot of money. So there's a whole bunch of people trying to become number one. But in that battle, there's a whole bunch of companies losing out. And AirCell is clearly one of them. Because it's like, you know, you wouldn't go to an American mobile operator that was called BTBT. You know what I mean? Like, you'd be like, no, we'll go with AT&T. So it's one of those things where, yeah, he lost, I think, like $5 billion on this whole thing.

And then, like, I remember it was kind of a complicated structure, but he, like, transferred ownership to what was India's Minister of Finance, or, like, some shares to that and another billionaire who was involved in india yeah in 2017 this case uh got a bit more open because uh the i think it was like the central treasury or something like that i can't remember what the guy's position was but essentially one of the guys in the indian government was uh basically being charged with uh the uh supervision of this transaction essentially especially the, the Indian government found a guy to say, you suck. Excellent reporting by Yogi Paliwal.

But yeah, I mean, so it's like, again, we don't have a complete picture of how this guy got his start, but it's pretty clear, like, by the 70s, 80s, he was, like, very much just sucking off the teat of government. Completely different from how billionaires operate globally. Speaking of the 80s, though, I want to talk about this guy's kid real quick. Oh, yes. Because he's got three children with his first wife, two daughters and one son.

And literally nothing's known about his two daughters. One of them might have married a French politician. I think one of the daughters is a doctor in england okay and then the other the other daughter is like the only one he's still like close to or might take over his business and apparently he like vacations with her and his current wife in france yes i think she might be the one who's linked to some french uh politician but his son in 1989 visited this uh time um she's linked to marine le pen uh in 1989 this guy this guy was 18 years old his uh another son um uh you can google his fucking name and um he visited this monastery that's right assholes who listen to this podcast to learn about billionaires why don't you learn

google yeah yeah um that's how we're gonna sound by like episode a thousand listen jerk off you got the internet you fucking figure it out it's not our job to fucking teach you come on you don't even know his fucking name anyway so this cat he's 18 years old old and he decides to become a monk for two weeks when he's 18. He is now 47 years old and he's been a monk for the last 30 plus years.

No one becomes a monk for just two weeks. But his mother is a Thai and so he was linked to this monastery via his Thai roots. And so... So he hasn't had sex in like 30 years? Well, I think he can fuck.

I don't know if he... Oh, I was going to say, it sounds like he's all powerful. No, but you know what, though? I love this dude because his literally... His dad's a billionaire. His life is just being a monk most of the time. And then every now and then, like one of the things he did is for his father's 70th birthday, he got a private jet to France.

And it's like yo his life is being a monk and then every now and then he rides a private jet to go to a billionaire's birthday party like i could live that's like one of those like one day as heaven 100 days as hell type of questions it's like be a monk and then every now and then take a jet to a billionaire's birthday party yeah i could live that life yeah yeah, yeah. He was like, and also he was, before we started recording, Sean was watching some of his videos where he talks about like, you know,

living spiritually with family. And it's got these really weird, but clearly well-funded CG videos of literally just a woman taking care of her baby. And it's like, oh, wow. He got taking care of her baby. Oh. And it's like, oh, wow. He got some real spiritual money to... Sure, sure. I did think it was weird in that video where he was like,

using the power of your mind, you can fly anywhere on a Gulfstream 4. That's the thing about this guy that's interesting is that he's... You can fly anywhere with the communications off into the indian ocean and no one will ever find you using the power of your mind he's like he's been in this he's been a monk with these people for 30 years but he still has the british accent he picked up from childhood which i just find very funny that like for 30 years you can live among people that don't sound at all like british people and yet still if you got that money in your blood eventually you'll just be like yeah cheerio love is beautiful the english boarding schools work please sir could i

not have another the buddhist ways teach me to not to not waste but yeah maybe we'll put his son's video that you can find on YouTube about the power of love and how love is more powerful than money which is easy to say when you're inheriting 5 billion dollars I think he says that yes he says your parents

gave you a body and life which is worth more than any amount of money and funding for this video your parents gave that to you the exception of all the bodies you can buy with that much money yeah it's true I don't think the bodies are really worth that much more than 100k but so you're John McAfee you can drop a body for $5,000 well he, he knows value. QF, let the bodies hit the floor. We're at an hour.

Yeah, so we're wrapping up here, but I do just want to highlight one other case and then just one miscellaneous thing we missed from the episode last week. So another thing that's going on with Ananda Krishnan, though he's recently resolved it,

but he had a dispute with an Indonesian billionaire named Mokhtar Riadi, who we'll have a future episode about. But they started a partnership in early 2005 with Ananda's Astro, the satellite TV entry, going into a joint venture for Pay TV with a subsidiary that was owned by makdariyadi uh but it turned hostile within a couple years uh and i'm just quoting here from uh straightstimes.com uh allegations of embezzlement and fraud broke out plus charges that unauthorized payments were made

to a family member of a former malaysian premier relations are so bad that three employees of ananda's business division in jakarta had to flee the country for fear of being arrested so basically like they started a partnership for pay tv and then it uh fell apart and then ananda's people had to like get the fuck out of the country because they were afraid they were going to be arrested because this Indonesian billionaire has, like, connections to the government. But so what happens is he gets the final fuck you,

Ananda Krishnan does, because, again, quoting from this, the turning point came in April 2007 when Ananda's Max's bought out Lipo's, or, sorry, bought out Mokhtar Radi's, Lippo is his company, bought out Radi's remaining 44% interest in the venture. Two months later, Ananda sold a 25% interest to Saudi Telecom for a staggering US $3 billion, $3.05 billion.

And so then, riadi sued him basically because what happened was he bought out riadi steak and then immediately resold it for like a ton of money to sat to a saudi to saudi telecom so riadi sold uh sued him being like hey hey buddy yeah you had this buyer lined up and you lied to me and then you bought my steak and fucked me out of all this money. Which again, they're both billionaires, so it's like, whatever. But this worked its way through the courts and eventually Anandakrishnan, I believe, was vindicated. But it is just kind of an interesting thing where you see another little slice of corruption in his business empire.

Yeah, he's an absconder but so i wanted to get to uh one fun thing we missed from uh the jolo episode which was uh from the book billion dollar billion dollar whale um as the jolo fraud was falling apart he flew out to clinic clinic La Prairie in Switzerland. It's a clinic in Switzerland, which is like a week-long spa and relaxation where for $30,000, quoting from the Billion Dollar Whale, for $30,000, the clinic offered

a week-long revitalization program during which patients were fed an extract derived from the livers of fetuses of black sheep. And it's like, you read all this like paranoid illuminati shit and then you read the real shit and it's worse you're like yeah no that's what billionaires are doing when they're like fraud is collapsing they are relaxing by eating fucking sheep fetus oh yeah what's even funnier about that though is like, you know, it's, it's got sort of that Illuminati thing, but it's like if the Illuminati were getting scammed. Um,

but so we will see how things shape out with a non-decretion. And again, heavily involved in the one MDB scandal. But as we've mentioned a hundred times here, the former prime minister made the guy a billionaire, and now he's the current prime minister. So this friend who watched his kids, who he made a billionaire, clearly knows where some of the bodies are buried. Likely, as long as Mata Hir Mohamad is prime minister of Malaysia, they're going to try and limit Anandakrishnan's

exposure to the 1MDB corruption scandal. But just random facts from Reuters about Ananda Krishnan. He's an avid collector of modern art, and he spends most of his time in the South. That just means he's getting ready to launder money. That's what we learned from the Jolo episode and the Met episode. If you're a collector of art, just means like if you need money in a sense you've got yeah some yeah you've got some collateral i've got some uh you got fluid assets yeah looking at like a sculpture sideways being like look at the way this piece accentuates my

portfolio oh yeah that is exactly what it is though yeah that's that's picas Picasso's legacy is that Picasso and Warhol, it's like, it's your shit hits the fan money. But yeah, so apparently like he spends most of his time in the south of France. He only visits Kuala Lumpur occasionally, but he has like a business manager who he like abuses. And the Asian Godfather's book tells an anecdote about like him calling this guy all the time at one point like this guy goes but it's 3 a.m over here and he just goes that doesn't matter so basically that's how you be a billionaire is just get somebody to do all of your work 24 hours while you are using your personal relationships with the malaysian government there's another story about uh the day his daughter was getting married and that guy had a request and he was like,

on the day my daughter has a request. Keep going, Yogi. On the day of my daughter's wedding. I don't know the quote, I just realized. That's all I know. I've never seen The Godfather. I've just seen parodies of it. On this, the day of my daughter's wedding. It's not a stereotypical Asian accent.

It's a viceroy from Star Wars. Trade Federation? Yeah. On this, the day of my daughter's wedding. You see like a laundry room operating in the back. Like three people ordering dim sum. All right. Well,

is that everything? Yeah, I think it's basically it. I have one last thing to say. Yes. It's been about half of this episode on the Wikipedia page for tallest buildings in the world

and it turns out, well, the Petronas Towers used to be the tallest in the world. Now they're even shorter than one World Trade Center. Oh!

SMDB New York, baby! Alright, on that, this has been Grubstakers. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Yogi Poyle. Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean McCarthy. I will be out next week going back to visit Brazil to continue a Twitter fight with Glenn Greenwald in person.

Nice. But the rest of the gang will be doing the episode next week. And I should just mention, it is bullshit that One World Trade put that giant fucking tower at the top and counted that as the hype. Shut the fuck up, Sean. New York, baby. New York. New York, baby. Patronus is still the tower building.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.