On October 30 of the previous year, a news item took over the headlines of finance, entertainment and legal magazines overnight.
The news picture is also very similar, nothing more than an Asian man with a humble appearance: short, bloated, rimless glasses with small eyes, looking no different from ordinary people.
However, it is this man named Jho Low who is actually the mastermind of the financial case that shocked the world in 2018.
In that year, the money transfer case involving Malaysia, the United States and Singapore not only involved a huge amount of 4.5 billion US dollars, but also involved well-known European and American movie stars Xiao Lizi and Miranda Ke'er.
As the investigation deepened, the man who took advantage of the loophole in the rules and stirred up Malaysia gradually entered people's sights.
To understand the Malaysian money laundering case, it is first necessary to understand the mastermind of the case, Jho Low (also known as The Low Group).
As for Jho Low's identity, as early as 2010, there was an interview with the Malaysian gossip tabloid "The Star", at that time, the newspaper used the title of "Not an Ordinary Ancestor" as a gimmick, mainly introducing Jho Low's family background.
In the eyes of the interviewer, Jho Low's first impression is "a mysterious man, quickly famous for playing with Arabs and celebrities", as long as the queue is organized by him, then the participants must be either rich or expensive.
He himself often appeared as a playboy, and every time he appeared in the newspaper, he must have a relationship with an entertainment star or had a new gossip object.
Jho Low's first girlfriend was Lindsay Rohan, a well-known American actor who debuted with the movie "Born a Couple", and in order to make his girlfriend happy, he gave 23 bottles of French wine crystal champagne on Lindsay Rohan's 23rd birthday, with a total price of more than 1.15 million US dollars.
However, just a year later, he began to openly pursue the luxury hotel Hilton's Thousand Gold Parris Hilton.
In the early days, Paris Hilton was completely uninterested in this Asian man who was shorter than himself, and Jho Low went straight to the world to party, burning 2.2 million euros a night just to open champagne.
When the beauty accepted his invitation to participate in the party, Jho Low immediately denied the relationship between the two.
When asked by reporters whether they are in a relationship with Paris Hilton, he simply denied: "I know her parents, but I don't know her well, and it is purely coincidental that I met her at a party." She was a common friend of the family, and I hadn't pursued her either. ”
However, in the queue photos taken by the paparazzi, Paris Hilton danced with Jho Low at the party, and even took the initiative to kiss, and the relationship between the two is naturally self-evident.
Jho Low really made a name for himself in Chinese circles during a marriage proposal in 2012.
The heroine of the marriage proposal is the well-known actress Xiao Yaxuan, at that time, Jho Low was just a mysterious "Malaysian Chinese" in the mouth of the media, wrapped up the entire private beach, lit more than 10 million fireworks to propose to illuminate the whole sky, and the luxurious pomp and even made Xiao Yaxuan, who beheaded countless men, shed tears.
However, perhaps because of Jho Low's appearance, Xiao Yaxuan later rejected J. Low's marriage proposal through his own brokerage company.
"He (Jho Low) is just a younger brother with a relatively good relationship", after receiving this disguised good guy card, Jho Low did not react to any stress.
After all, at that time, he was famous in the Chinese circle overnight through this move, even if Xiao Yaxuan did not agree, the celebrities and actresses in the Chinese circle would also favor him in the future.
Before Jho Low's accident, his last gossip girlfriend was Miranda Kerr, the supermodel goddess of Victoria's Secret, who, as a top face controller, interacted with Jho Low after his ex-husband "Elf Prince" Orlando Bloom, which became the most sensational big news in the entertainment industry at that time.
The two met in 2014, Jho Low bought a heart-shaped diamond ring for Miranda Kerr, and bought a cruise ship, spending at least four or five hundred million US dollars before and after, and finally bought the love that everyone envied.
Jho Low's attitude of playing with life and treating money as dung is closely related to the education of the original family.
As early as his 20th birthday, his father held a carnival party in a well-known bar to celebrate his birthday, and there were countless strippers and famous drinks and cigarettes at the party, and Jho Low even threw dollars at the party, which was really a drunken fan.
The money to hold a party is astronomical for ordinary people, but for Jho Low, it is not worth mentioning. After all, Jho Low himself is a real "rich third generation".
The history of the Liu family begins with Liu Tezo's grandfather, Liu Mingda, who came to Penang, Malaysia, to escape the war during World War II.
At that time, he used all his wealth to buy an iron ore mine and made a lot of money.
And Liu Tezo's father, Liu Fuping, was a Malaysian clothing tycoon and stock king, and at that time he perceived that there were many "gray areas" in the financial market, and at the stage when many people were still waiting, he directly smashed all his wealth into it, directly making the Liu family cross the class.
Born in this kind of family, Jho Low can be said to have had a smooth life, the school he went to from an early age was an aristocratic college, and his classmates were either the sons of politicians or rich people, and even many royal families.
Jho Low mixed with people of this class every day, and gradually developed ambitions to cross classes.
At that time, when most of the students around him chose Oxford, Harvard and other famous schools, he resolutely chose to study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, where the nobles gathered, in order to expand his personal connections.
By bribing people's hearts and minds through money-burning parties, Jho Low successfully met many children of the family at school, among which Za Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, also became a key figure in Jho Low's later emptying of Malaysia's national treasury.
After graduating from school, Jho Low has been making a profit by building shell companies to defraud bank loans.
He then gave his shell company shares free of charge to aristocratic royalty in Malaysia and the Middle East to gain connections and initial capital.
Abu Dhabi's crown prince once invited him to a dinner where the wife of Malaysia's then-defence minister, Najib Najib, said publicly: "I would like to thank Jho Low for bringing investment in the Middle East to Malaysia." ”
He was only 27 years old at the time, but he had already obtained funds that his peers could not expect through this commercial scam, but this money was obviously not Jho Low's ultimate goal.
For him, changing the financial landscape of the world is the ultimate goal, he already has the ability and hardware, and to achieve this goal, there is only one opportunity.
And the "east wind" that Jho Low was looking forward to has really arrived.
In April 2009, Najib, who is close to Jho Low, was successfully elected as the sixth prime minister of Malaysia, and Jho Low naturally ascended to heaven by virtue of his "friendship" with the prime minister, becoming an unofficial assistant to the prime minister.
After Najib took office, he established a sovereign fund, 1MDB, to support national development, acting as Malaysia's national reserve treasury, and declared that "in order to invest in Malaysia's green energy industry and tourism, increase Malaysia's jobs, and enhance Malaysia's international status, so as to attract more political contributions".
However, in a later investigation by the US Department of Justice, it was found that most of the funds in 1MDB actually went to the pockets of Jho Low and the prime minister's family!
Jho Low first moved the Malaysian treasury in 2009 during the acquisition of Turkmenistan's offshore oil fields, when Jho Low reached out to Saudi Prince Turki as an assistant and promised to provide $1 billion for the prince's oil company through 1MDB to acquire Turkmenistan's offshore oil fields.
But in fact, in the end, Turki received only $300 million in funds, while the other 700 million went into Jho Low's shell company!
At that time, In order to wash away the stolen money, Jho Low not only established a new shell company in Switzerland overnight, but also transferred it to another lawyer trust after the funds arrived, and it took several weeks to dare to bring the money out.
The speed of money laundering through yin-yang contracts obviously did not satisfy Jho Low, and in order to find a more efficient way to launder money, he began to set his sights on the film and television industry.
In 2012, the establishment of "Red Rock Pictures" with Jho Low as the main partner coincided with the start of filming of Little Plum's film "The Wolf of Wall Street", so Jho Low invested $155 million through Red Rock Pictures in the name of 1MDB.
Later, "The Wolf of Wall Street" was released, and Jho Low also appeared in a photo with Little Plum at the premiere.
It is also this incident that makes Liu Tezo and Xiao Lizi become friends, and at The 30th birthday party of Low Tezo, Xiao Lizi has personally come to the scene to sing on stage.
On the 39th birthday of Xiao Lizi, Liu Tezo also directly bought the small gold man obtained by Marlon Brando in 1955, and realized the dream of "little gold man" of Xiao Li zi in advance.
However, after the incident was exposed, people were surprised to find that the original Wall Street Wolf used only $55 million to shoot, and then the remaining $100 million was missing!
At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice found through an investigation that over the years, the little plum charitable foundation has embezzled more than $3 billion from 1MDB, and the final destination of this money has all been pointed to the private accounts of Jho Low and the Malaysian president's family.
Film and television, jewelry, real estate, oil... Through countless transactions in various fields, Jho Low, the "giant rat", successfully moved Malaysia's treasury to his own home.
During this period, 1MDB also began to have frequent problems in financial accounting, and in order to eliminate suspicions, Najib first terminated the partnership with Wing On Accounting Firm, and later replaced it with KPMG, but the latter also found countless suspicious points in the fund accounting.
By the time of the prime ministerial election in May 2018, international skepticism about 1MDB was hard to conceal, and even the well-known Wall Street Journal reported on it.
At that time, Najib knew that things were not good after losing the election, and took a private jet overnight to escape to Indonesia, but was eventually stopped by the new prime minister.
After an investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, police found $274 million worth of luxury goods and art in the Najib family's apartment, and the former prime minister was sentenced to 20 years in prison for abuse of power.
After Najib was investigated, the Malaysian and U.S. Departments of Justice probed Jho Low through shunto. Jho Low fled overnight, and the governments of The four countries involved in the case, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, immediately issued an international wanted warrant against him, and were bound to track down the real culprit behind the 4.5 billion financial case.
What no one expected, however, was that after a year of investigation and arrest, Jho Low reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice on October 30 of the previous year to return $1 billion in stolen money.
The recovered funds are largely through Jho Low's abandonment of hills, properties and other nearly $700 million investments, as well as a yacht worth $120 million and about $140 million in other assets. The rest of the money, however, was squandered by Jho Low and his friends.
Although the U.S. Department of Justice said that Jho Low had other civil cases to try and would not let him go, such an outcome was clearly unconvincing, especially for Malaysians who had suffered losses.
Ratings agency Moody's predicted that the Jho Low embezzlement case would bring malaysia up to $7.5 billion in debt, equivalent to 2.5 percent of Malaysia's existing economy.
In addition, international investors are worried about malaysia's treasury scandal, and have sold Malaysian assets in the months after the incident, causing the Malaysian currency exchange rate to fall directly by 30%.
And the bearers of these consequences must end up being ordinary Malaysians. In order to severely punish Jho Low, people in Malaysia have taken to the streets to raise signs to protest against the "national thief Jho Low".
However, Jho Low himself directly "evaporated" in the excitement of the crowd, and there was no more news after the settlement with the US Department of Justice was reached on October 30, 2019.
This financial case, which can be called a realistic version of the "wolf of Wall Street", has also come to an end, but the absconding Jho Low has not been found until now.
With the strengthening of anti-money laundering laws in various countries in the world, many people infer that Jho Low's life will not be too good.
However, some people believe that at that time, Jho Low's shell companies were all over the world, and in fact there were only five countries that traced them, so many people worried that after fleeing, Jho Low would not only not be affected, but would continue to spend money in no man's land.
However, after all, this big case has been full of storms, even if Jho Low has spent all his money in the future and wants to revive, it is absolutely impossible.