He has been a global actress and has burned money in every possible way: buying the front page of newspapers, Rolls-Royce RVs, private jets, exclusive bands, custom jewelry, fireworks in the sky······ In the end, everyone found that his wealth, like the fireworks he set off, was nothing.
Text丨Financial gossip female author: Deng Biluo's small waist
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A scandal of the century, and new news has come out.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a new forfeiture order against fugitive Malaysian financial tycoon Jho Low, which will confiscate more than $100 million in property, including a mansion in Paris and two famous paintings. The U.S. Department of Justice has helped Malaysia return assets worth more than US$1.5 billion in the 1MDB case, the largest civil forfeiture case in their history.
This case has lasted for eight years, and in 2016, Malaysia's "One Malaysia Case" was exposed and shocked the world, which can be called a super transnational financial fraud case, and its core figure is the rich third generation of Malaysian Chinese Jho Low.
He was once a guest of honor on Wall Street, had a good conversation with Obama, talked about big business with Middle Eastern tycoons, and was a big customer of Goldman Sachs.
He has been a global actress: the daughter of the Hilton Hotel has dated him, Lindsay Lohan, the heroine of "Natural Couple", is his ex, and the top supermodel Miranda Kerr almost became his bride. He also once gave Kim Kardashian a Ferrari sports car, and also spent tens of millions of dollars to confess to Xiao Yaxuan, burning money in every way: buying the front page of newspapers, Rolls-Royce RVs, private jets, exclusive bands, custom jewelry, fireworks in the sky······
In the end, everyone found that his wealth, like the fireworks he set off, was nothing. After the East Window incident, not only did Wall Street panic, Goldman Sachs was fined a total of more than $7 billion, and even Hollywood was affected, Miranda Kerr handed over jewelry worth $8.1 million, Xiao Lizi handed over Picasso's famous paintings and other "gifts".
This case, which has attracted worldwide attention, has not yet come to an end.
1.
/ Heir to Asia's "Top Family",
Relying on the ability to chase Hollywood actresses /
In 2009, a "rich second generation in Asia" Jho Low suddenly came to the American celebrity circle, and he organized a party to spend a lot of money, which set the whole atmosphere on fire.
His way of being in the limelight is very simple, throwing money to chase female stars.
At the beginning, he set his sights on the famous actor Lindsay Lohan, who has starred in many movies such as "Natural Pair" and "Mean Girls", and has also released records. On her 23rd birthday, Jho Low gave her 23 bottles of crystal champagne, each priced at more than $50,000, and Lindsay was happy to introduce Jho Low.
But this "love" ended after a few months.
In 2010, Jho Low began courting socialite Paris Hilton again, hosting 12 parties for her in one month. The old routine is to come up with a sky-high price of champagne of 1.8 million pounds, and play with famous wine as a water gun.
Soon Jho Low made the beauty happy, and even Paris Hilton hugged and kissed him in front of everyone.
However, the two of them separated soon after.
But Jho Low still did not give up exploring new goals, and soon, he bought a Ferrari sports car for Internet celebrity Kim Kardashian. However, this period of pursuit was short-lived, Kim Kardashian did not choose to be with him, and the story of the two did not make much waves.
In 2011, Jho Low made another effort to set up a large-scale confession scene at the Atlantis Beach Resort in Dubai, directly covering a section of the coastline, expensive champagne in a circle to form a big heart, accompaniment by top orchestras, and romantic fireworks shows, and the scene was arranged for more than 1 million pounds. This time, the beauty he pursued was Xiao Yaxuan, the queen of Chinese music.
Jho Low invited Xiao Yaxuan to the beach, took out a valuable diamond ring from his pocket, and a helicopter with jewelry fell from the sky. However, Xiao Yaxuan, who only likes handsome guys, is really immune to the trick of champagne + jewelry, and directly said, "I'm sorry, I treat you as a good friend." ”
When a reporter asked Xiao Yaxuan about this, she bluntly said, "I just think he is a younger brother."
Jho Low spends the most money on supermodel Miranda Kerr. In 2014, after divorcing Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr became Jho Low's official girlfriend and almost got engaged. When Jho Low chased Miranda Kerr, he gave her a bunch of jewelry, an 11.72-carat pigeon egg diamond ring, an 11-carat diamond earring, a 9-carat pendant, etc., and that diamond ring alone was worth $1.29 million.
I heard that Miranda Kerr likes pianos, so I asked the Dutch Crystal Music Company to order a crystal piano worth $1.1 million. However, in Jho Low's eyes, these are small things, and in order to be able to live freely in the world of two, he spent $250 million to buy a yacht Tranquility. This time, they were separated for almost a year.
Jho Low not only chases actresses, but also "chases" male stars, but not to fall in love, but to invest in making movies.
Jho Low's production company invested $150 million in Lee's 2013 film "The Wolf of Wall Street," and he also bought a $36.51 million mansion near Lee's home in Hollywood.
为了安慰小李子没拿到奥斯卡小金人,刘特佐重金买下马龙·白兰度的奥斯卡小金人,又花320万美元拍下毕加索名画《Bull Skull Still Life》,一并送给了小李子。
This gold owner's father, who is not confused when he sees it.
When Hollywood and various media chased Liu Gongzi, Wall Street also treated him as a guest, and Goldman Sachs chased Jho Low to call the client's father.
In 2012, Goldman Sachs' then-head of Asia, Tim Leissner, had a deep relationship with Jho Low, whose brother had worked at Goldman Sachs, and Mr. Lessner, who was in charge of Southeast Asia, had access to the head of the country, both in Malaysia and in the Middle East. Goldman Sachs has always wanted to connect with Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund IPIC, and after four years of hard work, it was unsuccessful.
In the eyes of Goldman Sachs, Jho Low's thighs are about to be hugged.
2.
/ Rich three generations training policy: pulling relationships is the strongest skill /
If you want to say where Jho Low got so much money, how can he have so many connections to help Goldman Sachs catch up with the Middle East tyrants? Because his strongest skill is - social.
This starts with Jho Low's family education plan.
Jho Low's grandfather, Liu Mingda, left his hometown of Guangdong when he was a child to make a living in Malaysia to do business, and after years of operation, he has become a leading figure in Malaysian business circles, real estate, oil, industry, and high-profit businesses. Together with his eldest son, Liu Fuping, he runs the family business Malaysia General Industries Group (MWE), and has also been awarded the honorary title of "Dato" (equivalent to a knighthood) by Malaysia.
And Jho Low, the third son of Liu Fuping, was still very handsome back then:
▲ Jho Low and his grandfather Liu Mingda
Since Jho Low's two elder brothers are not outstanding, Liu Fuping set his sights on his youngest son, and the focus of his cultivation is also very simple: do not roll in grades, but in social relationships. Liu Fuping spent a lot of money to send his son to a place that the rich and nobles liked, first to study in an international school in Malay, and then to Harrow School, a top school in the United Kingdom.
After graduating from high school, Jho Low attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, another school of celebrities. During his time at the university, Jho Low published an article on the stock market in the Wharton journal, which attracted the praise of his classmates, who praised him as a securities expert and financial talent.
It's hard to say what Jho Low's level of stock trading is, but he is really talented in relationships, and he is familiar with all the people he can contact on campus. Many royal children in the Middle East like him very much, and they are willing to let him help take care of their property in the future. In addition, Jho Low also has a good friend named Riza Aziz, who is the stepson of rising Malaysian political star Najib Razak.
After catching Riza, Jho Low also frantically gave Riza's mother Rosmah luxury goods, such as pink diamonds worth $23 million, and countless other bags and watches. So, Rosmah blew the wind on the pillow with Najib when he was fine, saying that Jho Low, a young man, is very good at managing money and is a talent.
In 2009, Najib Razak was elected prime minister and immediately set up One Malaysia Development Corporation (1MDB) as the new Malay sovereign wealth fund, while Jho Low has been Najib's unofficial assistant and unofficial adviser to 1MDB. You read that right, Jho Low is not chairman of 1MDB, but an adviser.
Sovereign wealth funds, this line of work Jho Low is familiar, there are also many sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and they are all old friends. Although Jho Low has no real position, his power and prestige are still very powerful, and the most important investment cases from the Middle East rely on Jho Low's connections.
When he was in school, Jho Low met Otaiba, a royal assistant to the UAE in the Middle East. After following Najib to get into the mix, Jho Low called Otaiba and confidently recommended a Malay government project, saying that it would definitely make a lot of money.
Otaiba was so moved that he sent a delegation to investigate, and in fact, when he arrived, he followed Jho Low to have a good time. After going back, the group told Otaiba that Jho Low's project was absolutely first-class, and then Otaiba waved his hand and signed $500 million to Jho Low. Years later, he found out that the money had been squandered by Jho Low to squander officials and himself.
In addition to knowing how to manage money, Jho Low also made Najib grow a wave of face.
Jho Low once met a distant relative of Obama at a celebrity party. Soon after, he used his distant relative's connections to gain a foothold in the United States, and after the release of "The Wolf of Wall Street", Jho Low used his connections to arrange for the star, director and Najib's stepson to go to the White House to meet Obama. The following year, Obama visited Malaysia, becoming the first U.S. president to visit Malaysia in half a century, and Najib was suddenly crowned with glory.
3.
/ Hollywood stars return stolen goods en masse,
Goldman Sachs angrily lost $7 billion /
In 2015, two newspapers in the United States suddenly attacked, reporting that 1MDB was suspected of money laundering and corruption, amounting to more than 700 million US dollars. A year later, Jho Low was charged with international money laundering and embezzlement of huge sums of money, but he was not in Malaysia at that time and had already left.
In 2018, Najib was defeated, and the 1MDB case was discovered, and Najib was arrested, and all the jewelry bags he and his wife received were packed. The newspaper numbers stunned the world: 567 designer bags (272 of which were Hermès), 423 watches, 25 bags of gold, thousands of pairs of designer shoes, 12,000 pieces of jewelry...... Combined, it is worth 1.8 billion RMB.
Malaysia's investigation found that Jho Low and Najib Razak jointly took US$4.5 billion out of the 1MDB fund, far more than the US newspapers estimated.
Here, Goldman Sachs "made a lot of contributions".
At first, Goldman Sachs compliance was concerned about the source of Low's wealth, but two executives with whom Mr. Low was well-connected, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng, had been pressuring Goldman Sachs and Jho Low to work together until 2013. In the end, under the temptation of interests, the two became strategic partners, and basically Jho Low went to Goldman Sachs if he had debts.
For example, once 1MDB wanted to buy a power plant and raise US$1.75 billion in the Middle East. Jho Low immediately informed Goldman Sachs and unceremoniously put forward his own conditions: the project can be given to Goldman Sachs, but it needs to take money out of it to deal with officials in Malay and Abu Dhabi, and Goldman Sachs can get about 10% commission after operating it.
In order to issue the $1.75 billion bond, Goldman Sachs used GSI teams in Asia and the United Kingdom to do it, evading regulation and successfully getting a commission of 190 million. So, does Goldman Sachs know he's bored? I know, but in order to make money, I still do it for him.
According to the US Department of Justice, between 2009 and 2014, Goldman Sachs executives, along with Jho Low, paid bribes to Malaysian officials to ensure that banks were entrusted with 1MDB fundraising. Between 2012 and 2013, Goldman Sachs raised US$6.5 billion in bond issuance and earned more than US$600 million in transaction fees.
These things also made Goldman Sachs miserable in the end.
In August 2020, Goldman Sachs reached a settlement with Malaysia, paying $2.5 billion and then adding a $1.4 billion guarantee for the return of assets, on the condition that Goldman Sachs would be exempt from criminal proceedings in Malaysia. By the end of October, the U.S. Department of Justice also issued a notice, saying that Goldman Sachs was temporarily not prosecuted, but in order to exonerate itself from criminal liability, Goldman Sachs had to pay a settlement of $2.9 billion. In addition, there were several "piecemeal" regional regulatory fines: $350 million in Hong Kong, £96.6 million in the UK, $122 million in Singapore, and CHF 70 million in Switzerland.
The full set adds up to more than $7 billion, which makes Goldman Sachs lose money.
In addition, the two executives who had a hot fight with Jho Low could not escape, Roger Ng was directly sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Tim Leissner was ordered to confiscate $43.7 million and 3.3 million shares in the fitness drink company. There is also Andrea Vella, a Goldman Sachs banker, who has been banned from the financial industry for life for her involvement in the case.
And a number of Hollywood stars who received gifts from Jho Low were also recovered.
Xiao Lizi's little gold and famous paintings, Miranda's $8.1 million worth of jewelry, and all the proceeds from "The Wolf of Wall Street" were all confiscated. The yacht Tranquility, which was parked in Bali, was also recovered by Malaysia.
In October 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement saying that the wanted Jho Low was willing to provide nearly $1 billion in compensation assets to seek a settlement with the U.S. government. The list shows that there are several mansions in Manhattan, Beverly Hills and London, famous paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, and so on.
At the same time, Malaysia recovered some losses, including $126 million from the auction of Jho Low's cruise ship and $139 million Jho Low's stake in the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan.
That's it, Jho Low still insisted: "This does not represent any form of confession." The countries that initiated criminal proceedings against Jho Low still list him as a fugitive.
As for where Jho Low is, some media once broke the news that when he was in the East Window incident in 2015, he asked an immigration company in London to make a 5 million euro investment immigration and went to Cyprus, but after he went there, no one knows whether he is still there. The contact with the lawyer and the United States was mainly through emails, and since then he has disappeared into the rivers and lakes, leaving only a legend.
Resources:
Goldman Sachs of the United States plunged into a fine of 3 billion yuan, accumulating 2/3 of last year's profits, Global Times
"Swept away billions of dollars from the treasury, just to soak up all the female stars? "Malaysia and Shen" is not so simple" Global People Magazine