In November 2012, at the 31-year-old man's birthday party, he invited Uncle Bird, Chris Brown and other top stars to perform. Even let the little sweet Britney jump out of the cake with a bang.
He opened the most luxurious parties in New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, invited the top superstars, and could spend millions of dollars in one night, it was this mediocre-looking, unassuming Malaysian guy, no one knew where his money came from, his name was Jho Low Jho Low.
Leonardo Plum is his good buddy, and Victoria's Secret supermodel Miranda is his old lover, who lives the kind of extravagant and lavish life we see in the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street", a nightclub carnival and high gambling. Forgot to say that "The Wolf of Wall Street" was made by him.
But this guy who has to make his life into a movie, his ambition is actually just the tip of the iceberg of the whole incident. Behind this is actually hidden, arguably the world's largest financial scam. There's the top leader of a government, there's the craziest party in the world, the top investment bank on Wall Street and the astronomical number that disappears out of thin air. So many people ganged up and used the most complicated means to do an extremely simple thing: is it not very exciting to steal money? Then let's start with less nonsense
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > episode 1 secret</h1>
The originator of the largest financial scam in history. Just as we mentioned earlier the Malaysian brother Jho Low. In fact, Jho Low's family conditions have been very good since he was a child, and then he has always been in a good school. Later, he went to England and attended an aristocratic school called the Harrow School. It was at this school that he met a man. This man was a stepson of a malaysian political tycoon, and they played very well. So this Low Tezo went along with the vine and naturally got to know this political bigwig. This brings us to the second key task in our whole affair. Later Malaysian Prime Minister was called Najib Razak. (Let's call him Ji Lao.) )
In 2009, Ji Lao was successfully elected prime minister of Malaysia. At this time, Jho Low was 28 years old, and he did not have an official position in Malaysia. But in this case, he succeeded in convincing the new official, Yoshiro. In the name of the Ministry of Finance, a Malaysian government fund was established, called the 1MDB Fund. You see, it was this chubby guy who persuaded this big guy to set up a national fund.
The full name of this Malaysian company is a Malaysian development company. If you listen to this name, it is a fund under the state, and to put it bluntly, it is to invest in the development and construction of the country. He did get a couple of development projects like business districts and power stations in Malaysia.
The development of the project is definitely in need of a lot of money, and 1MA can naturally issue bonds to the public to raise money. And this Elder Ji, he is not only the Prime Minister of Malaysia but also the Minister of Finance. He has successfully enjoyed the right to control the cash flow of 1MDB. So you look at his development so brightly, behind the vision has actually become the cash machine of Jho Low and Ji Lao.
Let's take a look at how they play. First of all, I must borrow money to do this. How do I borrow money?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Episode 2: Bond Issuance. </h1>
Of course, they also know what they are going to do later, so this is certainly not a fair bond issuance. We had to borrow secretly, we said before that we had to find an investment bank to issue bonds. So they contacted these big investment banks for a while, and finally chose Goldman Sachs. At this point, the three main characters of this biggest financial scam have all appeared.
Planner Jho Low – Coverer Yoshirao – Executor Goldman Sachs
Seeing that everyone is gathered, the next thing is to conspire for a great cause. Yima Company said to Goldman Sachs, you help us send some debt, quietly Mimi', be light and fast, and then the return is great. As soon as Goldman Sachs heard that the music had blossomed, they liked to do this kind of "small sound and big return" business, up and down to open up all Malaysian government officials to bribe. The next big order that was finally successful.
The next step is some business-level operation that is very simple for Goldman Sachs, that is, bond issuance. Issuing bonds is to borrow money from the public, but when issuing bonds in general, it will look at the interest of this loan according to the company's credit rating. To put it bluntly, your credit is poor, your borrowing interest rate is high, the credit is good, and the borrowing interest rate is cheaper. But this HORSE company it just established where there is no credit. Saying that Goldman Sachs is very good at playing, he immediately went to Saudi Arabia to find a fund called IPIC. Come and make a credit guarantee for this 1MDB company. Saudi companies are old and rich, so the credit will come up.
Goldman Sachs began to contact the majority of investors, just tell them, you see all invest in this kind of constructive project, and then the return is also very good, there is no risk. There are Saudi funds as a guarantee, you should hurry up and invest.
So in two years, 2012, in 2013, Goldman Sachs helped the company raise a total of 6.5 billion US dollars. You see this thing is doing so well, do you know how much Commission Goldman Sachs got from here? After hitting 600 million US dollars, the general issuance of 1% of bonds is already quite good. But that 600 million US dollars of finance 6.5 billion will take 10% ah, usually 10 times the income! With Goldman Sachs' shrewdness, it must know that the money in this is a problem whether it can be returned later.
The money is now borrowed, so it's time to complete what we often hear about, and there's an operation called money laundering.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > episode 3 money laundering</h1>
This is to the part that Jho Low is very good at, they use a lot of various complex operations, the most used here, in fact, it is also very well understood, the proper noun is called Layering, that is, layered hiding, to put it bluntly, it is called fighting around.
For example, if I have a huge amount of stolen money of 100 million US dollars, then I need to split it into tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small dollars, and fight around in various bank accounts. That's because there are layers of back and forth, so whether it's a bank or assuming that the FBI wants to investigate, it's actually very difficult. However, the operation of layering is very common in money laundering, so banks must have something to guard against.
But Jho Low made a riot here, and he gave his accounts a bunch of weird names. These names look like subsidiaries of some big company, or a division. These large companies actually have high credit ratings, but occasionally some large transactions are also normal. The money that came and went actually ended up in The pockets of Ji Lao and Jho Low.
In fact, these three people joined forces to do such a thing. First there's a top leader of a country to get you an agency to cover up, then there's a super big scammer to come and plot, and there's a top Wall Street investment bank to execute, and unknowingly, borrow money from the public, and then don't pay it back. If this matter is not exposed, they can keep tearing down the east wall to make up for the west wall, and no one knows about borrowing new debts to pay off old debts.
According to statistics, a total of 1.5 billion US dollars was set aside in the personal accounts of Ji Lao and Jho Low. What is the concept of $1.5 billion? That's nearly 10 billion yuan, even if you earn 2 million a day, it will take 14 years. So much money fraud has been cheated into the hands, and it is not their own hard work, of course, it will be spent.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > episode iv extravagant</h1>
Jho Low had a party on the world's revelry. Look at who his close friends are! Little Plum, Alicia Keys, and more. Then there are all kinds of superstars whose faces you look familiar with and can't call out their names. When Jho Low attended the dinner in 14 years, he made a bold statement.
Crazy Jho Low and Alicia Keyd, and then once had a meeting with Victoria's Secret supermodel Miranda and Xiao Yaxuan. The manager of a casino in Las Vegas revealed that Jho Low may be the most expensive master he has ever hosted.
Of course, not only does he play with money, he also has to buy some fixed assets. So Jho Low was in New York, and Hollywood began to buy luxury houses, airplanes, private yachts, famous paintings and what is expensive.
Maybe in order to commemorate his own state of life, he funded the film "The Wolf of Wall Street". The most famous director and actor were invited, so you see that when Little Plum won the Golden Globe Award, he thanked these two Malaysian guys heavily.
It's all such a flowering method, no one knows where his money came from? I knew that they might have something to do with the Malaysian government in a way. Looking at the Malaysian government's side, Ji Lao still has a beautiful scenery on the surface as his prime minister. Then he began to take the money behind his back to build momentum for his next election. Of course, he has not forgotten his wife, and he also bought some jewelry and bags to coax the wife of the family to be happy! He also exchanged the money for cash and hid it at home.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the fifth episode is revealed</h1>
But to be honest, this Low Tezo and Ji Lao are really too greedy. You said such a huge amount of stolen money, you still want to quietly Mimi spent, what else do you want to do? Sure enough, justice will be late, but it will never be absent.
In 2015, the Wall Street Journal discovered that 1 Malaysia had acquired a power station in Malaysia at a very high price. After that, this money, and 1 million US dollars to fund a primary school, to create momentum for the election after Ji Lao, this thing is very strange.
The Wall Street Journal looked it up layer by layer. As a result, this multi-billion dollar century giant fraud case has been moved to everyone's eyes little by little. It was found that the last $681 million in property had fallen into Ji Lao's pocket. Ji Lao has been this matter, saying that I did not take this money, this is Saudi Arabia, and there is a person who gave me political donations.
Later, the Wall Street Journal reported that there was a $1.4 billion sum of money that was supposed to be paid to a Saudi company, but later said that it was gone. Then we found the inexplicable company names that we talked about earlier. With incomplete statistics, the financial deficit of this 1MDB company will reach as much as 11 billion US dollars.
After this incident was exposed, more than 300,000 angry Malaysians took to the streets to march. They're really fed up with this blatant corruption. So in May 2018, Ji Lao was knocked out of office in the re-election. Two days later, the court ordered them to leave the country and began raiding their homes. In June 2018, Malaysian police raided Ji's home and moved out 284 boxes of bags and 72 boxes of gold and silver jewelry and cash, worth a total of $275 million. Within half a year, Elder Ji and his wife were charged with more than 40 crimes, including money laundering, tax evasion, bribery and so on. Last year, Ji Lao was sentenced to 12 years in prison and a fine of $50 million.
The stolen goods, yachts, mansions, famous paintings, and planes on Jho Low's side have also been chased back little by little, and it is estimated that there will be more than 900 million US dollars. The production company for "Wolf of Wall Street" also lost 60 million. Miranda, who was in contact with Jho Low at the time, also handed in the jewelry worth $8 million that Jho Low gave her. Goldman Sachs always owes debts to be repaid, he first lost the Malaysian government 2.5 billion US dollars, and then the US government fined them 2.8 billion US dollars, plus the scattered to What Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Singapore was eventually fined more than 5 billion US dollars.
We started by saying Tim, the Head of asia pacific who was in charge of this project. This once-brilliant star banker is also likely to face decades of imprisonment for suspected money laundering and bribery. Of course, the whole incident involves not only these three parties, because this chain of interests is indeed particularly huge, including the interest chain of hundreds of people like executives in the Middle East, the Singapore government, the US Security Agency, and so on.
But do you think that's the end of it? And it didn't...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > follow-up to Episode 6</h1>
After Jho Low handed over $900 million in stolen money and stolen goods, he disappeared without a trace. The United States, Malaysia, and Singapore have begun to arrest him worldwide. Although Ji Lao's side said that he had been sentenced to 12 years in prison, he always declared to the outside world, "People, you believe me, I did not do such a thing." That money was donated to me by Saudi Arabia. Then there was a constant appeal, and with the complexity of the case, it was a mess, at least 5 years. During those 5 years, Bian Jilao was safe and sound, and he could even discuss with his political colleagues how to run for the next term of prime minister.
On the back side of Goldman Sachs, the things that can be solved with money are not called a problem! They may have lost some money, but they are still one of the most profitable investment banks on Wall Street. So like goldman Sachs led by this kind of Wall Street investment bank, they also know that in three days there will be some thunder at both ends, in advance to reserve a huge amount of money, called legal reaser (legal reservation), put it in advance, then more than a billion billion billion or even tens of billions of funds, just in case the cold is sent like this!
The $4 billion that was originally left behind has now been found out. Half of them can be recovered, but the other half is still missing. But you say that money like Low's party will definitely not be recovered.
So who in the end bears these huge losses? The creditors who bought the bonds from Goldman Sachs in the first place, of course, also have the people of Malaysia.
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