Review: Billion Dollar Whale

Credits to @bernieparasgan on Instagram.

After exactly one year since my last book review , I am finally back with a review on one of the most to-be-read books - Billion Dollar Whale.

Some housekeeping before I dive into details...

***Disclaimer I: Me, a Malaysian, trying to come up with a perfectly objective review is an impossibility. If you are looking to feel rage and disgust, feel free to read Billion Dollar Whale.

***Disclaimer II: The images in this post belong to various Instagrammer. I have linked the pictures to the original posts.

Billion Dollar Whale is an easy read. Reading the revelation of a decade long kleptocratic 1MDB scam is expected to be difficult, given that there are tons of complicated transactions and events happening in Malaysia and overseas at the same time. Nonetheless, the authors wasted no time and go straight to the point they wanted to make; which concludes everything in the span of 200 pages. The authors narrate without taking biased sides. Their research is very extensive and unbelievably meticulous.

Billion Dollar Whale is a good book for you to catch up if you haven’t followed the 1MBD scandal closely. There is a helpful guideline on all the VIPs that played huge roles in this scam in the first few pages of the book. The book is structured very well and reads like a financial thriller; I was never bored of it.

Billion Dollar Whale is also a page-turner because it doesn’t feel like you’re reading a non-fiction; it’s as if the stories were fantasies. Plus, when I was approaching the end of a chapter, the name of the upcoming chapter always gripped my attention; thus, I wasn’t given a choice of putting the book down. I think, the only times where I had to put the book down was when I was too infuriated to continue reading and I needed a break.

Credits to @tomwrightasia on Instagram.

A little preparation for you if you have yet to read this book and want to know what it is about.

1MDB is a Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, heavily inspired by the sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi, Mubadala Development. FYI, a sovereign wealth fund is a stated-owned investment fund and is commonly set up to globally invest in real and financial assets like stocks, bonds, real estate etc. Another example of such fund in Malaysia is Khazanah Nasional which is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.

After spending some time in Abu Dhabi, what Jho Low saw there (Mubadala Development) planted a seed in his mind. Only in his 20s, a fresh graduate of Harrow, Jho Low used his Ivy League connections and persuaded the former Prime Minister of Malaysia to set up 1MDB, which was to partner with PetroSaudi, a company owned by Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi Royalty.

What followed is all the complex details and conniving structure that resulted in multiple shell companies being incorporated and offshore bank accounts being set up in various tax havens across the globe through which monies were ruthlessly siphoned off by Jho Low and his associates to fund for birthday parties, jet-setting life, a filmmaking company, purchases of mansions, condominiums, private jets, yachts, paintings and many more. All at the costs of Malaysian taxpayers.

Credits to @sonny_liew on Instagram.

I’m going to express some of my personal views of the Asian Great Gatsby, Jho Low. Coming from a moderately rich family in Penang, he sure did know how to use his family’s advantage (i.e. wealth) to connect and surround himself with people of a certain level of social status all around the world. Yes, you may say, Jho Low is a social-climber.

He is very desperate to please and impress others and at the same time, craving for companionship, recognition and (paid) affection. To achieve these, he needs truckloads of money to sustain his lifestyle in order to constantly be with the social elites. In other words, these people (bankers, princes, politicians, auditors, lawyers and celebrities) are the accessories to Jho Low’s heist.

Many may defend these social elites by saying that, “Can’t blame them! They were sucked into this web of lies, without knowing that the ill-begotten wealth of Jho Low was financed by millions of Malaysian taxpayers!”

Let me pause you right there. Surely these people, ESPECIALLY celebrities, chose to close, not one, BUT BOTH OF THEIR DAMN EYES just so they can pocket hundreds of thousands and millions by doing nothing but attending parties and have fun!

I was particularly disappointed in Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Keys and Pharrell Williams. I have always admired their talents. I just didn’t know they lack something called, INTEGRITY. It goes to show how corrupt the music and movie industries are. Out of all, I think, the worst are Miranda Kerr and Leonardo DiCaprio; Leonardo DiCaprio even had the audacity to film his global warming documentary which also was funded by his BFF, Jho Low and tell us how we are polluting the earth. What an absolute hypocrite!

I can conclude that, the music industry and movie industry are filled with people who can be easily bought with dirty money, useless paintings, pink diamonds and unjustifiably expensive mansions in LA and condos overlooking Central Park.

Credits to @somebooksaround on Instagram.

One thing for sure, I gotta admit that Jho Low is quite a genius for duping everyone for a short-lived adventure. Making full use of his knowledge of offshore accounts and companies just to siphon off billions of Ringgit out of Malaysia without a proper traceable transaction. Always so punctilious, stage-managing meetings and phone calls between politicians, bankers, royalty, as if all these people are born to attend to Jho’s whims and fancies.

Brilliant, isn’t he? But then again, you must be thinking, what are the foreign bankers doing? What is the exact purpose of having compliance unit in banks when a scam this HUGE was not being able to foresee and prevented? Hadn’t the system of checks and balances at banks realised something was wrong, especially a sovereign wealth fund that was being controlled by one Jho Low who wasn’t on the board? Isn’t that shady enough to deserve some scrutiny? How could nobody even thought to wonder where the huge amount of money came from? Ridiculous, right?

This can be easily explained by one particular line in the book, page 371 - “he sensed that the world’s largest banks, its auditors, and its lawyers would not throw up obstacles to his scheme if they smelled profits”.

Banks need money and bankers need those commission to sustain their high-roller lifestyle as well. So, they chose to accept all the lousy reasons Jho Low has given and to approve all the billions to be transferred out of Malaysia, malignantly affecting the currency of Ringgit, leaving us Malaysians being shackled by massive debt incurred for things we didn’t even get to enjoy. None of this could have happened without the connivance of scores of senior executives in banks. All the system of checks and balances at banks failed to provide safeguard and are merely put to show to attract ‘investors’!

Particularly, the Wall Street Banking giant Goldman Sachs. To obtain their remarkable cut, Timothy Leissner and Andrea Vella ensured that “the bank had earned nearly $600 million from selling 3 bonds for the 1MDB Fund - two hundred times the typical fee” in less than a year’s time.

Tim Leissner and wife, Kimora Lee Simmons (left) who is also a good friend of the Malaysia's former First Lady, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.

Other than banks and bankers, there were those useless puppets on the 1MDB board, especially Shahrol Halmi, one of the loyalists of our former PM who unquestioningly rubber-stamped orders of the former PM and Jho Low.

Not forgetting that the 3 large auditing firms (EY, KPMG & Deloitte) who failed in their duties to detect non-existent investment funds in the Cayman Islands.

All of these people who compromised on all scruples at the prospect of personal enrichment fuelled Jho Low’s insatiable desire to be constantly drown in wealth. On one particular night in Saint Tropez, France, Jho Low spent 2 million euros on Cristal champagne - ‘an amount of alcohol that the whole club couldn’t possibly finish off in a week of drinking’, just to win the battle with Winston Fisher to see who was willing to pay the most for champagne. There is no way a person with sane mind will spend his hard-earned money in such an excessive way.

Spending $85 million on gambling, flying supermodels across the globe, paying Playboy Playmates and A-List celebrities to ‘be friends’ with them, renting suites that cost $100,000 per month, purchasing a condominium in New York for $36 million etc.

The Malaysian former Prime Minister spent $36 million to acquire this house in London's exclusive Belgravia neighbourhood.

After beginning to get the wanted and unwanted attention from media, he started to change its way of spending; paintings, hardly traceable and could be easily disposed off for fast cash. Jho Low had spend $137 million on the artworks of Picasso, Van Gogh, Warhol etc. However, weirdly enough, all these paintings were either gifted to other people or stowed away in Geneva Freeport, beyond the prying eyes of the taxman.

Alas, such a massive theft can not go uncovered forever. Jho Low’s money-laundering techniques, although sophisticated, had been carried out through some of the major banks, and there was a solid trail. Journalists and FBI agents started to uncover the LARGEST FINANCIAL SCAM OF ALL TIME.

Being one who only know how to spend monies of others and not knowing how to earn his own money through hard work, of course, Jho Low would be on the run. God knows where he is cowardly hiding his pathetic little head right now. Worst of all, he is still at liberty, living his life at ease in five star residences in China and Thailand, telling people that he is a self-made Asian billionaire, throwing parties even tho’ they are paler in comparison to the ones he threw in Vegas, Monte Carlo and LA.

I was filled with anger and disgust for every single page I turned when I was reading this book. Because, what sanction had anyone faced for this white collar crime?

Leonardo DiCaprio merely had to hand in to the US government the paintings gifted by Jho Low. Similarly, Miranda Kerr only had to return the jewels Jho Low gifted her. That’s it.

Oh, there is a Singaporean banker who was sentenced to jail, Yeo Jia Wei, currently serving the longest sentence in Singapore’s prison for money laundering (indirectly abetting Jho Low). There are a few banks who were also sentenced to millions of fine by the Singaporean courts for failing to realise money laundering activities. Singapore’s judiciary is efficient. But, effective? I doubt so. Bankers who are sentenced to imprisonment may have some of their assets confiscated, when they are released, they still have lots to spend! Whereas for banks who paid huge sum of fine, will they be deterred in the future? No, because God knows how much more profit they gained from these illegal transactions in the past.

Another Singaporean banker who also abetted in the heist of Jho Low, Yak Yew Chee took home $5 million for his annual salary and bonuses, 5 times more than his previous earnings when he was working with BSI. Where is he now? Why is he not being investigated and taken action against?

On the other hand, there were people who have been persecuted for uncovering this scam (e.g. Xavi Justo), some even went missing or dead (RIP, Kevin Morais). The authors of this book repeatedly faced threats of lawsuits and once, one of them who travelled to Kuala Lumpur to gather information for the book, had to escape to Singapore by taking a taxi, for fear of being captured by the former government. I honestly could not imagine what would follow if 9/5/2018 did not happen.

Kudos to the wonderful authors and people who contributed to Billion Dollar Whale; thank you for piecing all the puzzles of this mind-numbingly complex case and made it so much easier for us readers to get the entire picture of Jho Low’s crime. One can only imagine the two journalists sifting through what must have been a mountain of physical and digital sources. Indeed, they have done a wonderful job at unleashing the truth.

This book should be translated into other languages, especially into Bahasa Malaysia, so all the extremists who keep screaming “Bangkit Melayu” at the top of their lungs can read this book and understand what their idol have done and how he has been a good friend and partner of Jho Low for the passed 10 years.