Never Going Back Again - Jho Low and the China Connection
The Asian Crime Century briefing 23
Malaysian fugitive Jho Low has been the subject of more speculation in the past several weeks for differing reasons. In May, a former aide of Jho Lo died in Malaysia, reportedly of a heart attack. Later in May, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission stated that Jho Low is in Macau. And in June, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that his government was negotiating with overseas authorities to secure the return of Jho Low. These events may indicate that Jho Low is at last homeward bound if Malaysia can secure his repatriation to face criminal charges, but the value of the information he has may make it impossible for him to leave China.
To recap, Low is wanted in the US and Malaysia. An INTERPOL Red Notice (a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition) has been issued for him since 2018 for his role in the massive fraud and corruption case involving the 1Malaysia Development Board (1MDB). He has been charged by a Malaysian court with eight counts of money laundering. A separate Malaysian court in 2020 said Low played a key role in transferring RM42 million from a former 1MDB unit to former prime minister Najib Razak’s accounts. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has also accused Low of stealing US$1.4 billion from three bond transactions that Goldman Sachs Group helped facilitate for the Malaysian wealth fund.
A great deal of the transparency to the background of Jho Lo and also the 1MDB case has been provided by investigative journalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, who have created Project Brazen as the platform for their work. Their excellent book, Billion Dollar Whale, broke the story of the billions of dollars stolen from 1MDB and exposed the extravagant life of Jho Low. The story in Billion Dollar Whale is simple but ridiculous for its scale.
Jho Low’s real name is ‘Low Taek Jho’, he is of Chinese descent but was born in Penang, Malaysia. Low is from a wealthy family and was sent to be educated at Harrow School in the UK, after which he studied at Wharton School in the US. Low’s connections with wealthy young people that he developed at boarding school in the UK and then university in the US helped kick start his career as an investment advisor and broker.
However, it is clear from Billion Dollar Whale that Low was a pretend billionaire. Low bought a private jet aircraft, a superyacht, art masterpieces, a penthouse in the Time Warner Centre in New York, the Beverly Hills hotel Viceroy L’Ermitage, agreed to invest USD 100 million in the movie the Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo Di Caprio, and partied with the super-rich and famous. Low was famously pictured partying with Paris Hilton in St. Tropez (hence the poster of Paris Hilton in the protest in Malaysia pictured above). But as the authors of Billion Dollar Whale point out, Low was a fraud.
The first attempted arrest of Jho Low was in 2016 when the Singapore Police Force sent a request to the Hong Kong authorities to arrest him. Strangely, the Hong Kong authorities reportedly declined to arrest Low and he escaped from the city to Macau. Media reports stated that the Hong Kong authorities had no obligation to arrest Low because there was no INTERPOL Red Notice, but the Singapore Police Force made an interestingly strong statement saying that “"We issued a warrant of arrest for Low in April 2016, following investigations and charges against him for offences of money-laundering and dishonestly receiving stolen property. In the same month (April 2016)... we sent a request to the Hong Kong Department of Justice for assistance to provisionally arrest Low under the Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of Singapore and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China for the Surrender of Fugitive Offenders.” For such a request for arrest in a substantive case from such a reliable law enforcement partner as Singapore to be declined by Hong Kong is highly unusual.
In July 2018, former Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak was arrested in connection with the 1MDB fraud and corruption. In July 2020, Najib was convicted after a court found him guilty of seven charges relating to the transfer of USD 9.4 million to his own personal accounts and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
Najib’s wife was also implicated, and audio recordings reportedly from 2018 of Jho Low negotiating his surrender with then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad have him saying that he spent over half a billion US dollars on gifts for her. Low made the extraordinary claim to Mahathir that he only borrowed billions of dollars from 1MDB to fund his lifestyle!
The case became more international in November 2018 when the US Department of Justice submitted indictments in federal court charging Low and Ng Chong Hwa with conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB, and conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials. The case also involved the former Southeast Asia Chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and conspiring to violate the FCPA by both paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials. The Goldman Sachs executive was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, after admitting conspiring to and paying more than $1 billion in bribes to 12 government officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.
Jho Low however had disappeared, although he was reported to be appearing in public. Bradley Hope of Project Brazen tweeted in late May that “Jho Low was in Macau a lot from 2015-2018, as well as Hong Kong Kong, Shenzhen & Thailand but after Najib’s electoral defeat his movements were more restricted to the mainland. We at @WhaleHunting_ believe he’s under house arrest in Shanghai.”
In September 2022, Tom Wright Tweeted photographs of a Chinese male reported to be Jho Low in the MGM casino in Macau. Wright and Hope of Project Brazen have also then stated that they believe that Jho Low has been hiding in the PRC for years, despite this being denied by the Chinese authorities.
By 2023, Low was still Wanted but still not found. On 30 May, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission said in a statement to Al Jazeera that Jho Low is believed to be hiding in Macau. This report follows the deportation from Macau, and subsequent arrest on arrival in Malaysia on 3 May, of Kee Kok Thiam, another suspect in the 1MDB case. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission is reported to have stated that "This was also confirmed by several individuals who have seen Jho Low in Macao", indicating perhaps that Kee Kok Thiam may have provided information regarding Jho Lo to the authorities. However, Kee died of a sudden stroke later in May which removes a key witness with details of where Low may be hiding as well as what he knows.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on 5 June that his government was negotiating with overseas authorities to secure the return of Jho Low, but he did not say where Low is in hiding. The Malaysian government has stated recently that it is working with international organisations through diplomatic channels to extradite Jho Low.
Macau might seem an oddly high profile place for fugitives from justice to hide given that it is essentially a city of gaudy casinos, but it has several advantages. Firstly, there is no extradition treaty between Macau and the US so there is no chance of an accidental deportation of a sensitive person to the US (from the PRC government perspective). Secondly, as Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the PRC, there is a degree of deniability for the PRC authorities if a fugitive is in hiding in the city and officially (but not practically) beyond the reach of the Chinese Public Security Bureau and other agencies.
In March, the importance of the visit by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was illustrated by his meeting with President Xi Jinping. The PRC Foreign Ministry stated that “The two sides should continuously elevate the level of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, advance key projects, foster more growth drivers in cooperation in such areas as digital economy, green development and new energy, and explore cooperation on people’s well-being, so as to enable China-Malaysia relations to deliver more benefits to the two peoples.” Clearly the PRC government expects that Malaysia will remain part of the Belt and Road. Malaysia is also seeking continued PRC investment and loans.
There have been continual reports for the past six years that Jho Low has been hiding in Macau. The Malaysian authorities have stated that Low was in Macau, and there have been reports that he was living in a house owned by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Billion Dollar Whale author Tom Wright reported in 2020 that Low had met former Vice Minister Sun Lijun in a Shenzhen hotel to negotiate for President Donald Trump to return prominent CCP critic Guo Wengui to China.
Sun Lijun was arrested in April 2020, and sentenced to death in September 2022 (commuted to life imprisonment). Guo Wengui was arrested by the FBI in the US in April 2023 and is facing charges relating to USD 1 billion frauds. Whatever Jho Lo may know about any of these people is information that the government of the People’s Republic of China will not want to be in the public domain.
Considering that Low has been a fugitive since 2016 (in relation to the Singapore Police Force arrest warrant) and is likely to have been hiding in China for much of this time, there is no good reason for the Chinese authorities to return him to Malaysia. If the Chinese authorities would not release Low six years ago, there is no motivation to do so now. Jho Low’s secrets are too valuable and his fate is more likely to be decided in China.
Malaysia may be less interested in Jho Low himself but more interested in the missing billions of dollars from 1MDB, as well as further investment from China. It is more likely that money will be repatriated from China to Malaysia after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s recent visit but not Jho Low, who may never be going back again.