Malaysia

[Typhoon]

Economist | Malaysia’s general election - Tawdry victory

The government scrapes home—allegedly aided by vote rigging

[Azrael]

It won't be very many years from now when they lose. They're starting to look like the PRI in Mexico circa 1990.

[Doc]

Low friends in high places

Well Connected at Home, Young Malaysian Has an Appetite for New York


By LOUISE STORY and STEPHANIE SAULFEB. 8, 2015
In early 2010, a young Malaysian financier named Jho Low began making some very expensive real estate deals in the United States.

First, a shell company connected to Mr. Low, famous back home for partying with the likes of Paris Hilton, purchased a $23.98 million apartment in the Park Laurel condominiums in Manhattan. Three years later, that shell company sold the condo to another shell company, this one controlled by someone even more prominent in Malaysia: the film-producing stepson of the prime minister.

A similar transaction was playing out on the other side of the country. Mr. Low bought a contemporary mansion in Beverly Hills for $17.5 million, then turned around and sold it, once again to the prime minister’s stepson. (Read a summary of this article in Malay.)

Mr. Low also went shopping at the Time Warner Center condominiums overlooking Central Park. He toured a 76th-floor penthouse, once home to the celebrity couple Jay Z and Beyoncé, then in early 2011 used yet another shell company to buy it for $30.55 million, one of the highest prices ever in the building.

At the time, Mr. Low said he represented a group of investors, according to two people with direct knowledge of the transaction. Mr. Low recently told The New York Times that he had not purchased the penthouse for investors, and that it was owned by his family’s trust.

One thing is clear: As with nearly two-thirds of the apartments at the Time Warner Center, a dark-glass symbol of New York’s luxury condominium boom, the people behind Penthouse 76B cannot be found in any public real estate records. The trail ends with Jho Low.


Mr. Low, 33, is a skillful, and more than occasionally flamboyant, iteration of the sort of operative essential to the economy of the global superrich. Just as many of the wealthy use shell companies to keep the movement of money opaque, they also use people like Mr. Low. Whether shopping for new business opportunities or real estate, he has often done so on behalf of investors or, as he likes to say, friends. Whether the money belongs to others or is his own, the lines are frequently blurry, the identity of the buyer elusive.

Mr. Low’s lavish spending has raised eyebrows and questions from Kuala Lumpur to New York, where he has made a boldface name for himself as a “whale” at clubs like the Pink Elephant and 1Oak. The New York Post once called him “the mystery man of city club scene,” adding, “Speculation is brewing over where Low is getting his money from.”

One answer resides at least indirectly in his relationship, going back to his school days in London, with the family of Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak. Mr. Low has played an important role in bringing Middle Eastern money into numerous deals involving the Malaysian government, and he helped set up, and has continued to advise, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that the prime minister oversees.

Now, that relationship has become part of an uproar gathering around Mr. Najib and threatening his already shaky hold on power. In Parliament, in political cartoons and in social media, Mr. Najib’s critics tend to argue that he is too close to Mr. Low.



Much of the concern, even in Mr. Najib’s own long-ruling party, involves questions about the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. More broadly, though, the prime minister’s trappings of wealth and the widely broadcast tales of his wife’s outsize spending — the diamond jewelry, the collection of extravagantly costly Hermès Birkin bags — have become a focus of Malaysians’ rising unease with their government’s institutionalized culture of patronage and graft.

“We are very concerned,” Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a member of Malaysian royalty and an independent-minded elder statesman of Mr. Najib’s party, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur last summer. “We want people of integrity to be up there.”

Increasingly, the glare turns to Mr. Najib’s stepson, Riza Aziz, and so to Mr. Aziz’s friendship with Mr. Low. With Mr. Low’s help, Mr. Aziz runs a Hollywood company that produced the films “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Dumb and Dumber To.” He has spent tens of millions more on the homes in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, transactions that involved Mr. Low, The Times found.

“That’s a lot of money,” Sivarasa Rasiah, an opposition lawmaker, said of Mr. Aziz’s spending. He added, “Every U.S. report on him talks about family wealth. Family who?”

While Mr. Aziz has previously said he is personally wealthy, he declined to explain how he had acquired his money. Mr. Najib’s office, in a statement, said, “The prime minister does not track how much Mr. Aziz earns or how such earnings are reinvested.” As for the prime minister himself, the statement said he had “received inheritance.”

In a statement provided by a spokesman, Mr. Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, said he “is a friend of Mr. Riza Aziz and his family.” His real estate transactions with Mr. Aziz were made “on an arm’s-length basis,” he said, adding that he had never purchased real estate in the United States for the prime minister’s family or “engaged in any wrongful conduct regarding any financial matters for the prime minister and his family.”

At the Time Warner Center, The Times found, the 76th-floor penthouse, purchased through a shell company called 80 Columbus Circle (NYC) L.L.C., is one of at least a dozen that can be traced to people with close ties to current or former high-ranking foreign officials, or to the officials themselves.

According to one member of the condominium board there, while the board understood that the penthouse had been bought for investors, it did not ascertain their identities. At the Park Laurel, where Mr. Najib’s stepson owns, the board did not respond to questions about whether it had examined the financing of the purchase.

In fact, in-depth scrutiny of real estate deals is not required. International anticorruption organizations have criticized this lack of inquiry — not just by real estate brokers and condo boards, but by banks, lawyers and the federal government.

“People should ask the questions, ‘Why is it that this individual is bringing in millions of dollars into America, and how was it acquired?’” said Charmian Gooch, co-founder of Global Witness, a nongovernmental organization that works against corruption around the world.

The Making of a Financier

To mention Mr. Low in Malaysia is to conjure the image of a baby-faced young man in rimless glasses and a loose black V-neck, holding a magnum of Cristal and surrounded by celebrities. But if he is sometimes derided as a tabloid party boy who once flew a group of bottle girls from New York to Malaysia, the reality is that the clubbing life, for Mr. Low, was actually a way to build a booming business managing money for his friends.

“I think a relationship with an investor is not just about managing their money well,” he said in an extensive interview with The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, in 2010. “Although it is not in my job scope, but if my friend says he wants a flight urgently to somewhere or he wants a dinner reservation at a well-known place, I’ll do my best to make it happen.” He also said, “I am usually the concierge service that arranges everything, and thus my name is all over the place.”

Around George Town, on Penang Island, where Jho grew up, the Lows were seen as a family of somewhat deflated affluence, according to several businessmen who have known them for years. The father, Larry, was an executive for an investment holding company called MWE Holdings, but he split with his partner in the mid-1990s and faded from the local business scene. Still only a teenager, Jho, the youngest of three children, emerged as the family’s best hope for the future.

There was money for education abroad, and in London, while attending the ancient and elite Harrow school, Mr. Low became friends with Mr. Najib’s stepson, Mr. Aziz, who was studying at the London School of Economics. He also grew close to Mr. Aziz’s mother, Rosmah Mansor, who stayed for months at a time in an apartment she kept there.

In college, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Low kept up his ties back home by running a Malaysian student group. But he also came to know the children of prominent Jordanian and Kuwaiti families. Even before graduating, he was managing money for what he later described as “my family and close Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian friends.”

After college, many of his early business deals were based in Malaysia — helping a Kuwaiti bank purchase a high-rise complex called the Oval, and bringing Middle Eastern money into the country to finance a commercial zone in the south and a new financial district in the capital. By 2007, he had formed an investment group that included a Malaysian prince, a Kuwaiti sheikh and a friend from the United Arab Emirates who went on to become ambassador to the United States and Mexico.


Two years later, he was pitching his idea for a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. His plan was to invest public money for the public good through a fund tied to one of the country’s oil-producing states, and so he began wooing the sultan of Terengganu, who was also Malaysia’s king under the nation’s rotating monarchy.

It was all about making connections, making friends. Success, he told The Star, is “attributable to being at the right place and right time and meeting the right people coupled with a trusting relationship.”

In April 2009, those ingredients all came together for Mr. Low. The stepfather of his friend Mr. Aziz became prime minister of Malaysia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/nyreg ... -york.html

[Typhoon]

BBC | Malaysia 1MDB scandal: Investigators say about $4bn may be missing from fund

Some of the money, the office of Michael Lauber said, had been transferred to Swiss accounts held by Malaysian former public officials and current and former public officials from the United Arab Emirates.

Massive theft of public funds by high Malaysian officials probably including the current PM.

[noddy]

aaah malaysia, always setting the world benchmarks for racism and corruption.

not only is he in trouble for stealing billions http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-edito ... mh17p.html

he is also part of conspiracy for murdering a mongolian socialite http://www.smh.com.au/world/troubles-re ... mhmn0.html

all that said, a culture that created beef rendang and kway teow can be forgiven many things.

[kmich]

Pointing out the common corruption and failures of developing countries is like shooting ducks swimming in a kiddy wading pool with a 12 gage – very easy to find the ducks, very easy to shoot them, and, yes, somehow there always appears plenty of ducks there to shoot. A little too much smug schadenfreude for me though, a familiar attitude among people residing in developed nations. While likely a satisfying exercise in cultural superiority for those who need such affirmations, it has the hazard of developing a far too narrow and stereotypical viewpoint on these nations.

Traveled through Malaysia this past January/February for professional/personal trip. Traveled there periodically over the years. An extraordinarily diverse society where you can walk through Kuala Lumpur one block and see women in burkas, go anther block, see Tamil women in saris, and yet another block and see Chinese girls in miniskirts. Go to Penang and visit large Buddhist temples coexisting with Mosques. Calls for prayer from the mosques in the mornings were punctuated by fireworks in anticipation of Chinese New Year and the songs of tropical birds. People, without exception, were polite, kind, and hospitable. Transportation infrastructure within Kuala Lumpur is better developed than most American cities, and there is very little crime. People were positive, hopeful, and proud of their nation in both urban and rural areas. There was a confidence and sense of security there, at least among the many people I met for what that may be worth. There is far more to the place than its corruption and political failures.

In contrast, when I traveled in Bangkok, the atmosphere there was very pressured, and had darkened since I last visited a few years ago. The sense of security and stability just wasn’t there and patience with "farangs" was short. The “land of smiles” just ain’t what it used to be.

[monster_gardener]

Pointing out the common corruption and failures of developing countries is like shooting ducks swimming in a kiddy wading pool with a 12 gage – very easy to find the ducks, very easy to shoot them, and, yes, somehow there always appears plenty of ducks there to shoot. A little too much smug schadenfreude for me though, a familiar attitude among people residing in developed nations. While likely a satisfying exercise in cultural superiority for those who need such affirmations, it has the hazard of developing a far too narrow and stereotypical viewpoint on these nations.

Traveled through Malaysia this past January/February for professional/personal trip. Traveled there periodically over the years. An extraordinarily diverse society where you can walk through Kuala Lumpur one block and see women in burkas, go anther block, see Tamil women in saris, and yet another block and see Chinese girls in miniskirts. Go to Penang and visit large Buddhist temples coexisting with Mosques. Calls for prayer from the mosques in the mornings were punctuated by fireworks in anticipation of Chinese New Year and the songs of tropical birds. People, without exception, were polite, kind, and hospitable. Transportation infrastructure within Kuala Lumpur is better developed than most American cities, and there is very little crime. People were positive, hopeful, and proud of their nation in both urban and rural areas. There was a confidence and sense of security there, at least among the many people I met for what that may be worth. There is far more to the place than its corruption and political failures.

In contrast, when I traveled in Bangkok, the atmosphere there was very pressured, and had darkened since I last visited a few years ago. The sense of security and stability just wasn’t there and patience with "farangs" was short. The “land of smiles” just ain’t what it used to be.

Thank You VERY Much for your post, kmich,

A little too much smug schadenfreude for me

Maybe so given that we/US have the Clintons, K-Street and similar dreck going on..........

[Typhoon]

It won't be very many years from now when they lose. They're starting to look like the PRI in Mexico circa 1990.

Your prediction has come to pass.

Reuters | Malaysia's Mahathir, 92, to be sworn in as prime minister after historic poll win

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad will be sworn in as the world’s oldest elected leader on Thursday after his opposition alliance pulled off a stunning election win, ending six decades of rule by a coalition he once led.

[Typhoon]

Reuters | Malaysia's Mahathir won't be sworn in as prime minister on Thursday: palace spokesman

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Mahathir Mohamad will not be sworn in as Malaysia’s next prime minister on Thursday, a palace spokesman told Reuters, without giving a reason.

And so it begins.

[noddy]

fascinating.

I wont even pretend to have a guess as to how this is going to play out, Ill just be watching wide eyed.

[Typhoon]

Mahathir is PM again and the investigation against the ex PM Najib begins.

Reuters | The cover-up - Malaysian officials reveal just how much 1MDB probe was obstructed

Malaysia’s new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told Reuters the week before last that he holds Najib fully responsible for the 1MDB scandal and that Malaysian authorities have “an almost perfect case” against him.

As a result of an anti-kleptocracy probe, the U.S. Department of Justice has alleged more than $4.5 billion (£3.4 billion) was misappropriated from 1MDB and that about $700 million of the fund’s money ended up in Najib’s personal bank accounts.

Reuters | Malaysian police to question [ex PM] Najib and wife after seizing up to $275 million from homes

Malaysian police said on Wednesday they would soon question former prime minister Najib Razak and his wife after finding nearly $275 million worth of jewelry, handbags, watches and other items at premises linked to the couple.

That's a whole lot of bling.