BELATEDLY, BUT nevertheless well tracked by: who else, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL!
IF not for the INTERNATIONAL PRESS SPOTLIGHT< THE !MDB ISSUE WOULD have been buried like how they tried to bury MONGolian beauty ALTANTUYA"S disappearance and eventually "vanishing into thin air in a Malaysian secondary jungle"> EVen her IMMIGRATION and Two Relatives' IMMIGRATION RECORDS also vanished into thin air! >>> another case of MALaysia BULleh!
DON'T MALAYSIANS EVER LET 1MDB CASE DISAPPEAR INTO THIN AIR; luckily former PM DR MAHathir MOHamad -- like him or hate him! -- is STILL AROUND. DIA TIDAK AKAN MUDAH LUPA! DESI pun!!
OKAY, now the famous/notorious JHO LOW's links to 1MDB as exposed by the WSJ, via DESi's SUNDAE TREAT:) or (:~~~
Malaysian Financier Jho Low Tied to 1MDB Inquiry
Correspondence between Singapore police and Bank Negara focuses on $529 million in deposits
Malaysian financier Jho Low has characterized his role at 1Malaysia Development as an occasional adviser. ENLARGE
Malaysian financier Jho Low has characterized his role at 1Malaysia Development as an occasional adviser. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Gabrielle
By Tom Wright
Updated July 9, 2015 2:45 p.m. ET
1 COMMENTS
Malaysian authorities have received information about the accounts of a young Malaysian financier as part of a probe into allegations of misallocation of money from a state investment fund overseen by Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to documents related to the probe.
More than $500 million in accounts belonging to Jho Low, a Malaysian financier in his early 30s who helped set up 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, were the subject of correspondence in March between Singapore’s police and Malaysia’s central bank, which had asked Singapore for help investigating the fund.
Mr. Najib, who is chairman of 1MDB’s board of advisers, launched the fund in 2009 to boost growth, but today it is facing multiple government investigations and struggling under an $11 billion debt load.
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Mr. Low previously has denied wrongdoing and has said he never had a formal position at 1MDB, characterizing his role as an occasional adviser. A person at Mr. Low’s Hong Kong-based company, Jynwel Capital Ltd., referred questions to international public-relations firm Edelman. A spokesman for Mr. Low at Edelman declined to comment.
The government investigation into 1MDB has traced nearly $700 million of deposits into what investigators believe to be Mr. Najib’s personal accounts, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. The prime minister has denied wrongdoing. The original source of the money is unclear and the government probe doesn’t detail what happened to the money that allegedly entered Mr. Najib’s personal accounts.
Authorities this past week ordered six accounts frozen in connection with the probe into the alleged transfers but didn’t give details of who owns or controls the accounts. The attorney general said on Thursday that these accounts weren’t the same as the three referenced in the Journal story, which had been closed earlier.
The task force investigating 1MDB searched the fund’s offices in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday and took away documents, the fund said in a statement. The fund in the past has denied wrongdoing and said in the statement that it was cooperating with authorities. A spokesman for 1MDB didn’t answer calls.
A Malaysian parliamentary committee that is investigating 1MDB’s activities has decided to call Mr. Low to explain his role in the fund, a member of the committee said Friday.
Mr. Low is known in the U.S. for buying expensive real estate and partying with Paris Hilton. His company was an investor in deals that acquired EMI Music Publishing and New York’s Park Lane Hotel.
In March, Malaysian authorities were told of $529 million said to have been deposited between 2011 and 2013 into a business bank account in Singapore controlled by Mr. Low.
Information about the deposits and Mr. Low’s ownership of the account was given in a letter dated March 13 this year from Singapore’s police to Malaysia’s central bank, a copy of which was reviewed by the Journal. Malaysia had asked Singapore, its neighbor and the financial hub of Southeast Asia, for help in its investigation into 1MDB, according to the letter. In the letter, the police’s Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office gave details of deposits into the business account from the Swiss bank account of a company called Good Star Ltd.
There was no indication in the letter of where Good Star got the funds or what happened to the money. The letter said the business account was shut in February last year. Attempts to locate Good Star weren’t successful.
“If proceeds of crime have been transferred to Singapore, we would like to consider whether an offense has been committed in Singapore,” Chua Jia Leng, the head of the Singapore police’s Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office, wrote to Bank Negara, Malaysia’s central bank, in the letter.
Mr. Low’s alleged Singapore account was at a Swiss bank called BSI SA, according to the Singapore police letter. Malaysia’s government, which wholly owns 1MDB, said earlier this year that the fund was holding $1.1 billion in a BSI account in Singapore.
It isn’t clear whether there is a connection between the two accounts. A spokeswoman for BSI had no comment.
Ms. Chua declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Bank Negara also had no comment.
Mr. Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, is an ethnic Chinese Malaysian from the northern state of Penang. He studied at Harrow School in Britain and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In media interviews, he has talked about building close ties to Middle Eastern investors and he has done deals involving Abu Dhabi’s government. ****He also is a friend of Mr. Najib’s stepson.
Mr. Low has acknowledged working on a sovereign-wealth fund for one of Malaysia’s states, which in 2009 morphed into 1MDB. The Journal reported last month how 1MDB appeared to have indirectly supported Mr. Najib’s election campaign in 2013. Mr. Najib denied wrongdoing.
Mr. Low, too, took part in the campaign. He organized a free concert involving U.S. musicians Busta Rhymes and Ludacris just ahead of the May 2013 vote in the opposition-controlled state of Penang. The event was festooned with pro-government posters, and the state government criticized the concert as unfair electioneering.
Singapore is involved with other strands of Malaysia’s investigations into 1MDB. Singapore’s central bank said this past week that it is cooperating with Malaysian authorities over the probe into the alleged transfers from a Singapore bank account into what investigators believe are Mr. Najib’s personal accounts.
The Journal reported last week, citing documents from a Malaysian government probe, that $681 million of the money allegedly transferred to Mr. Najib’s accounts came from the Singapore account of a British Virgin Islands-based company in March 2013, just before the election. The company, Tanore Finance Corp., was opened in October 2012 and closed in April 2014, according to company documents.
Tanore Finance’s bank account was held with Falcon Private Bank, a Swiss bank owned by an Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund, according to documents from the Malaysian government probe. A spokesman for Falcon Private Bank in Switzerland confirmed the bank was in contact with the Singaporean authorities and would “cooperate to allow full transparency.” He declined to give further details.
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com
DESIDERATA: ALL THE highlights, in RED THUS ,ARE done by YL, aka DESI, knottyaSsusual.
Wit' reference to this line: ****He also is a friend of Mr. Najib’s stepson,
DESi adds that if not mistaken, this Stepson was involved in the production of a multi-million-dollar movie titled WOlves at WAll STreet. Maybe DR MAhathir had the privilege of viewing this said movie, describing its as "PORNOGRAPHIC". I WIll try to askk my UMNO-BUMMER, THE VOICE, knot MIDnight, to influence leading BLOGGER Chedet for a special screening for us Members of B.U.M!
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