In 2009, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the formation of a company called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). This company's job was to create a sovereign wealth fund (essentially a for-profit investment bank run by a country) to aid Malaysia's developing economy. Acting in an unofficial advisory capacity is a man named Jho Low, a well-educated son of a wealthy family (how wealthy depends on who you ask).
They invested one billion dollars (.3% of Malaysia's GDP) into a Saudi oil company. Not long after, with the help of Goldman Sachs, they raised six billion dollars (2% of Malaysia's GDP) to invest in various business endeavors (mostly in the Middle East)
While Razak ran the country, Low was living his best life, rubbing elbows with Hollywood elite like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Victoria's Secret model Miranda Kerr, whom he wound up dating. I'm sure she was just drawn to his rugged good looks. He was also going on an insane spending spree, buying a 20% stake in EMI (a popular record company) and financing a movie called The Wolf of Wall Street (you can find his name in the credits). He also tried to illegally donate tens of millions of dollars to the Obama campaign using a rapper from the Fugees as an intermediary.
By 2015, however, things had gone very wrong. 1MDB was estimated to be $10 billion in the hole. This supposedly multibillion-dollar investment fund couldn't even cover the interest payments on the debt it took out. It wouldn't be long until the world found out why.
A banker-turned-whistleblower named Xavier Justo leaked a whopping 227,000 documents, many of which pointed to vast amounts of fraud and corruption. Not long after, Justo was arrested in Thailand for extortion. His former employers made it clear that they would get him out if he signed a confession saying that he stole the documents as part of a blackmail attempt. He signed the confession, and his employers let him rot in prison.
The documents alleged that an estimated $3.5 billion of 1MDB's money had been diverted into an account used by Low, Razak, Razak's stepson, and other dirty officials as a personal piggy bank buying yachts, luxury apartments, Monet paintings, and othe
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