Jumaat, 5 Februari 2016

New York Times Dedah Siapa Jho Low..!


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TOWERS OF SECRECY 


Jho Low, Well Connected in Malaysia, Has an Appetite for New York

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 condominiumsoverlooking 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 l
uxury condominium boom, the people behind Penthouse 76B 
cannot be found in any public real estate records. The trail ends 
with Jho Low.
Photo
Jho Low CreditIllustration by Michael Hoeweler 
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.
A POLITICAL LEGACY
Photo
Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia, center, leaving the Time Warner Center in September 2014. Mr. Najib met Mr. Low briefly there that week. CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times 
Mr. Najib, 61, has a deep pedigree in Malaysian politics. 
His father, Tun Razak, was the country’s second prime minister, 
in the 1970s. His uncle was its third. His cousin is now defense 
minister.
Mr. Najib has risen through the political ranks: member of 
Parliament at 23; chief minister of his home state; minister 
of education, defense and finance; and deputy prime minister.
The family is tightly intertwined with Malaysia’s leading political 
party, the United Malays National Organization, whose long hold 
on power owes much to its close relationship with the country’s 
business elite. That closeness, in turn, has helped engender a 
culture of corruption, said Zaid Ibrahim, a former minister of 
legal affairs and judicial reform who served alongside Mr. Najib. 
Inflated government contracts are the norm, widely accepted 
because recipients simply turn around and donate to the party, 
he said.
“You know why corruption is very high in Malaysia?” he said. 
“It’s because the party in power is synonymous with the state.”
Continue reading the main story

ABOUT L.L.C.s 

As The Times wrote in the first part of this 
series, while shell companies like limited 
liability companies and trusts can be used 
for secrecy, they are frequently used for 
other purposes, including avoiding exposure 
to lawsuits or double taxation. They are also 
used in multiparty real estate transactions. 
This was the case several years ago with 
family members of a reporter on this project, Louise Story. And they are used in 
inheritance matters and investment
 strategies.
That point was underscored in the State Department’s 2010 human rights report, which said, “Officials often engaged in corrupt practices with impunity” and noted “a broadly held perception of widespread corruption and cronyism within the governing coalition and in government institutions.”
There have been no proven corruption allegations against Mr. Najib. However, 
he has been dogged by questions, seized upon by his political 
opponents, stemming from a long-running bribery inquiry in 
France involving submarines he commissioned from a French 
company while he was defense minister.
The French national police found documents showing that the 
submarine company paid more than $100 million to a company 
controlled by one of Mr. Najib’s close associates. In addition, 
one police document says, without elaboration, that Mr. Najib 
demanded money in exchange for a 2001 meeting in Paris.
Malaysian officials said the payments to the company controlled 
by Mr. Najib’s associate were for “support and coordination 
services”; the prime minister’s office said he received no 
payments and did not demand any.
Mr. Najib, who earns an annual salary of about $100,000 
as prime minister, has been battered by news media reports 
of his wife’s lavish spending. A notable episode involved the 
Birkin bags: A series of photos that went viral on social media 
in Malaysia showed Ms. Rosmah holding at least nine of the 
purses. They typically cost between $9,000 and $150,000 apiece.
Photo
Rosmah Mansor with her husband, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia.
Ariff Sabri, an aide to Mr. Najib 
from 2000 to 2004 who joined the opposition in 2012, said the prime 
minister kept “piles and piles” of 
ringgit bills stacked in his safe. And 
invoices and other documents 
obtained by The Times show 
millions of dollars in jewelry 
ordered for Ms. Rosmah in 
Hong Kong in 2008 and 2009 
— diamond and emerald rings, 
and diamond, emerald and ruby bracelets.
The prime minister’s office said, “Neither any money spent on 
travel, nor any jewelry purchases, nor the alleged contents of 
any safes are unusual for a person of the prime minister’s 
position, responsibilities and legacy family assets.”
For some people who have long known Mr. Najib, the lavish 
lifestyle that appeared to evolve with his second marriage, to 
Ms. Rosmah in 1987, has been a surprising — even dismaying 
— turn for a modest technocrat.
Last year, Mr. Najib’s younger brother, Nazir, wrote a newspaper columnthat tacitly jabbed at the current prime minister by 
praising the frugality of their father, a career government 
official who died in office at age 53.
When he and his brothers had asked for a swimming pool 
at the prime minister’s residence, Mr. Nazir wrote, “My father 
made it abundantly clear that while Seri Taman may be our 
home, the house belonged to the government and, hence, to 
the people. Anything spent on it would have to come from 
public funds, and there was no way he was going to allow the 
state coffers to be depleted on something as frivolous as a 
swimming pool. ‘What will the people think?’ he thundered.”
THE FUND
Mr. Low’s business romance with Malaysia’s king, it turned out, 
was short lived. But the new prime minister, Mr. Najib, was 
happy to have a way to benefit the nation writ large, and the 
sovereign wealth fund soon morphed into a new one, called 
1Malaysia Development Berhad.
Photo
A billboard in Kuala Lumpur for Malaysia's strategic development company. Mr. Najib has faced questions about 1MDB. CreditSamsul Said/Reuters 
Mr. Najib became chairman of 
the board of advisers of 1MDB, 
which calls itself a “strategic 
development company.” A close 
Penang friend of Mr. Low’s father 
became a director, and two
 of Mr. Low’s friends joined the 
staff. Mr. Low 
himself was not given an official role,
 but he is regularly consulted on 
its actions, according to three people who have had regular dealings 
with 1MDB but requested anonymity to preserve relationships.
In his statement to The Times, Mr. Low played down his role in 
1MDB, saying that “from time to time and without receiving compensation,” he has given his views on various matters.
While Mr. Low has no official position with the fund, in 2012 it 
emerged in British court documents that he had presented a 
letter of support from 1MDB in his investors’ unsuccessful bid 
for the hotel group that includes Claridge’s. He also said the 
financing would be fully underwritten by Malaysian government investment funds, according to the documents.
Mr. Low and 1MDB also had dealings with an oil-drilling 
company called PetroSaudi International that had been 
founded by a Saudi businessman and a Saudi prince.
Soon after its creation, 1MDB invested $1 billion in a joint 
venture with PetroSaudi. A few months later, a PetroSaudi 
subsidiary purchased a Malaysian holding company, UBG, in 
which Mr. Low and his investors held a substantial stake, 
according to public records. News media reports did not say so, 
but corporate records reviewed by The Times show that a 
director of the PetroSaudi subsidiary was a close friend of 
Mr. Low named Geh Choh Hun.
PetroSaudi has told the Malaysian press that the deals were 
unrelated. And both men said Mr. Geh was not representing 
Mr. Low’s interest in the deal.
By 2011, 1MDB pulled out of the PetroSaudi joint venture. 
The proceeds, however, were not immediately returned to 
Malaysia. Instead, they ended up in a Cayman Islands company 
and managed by an investment firm that 1MDB only 
recently identified. The money was recently returned to 
1MDB, the fund has said.
The Caymans maneuver has stirred an outcry even within 
Mr. Najib’s own party. “I don’t understand why the 
government carries on with 1MDB,” Daim Zainuddin, 
a former finance minister, said in an interview. “To me, 
it’s quite frightening because you don’t know what 
they’re doing,” he said, adding, “Why must government 
money be parked?”
There have been other criticisms as well — that the fund 
has taken on large amounts of debt and that some of its 
investments have benefited large donors to Mr. Najib’s party.
The prime minister’s office said that 1MDB was run by 
professional managers, and that many blue-chip companies 
do business with funds registered in the Caymans. 
The criticisms, it added, “need to be examined for 
political motivation.”
A year ago, the accounting firm KPMG refused to sign 
off on 1MDB’s financials, according to Nur Jazlan Mohamed, 
chairman of Parliament’s audit committee. KPMG declined to c
omment for this article. The fund, which described the parting 
as amicable, found a new auditor: Deloitte.
Mr. Nur Jazlan, a member of Mr. Najib’s party, said the 
Deloitte blessing gave him comfort. “They wouldn’t sanction 
the accounts if there was a problem,” he said. Still, he 
acknowledged that “conditions are fertile” for fraud, given 
the scant oversight of 1MDB.
“Yes, they make money, but should they make more money?” 
Mr. Nur Jazlan said. Yet as long as 1MDB shows a profit, 
he added, it is unlikely that there will be any serious inquiry 
into whether money went missing. “Money makes money,” 
he said. “You can basically hide a lot of things in there as well. 
Then, the party doing scrutiny of management is the board, 
which is appointed by who? And chaired by who? 
The prime minister.”
LUXURY HOME PURCHASES
Photo
A shell company connected to Mr. Low purchased an apartment in the Park Laurel in Manhattan for $23.9 million. It later sold the unit to a shell company controlled by the stepson of Malaysia's prime minister. CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times 
The year before Mr. Low showed up at the Time Warner 
Center, the New York news media reported the $23.98 million 
purchase of an apartment in the Park Laurel, a few blocks away 
on West 63rd Street.
The purchase, the reports said, had been made by a shell 
company on behalf of two residents of Switzerland — 
Peter Edward Chadney and Simone Cécile von Graffenried 
Simperl. Those reports were mistaken. The Swiss “buyers” 
were actually Rothschild bankers. The real party behind the 
shell company was Mr. Low, whose spokesman acknowledged 
to The Times that the condo had been bought by a trust 
benefiting his family.
Nearly three years later, the Lows sold it to Mr. Aziz’s shell 
company for $33.5 million in cash — a 40 percent appreciation.
The sale involved a string of shell companies. In one spot 
on the property transfer, Mr. Aziz is listed as the “sole director” 
of Sorcem Investments, a British Virgin Islands company that 
was behind the shell company that bought the Park Laurel condo.
The transfer of the Beverly Hills house from Mr. Low to 
Mr. Aziz was even more opaque.
Photo
The Beverly Hills home, shown on a real estate website, that was purchased for $17.5 million by a shell company tied to Mr. Low.
After Mr. Low’s shell company, 912 North Hillcrest Road 
(BH) L.L.C., paid $17.5 million for the home — 11,573 
square feet, with five bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, private 
gardens and a glowing pyramid in the reflecting pool — 
his trust sold ownership of that shell company to a corporate 
entity controlled by Mr. Aziz, both men acknowledged to 
The Times.
Legally, however, the property itself never changed hands. 
The same shell company appears as owner in the public 
property records of Los Angeles County. It is as if nothing 
ever happened.
Mr. Aziz confirmed that he owned the New York condo as 
well as the Beverly Hills house, which is undergoing extensive 
rebuilding.
Mr. Low said the transactions were done at fair market value. 
He sold the Beverly Hills property, he said, because he had 
found another nearby. That house cost $39 million.
Back in New York, the Time Warner Center was a natural 
destination because friends of Mr. Low already owned 
apartments there. There was also a prominent Malaysian — 
the brother of Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary, a major beneficiary 
of government contracts and a generous backer of Mr. Najib’s 
political party.
With the penthouses on the top five floors of the north tower 
came wraparound views — the Catskills far off to the northwest, 
the Statue of Liberty just beyond the southern tip of Manhattan, 
and Central Park right next door. Mr. Low went to view 
Penthouse 76B with a retinue of women and told people
 involved in the deal that he would pay $30.55 million — 
all cash, as in his other real estate purchases.
One member of the condominium board and another 
person with direct knowledge of the deal said they believed 
that Mr. Low was buying for a group of investors. One of 
them recalled Mr. Low saying that a main investor was the 
family of Prime Minister Najib.
In its statement to The Times, the prime minister’s office
 said Mr. Najib had no financial interest or any agreement 
related to any Time Warner condominiums.
Mr. Low's statement said that the condo was owned by his 
family’s trust and that he and other family members 
“stay there from time to time when they are in New York.”
The professionals who helped Mr. Low buy the Time Warner 
condo included the same Rothschild bankers as in the Park
 Laurel condo transaction, as well as John Opar, a lawyer at 
Shearman & Sterling, who did not respond to inquiries. One 
of the bankers, Ms. Simperl, said she could not discuss the 
client, who in the same time period briefly owned a $33 
million condo at the Trump International, across the street 
from the Time Warner Center.
Janice Chang, the broker the Douglas Elliman firm identified 
as representing the buyer, said, “We work with a lot of people; 
sometimes we know them and sometimes we don’t.” 
She added: “They’re very confidential. We try not to pry.”
HELLO TO HOLLYWOOD
Photo
From left, Riza Aziz, Joey McFarland and Jho Low at a premiere of "The Wolf of Wall Street" in December 2013.CreditMichael Loccisano/Getty Images 
Mr. Aziz’s film company, Red Granite Pictures, was largely 
unheard-of when it took over the financing of “The Wolf of 
Wall Street,” announcing its intentions with a party at the 
2011 Cannes Film Festival, complete with a fireworks 
extravaganza and concert by Kanye West. The Hollywood 
Reporter called it “an audacious hello to the movie industry.”
Neither of its founders had the kind of résumé that reflected 
the experience, or the income, to bankroll a movie company. 
Mr. Aziz, now 38, had been a junior-level banker at HSBC. 
His partner, Joey McFarland, was a small-time investor from 
Kentucky whose entertainment-business apprenticeship 
included booking paid party appearances for celebrities 
like Ms. Hilton.
All of which led to a certain amount of curiosity in Hollywood 
about who was financing Red Granite.
Over time, the accounts seemed to change.
Interviewing a job candidate early on, Mr. Aziz said the 
financing came from “sovereign wealth,” according to two 
people with knowledge of the conversation.
When Irwin Winkler, an executive producer of “The Wolf 
of Wall Street” inquired, he was told that Red Granite had 
“a backer in Malaysia,” he recalled in an interview. He was 
introduced to the backer, and it was Mr. Low. “He’s the face, 
as far as I could see, of the financing,” Mr. Winkler said.
At the film’s December 2013 premiere party at the Roseland 
Ballroom in New York, several people said, Mr. Low had been 
introduced to them as the financier. He is thanked in the 
film’s credits.
The Malaysian explanations ended about a year ago, after 
Red Granite’s financing became the subject of persistent 
questions, especially from The Sarawak Report, a London-
based news site that focuses on Malaysia.
Mr. Low says he has not put money into Red Granite or its 
films. And last summer, a new money man emerged. In an 
interview with The Times for an article on Red Granite, 
Mr. Aziz said the principal backer was Mohamed Ahmed 
Badawy al-Husseiny, chief executive of an Abu Dhabi 
government-owned company, Aabar Investments, that has 
done deals with Mr. Low. Mr. Aziz noted that “The Wolf of 
Wall Street” had received New York tax breaks. He said there 
were other investors, but recently declined to identify them. 
“There is no Malaysian money” in Red Granite’s films, he said.
Even so, both Mr. Low and Mr. Husseiny have been involved 
with Malaysian government funds, including 1MDB.
Mr. Husseiny’s company, Aabar, had been a partner with 
Mr. Low in the failed Claridge’s bid that was backed by 
1MDB. Aabar has also done business with affiliates of a 
company called SRC International, which was spun off 
from 1MDB and is now owned by the Ministry of Finance.
Aabar also did a deal with a company outside Malaysia 
that SRC had helped create, according to two people involved 
with the transaction. Money from that deal was then set 
aside to be paid out to other corporate entities. That money 
was described as consulting fees for Mr. Husseiny and 
Mr. Low, the people involved said. Similar arrangements 
existed in other SRC deals, they said they were told by 
people at SRC.
SRC’s managing director, a friend of Mr. Low named 
Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, said that to the best of his knowledge, 
neither Mr. Low nor Mr. Husseiny had received fees from 
deals involving SRC or its affiliates. Mr. Low said that he 
had not consulted for SRC International Sdn Bhd, the 
Malaysia-based SRC.
In a response from his lawyer, Mr. Husseiny did not 
answer questions about SRC. His investment in Red Granite, 
he said, was “personal money.”
DISCONTENT AT HOME
Just before Christmas, while visiting Hawaii, Mr. Najib 
played golf with one of his international allies — 
President Obama.
It was “golf diplomacy,” the prime minister said when 
he was criticized in Malaysia for golfing while the country 
suffered through its worst flooding in many years.
It was also the continuation of Mr. Najib’s long effort to 
draw his country closer to Washington. Earlier last year, 
Mr. Obama made an official visit to Malaysia, the first by 
an American president since 1966. Afterward, he and 
Mr. Najib said they would “elevate” relations to a 
“comprehensive partnership” of political and 
economic ties.
A White House spokesman did not respond to inquiries 
about the president’s relationship with Mr. Najib.
Even as Mr. Najib’s diplomatic standing has risen — 
Malaysia was recently elected to a two-year seat on the 
United Nations Security Council — his political star 
has been falling back home.
Mr. Najib has positioned himself as a forward-looking 
moderate. Yet on issues ranging from the freedom of 
political speech to longstanding laws that favor the Malay 
majority over the country's ethnic minorities, he has not 
made good on promised reforms that would run afoul of 
his more conservative opponents. One long-running case 
that has rankled critics at home and abroad is his government’s prosecution of a leading opposition figure, Anwar Ibrahim, 
on sodomy charges; a ruling on Mr. Anwar’s appealis 
expected any day.
In the 2013 elections, the opposition won the popular vote 
for the first time in more than four decades. Mr. Najib kept 
his job only because the allocation of seats in Parliament 
was weighted to favor rural areas, where his party’s coalition 
was strong. Within hours of the announcement, crowds 
filled the streets of Kuala Lumpur in protest.
One of the toughest areas for Mr. Najib’s party was 
Mr. Low’s home state, Penang.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, Mr. Low helped a 
newly formed group, the 1Malaysia Penang Welfare Club. 
The club gave out free food and beer, as well as “lucky draw” t
ickets for bicycles and other prizes, and Mr. Low flew in 
musicians like Busta Rhymes and Ludacris for what was 
described as a nonpolitical concert.
Photo
Mr. Low, pedaling at center, transported Busta Rhymes in George Town, Malaysia, in 2013. Mr. Low invited popular musicians for a party organized by the 1Malaysia Penang Welfare Club. CreditMalay Mail Online 
The club’s leader was Mr. Low’s close friend, Mr. Geh, 
who said the mission of the group was charity. But o
pposition figures in Penang said the prizes and concert 
were aimed at recruiting votes for Mr. Najib’s party.
“Jho wanted to show that he could call the shots in Penang,” 
said Lim Guan Eng, the chief minister and an opposition 
member.
In the end, the governing party won only a quarter of the 
parliamentary races in Penang, and Mr. Lim was re-elected.
Since then, Mr. Najib’s standing has grown only more 
precarious, as criticism has spread from the opposition
 to factions of his own party.
Over the summer, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 
who led the country for 22 years and retains considerable 
influence, publicly denounced Mr. Najib and called on him 
to reform 1MDB. And while speculation that Mr. Najib would 
be pushed out at the annual party congress in November proved unfounded, weeks later, an official from his party called for a 
police investigation of 1MDB and said he would file a complaint 
against the prime minister if no action was taken.
In January, 1MDB officials responded to the controversy by appointing a new president, a banker named Arul Kanda. The appointment created its own flurry of questions.
In 2008, as Mr. Low was working to bring Middle Eastern money to Malaysia, he helped a Malaysian bank, RHB Capital, raise money from the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, where Mr. Arul soon 
became an executive. The next year, Mr. Arul joined a board 
of RHB.
In mid-January, the Malaysian press reported that Mr. Arul said 
that any insinuations about connections to “certain individuals” 
were unfair. “My C.V. should speak for itself,” he said.
AN EVOLVING IMAGE
Last September, Mr. Najib traveled to the United States for 
the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. He and 
his wife usually stay at the Time Warner Center when they 
are in New York, and they did so this time as well — at the 
Mandarin Oriental hotel.
Photo
A foundation led by Mr. Low, second from right, pledged $25 million to IRIN, a news agency focusing on humanitarian issues, in 2014.
Mr. Low was in town, too — for a Social Good Summit 
sponsored by his foundation, featuring speakers like Melinda 
Gates, Ed Norton and Alicia Keys — and he and the 
prime minister engaged in a bit of a pas de deux at the 
Mandarin Oriental: Mr. Najib arrived in the hotel lobby 
with his entourage and went upstairs; within minutes, 
Mr. Low followed for what he later described as a 
“courtesy social call.” Less than 10 minutes later, 
the two men came downstairs and took separate exits 
from the building.
Lately, Mr. Low has been emphasizing that he is 
investing his family’s money and no longer managing 
money for investors and friends.
He has been broadening his family’s business portfolio
making high-profile deals with the Abu Dhabi government 
and other Middle Eastern investors. In 2012, his family joined 
a group that bought EMI Music Publishing for $2.2 billion, 
and the next year, it was a principal investor in the $660 
million purchase of the Park Lane Hotel in New York.
After portraying himself for years as a friend of people with 
money — and saying in the 2010 interview with The Star that 
he came from a “fairly O.K. family” — he has started to say 
that he was born with it himself. Last fall, he did an interview 
with The Wall Street Journal, which reported that his 
grandfather had made a fortune in mining and liquor 
investments in Thailand. The Journal’s account — 
which said the Low family had a $1.75 billion fortune and 
called Mr. Low a “scion” — was immediately picked up in Malaysia.
As befits the modern scion, Mr. Low has lately begun trading 
in another asset class: contemporary art. His entry into the 
art market has generated buzz both for his youth and for the 
fact that he has become such a significant force so fast. 
Last summer, he made the ARTnews list of the world’s 200 
leading private collectors.
The art market is even more opaque than real estate, so that 
list is based not on actual sales data but on the assessments of 
people in the industry who know about collectors’ holdings. 
According to two people familiar with Mr. Low’s activities in 
the art world, though, he has taken a liking to pop art.
sumber.nytimes.
Bertepik tepik beb..!
Mana pergi jurucakap Rahman 
Dahlan, Saleh Keruak, Azalina
dan yang sekutu dengannya?
Dah bisu ke?
Lu Fikir La Sendiri!!!

6 ulasan:

  1. Admin nii...jangan dikacau mohd najib...maklum hati tengah senang tppa dah selesai...nek tempoyak tak nk komen pasal anak cina nii ke..? ProOO00ootTt

    BalasPadam
  2. Tak nak ulas panjang2....segala maklumat yg ditulis nyt tu betul. Duit2 pak arab dibawa masuk ke Malaysia. 1mdb pun dapat pulangan baik sebelum kena sabotaj dengan keturunan mandaliar dan cina khadam setia sang mamak.

    Lain macam cina2 babi belaan si mamak yg dipuja puja tu. Untung buat di Malaysia. Duit dilabur diluar Malaysia. Bila sesak balik Malaysia....m7nta sedekah. Tak dapat meroyan.


    Itulah pojaan hati sipemakan dedak mamak kutty and the gang.

    BalasPadam
    Balasan
    1. Mangkok hayun...panas ke bro...haha...cina nii belaan mohd najib pujaan hati lu..entah berapa billion mamat ni simpan..nek tempoyak pun malu nk pertahan mohd najib...ProOO00ootTt

      Padam
    2. Telo Berayonnn..

      Kalo bab bagi komen standard mad maselan mmg la handal...alaahaiii huhuhuhu!!..

      p/s: errr.. kalo dulu si telo berayonnn sikit sikit ajak berentap di google + ..cam POYO!!..

      Padam
  3. Hoooi mangkuk hayun keris berayon...
    Cina tu belaan najib bin rosmah la...

    BalasPadam
  4. 2 g3mok yg paling istimewa bg Najib lebih dari Negara..

    Rosmah
    Jho Taik Low

    BalasPadam