Welcome to Whale Hunting, a weekly newsletter and podcast delving into the hidden worlds of wealth and power from the team at Project Brazen. For more of Project Brazen's work – including our new show, The Illuminator: Art, Conspiracy, and Madness, and Fur & Loathing, the bizarre story of
Taylor Swift's juggernaut global tour has hit Asia, causing tensions between Singapore, the only Southeast Asian stop on her itinerary, and neighboring countries like Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
After spending decades covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our old friend Yaroslav Trofimov, in 2022, found himself reporting on a bloody conflict in the nation where he'd grown up: Ukraine.
In this week's Whale Hunting podcast I talk to Yaro, one of the world'
Fat Leonard, a military contractor known for organizing and filming orgies involving senior U.S. Navy admirals, is on his way back to San Diego to face sentencing for corruption over a year after he fled to Venezuela. It's one of the U.S.’s worst ever national
The following excerpt from "Crypto Kingpins," our six-part podcast out today, was published on Monday in Vanity Fair.
Listen to Crypto Kingpins
In May 2021, I took a taxi from my home in Singapore to a modernist mansion in a gated community on the resort island of Sentosa.
We're pretty hard-boiled here at Whale Hunting. But this photo of Tim Leissner, a former Goldman partner who has admitted to stealing more than $200 million from Malaysian fund 1MDB, was surprising even to us.
Goldman bankers, including Leissner, helped oil the wheels of the (at least) $6
During the pandemic, I got to know Adam Wilkes, an accomplished concert promoter. He's taken acts like Metallica, Ed Sheeran, and Katy Perry on tour. But the Covid-related shutdown had put a halt to all live concerts. And so Adam, for the first time in years, had time
Yim Leak, the son of Cambodia's deputy prime minister, is showing off on a private jet - G550, purchased for around $20 million in the middle of last year.
On Tuesday, famed Cambodian dancer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro staged an unsanctioned dance in the Metropolitan Museum in New York to spotlight the nation's attempts to reclaim its stolen heritage. (Photos and video of the performance are available here.)
The focus of her dance were statues looted by Douglas
