Jho Low: Dominos Falling

Bradley Hope -

Welcome to Whale Hunting, a weekly newsletter delving into the hidden worlds of wealth and power. Catch up on all Project Brazen's work here, including the phenomenal Gateway podcast about Europe's scary drug wars and The Closer, all about the story behind deals that changed how we live and work. – Bradley

We've been a bit slow to respond to some of the interesting 1MDB news trickling out in recent months, but things are getting interesting.

To recap:

  • One of Jho Low's key deputies, Kee Kok Thiam, was booted out of Macau and sent back to Malaysia after his visa expired. The Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission was waiting and started the process of interrogating him. Then a few weeks later, he suddenly died of a heart attack, spurring a lot of conspiracy theories that he'd been "offed" by someone trying to stop him from testifying. (Our sources believe his death was genuine natural causes, but the stress of the experience and likely imprisonment could have precipitated the stroke.)
  • Today, we learned that Jasmine Loo, a lawyer at 1MDB who was instrumental in big aspects of the fraud was arrested by Malaysian authorities.
  • A Kuwait appeal court ruled to uphold convictions of a member of the royal family and a former Jho associate for money laundering and other financial crimes.
  • We previously reported in April that Jho Low is under house arrest near Shanghai and that Malaysian officials are negotiating with China for him to be handed over.

The thread that links all of this together is one country, China.