The Panda's Last Play: Jho Low's Audacious Bid for a Trump Pardon

Welcome to Whale Hunting, where we follow the money behind some of the world's most brazen financial crimes and expose the networks of people who enable them.

It's been a hell of a decade for Low Taek Jho, a.k.a. Jho Low, the alleged mastermind behind the 1MDB fraud. The U.S. government's official charges put the stolen figure at $4.5 billion—but as we revealed last summer, the real number is considerably larger. A top Malaysian official confirmed to us that internal government investigations put the total at $7.65 billion stolen from 1MDB, with Low personally pocketing around $2.5 billion. When you add the corrupt, super-inflated Belt and Road deals Najib signed to cover up the theft, the total direct cost to Malaysia reaches somewhere in the $18 billion range. He went from being one of the biggest spenders in the world—a patron of celebrities who threw legendary parties in L.A. and New York—to an international fugitive, playing his phones like a piano as he searches for a solution.

As we also reported last summer, Low has been living in luxurious exile in China. He was holed up at the time in Green Hills, an ultra-high-end residential compound in Shanghai, cruising in luxury cars and operating out of an office at the Shanghai World Financial Center (surely he’s found new accommodation since).

He is a man trapped in a gilded cage, protected by Beijing as a strategic asset but unable to set foot in the West without facing immediate arrest. To move around internally, he has relied on a forged Australian passport under the Greek alias "Veis Constantinos Achilles."

Now, he's attempting his most audacious move yet: buying a "get out of jail free" card from the President of the United States.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week, Low has formally filed a request with the U.S. Department of Justice for a presidential pardon. The filing, listed on the Office of the Pardon Attorney's website under "Taek Jho Low," seeks a "Pardon after Completion of Sentence"—a procedural absurdity given that Low has never set foot in a U.S. courtroom, let alone served a sentence.

But the formal DOJ filing is just the public face of the strategy. We've uncovered the legal and lobbying infrastructure that appears to be quietly paving the way for Low's return—and it runs through a Washington law firm, a sanctioned Chinese tech company, a Hong Kong shell, and two former Trump campaign advisers.

Most people know the famous version of the Jho Low story. The yacht parties with Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, Miranda Kerr, and Alicia Keys. The bottle service at 1OAK. The financing of The Wolf of Wall Street. The $230 million Manhattan penthouse, the $35 million private jet, the $27 million pink diamond. That is the version we wrote in Billion Dollar Whale—the rise and the fall of the playboy financier who stole billions of dollars and never got caught.

But what happened next is, in many ways, the more interesting story. We barely had a chance to capture the second act in the paperback edition. Low didn't just disappear. He didn't just hide. He went to work for Chinese intelligence, became the bridge between Beijing and Najib Razak's government on a covert $34 billion bailout, ran a sprawling influence operation across two U.S. presidential administrations, and is now—with the apparent assistance of his own former lawyer—trying to engineer his return to the West through a presidential pardon.

This is that story.

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