You know when you’re stuck in a loop in YouTube and you’ve got no idea what to watch? So you end up watching the most random shit. Some of the things that I started watching are YouTubers taking down fake gurus. You know those millennial influencers and sales evangelists who talk always convincingly, recycling other people’s sales anecdotes, but when you watch them, you’re still left with the question at the end: what the fuck are they selling? It’s a good thing that these fraudsters are exposed, and you find that what rests underneath is a wobbly pyramid scheme that magically sells itself.
But these scammers really have nothing compared to the “whale” in the Billion Dollar Whale, Jho Low, a Chinese Malaysian from Penang who comes from not-so-humble origins. His parents also deal dubious deals and are experts in storing money in safe havens overseas — a knowledge procured conveniently by our fat-ass whale. Jho Low isn’t really great at anything aside from selling ideas and finding a fit for himself where these deals are made, and laundering the money from these deals into his personal accounts.
All of this is still fresh in everybody’s minds. When you talk about 1MDB and Jho Low, Leo DiCaprio and Wolf of Wall Street come to mind. I live in Malaysia where some of my friends know the people involved to some degree, yet it is not something that is talked about much anymore. The legacy of Jho Low is the collapse of the 1MDB scheme which promised to build a sustainable future for the country while generating jobs for future generations, that in reality is now indebted to pay back the missing money the size of the French and German economies combined.
It is admittedly, an intriguing story, all the more frustrating because it did happen, and we are still learning new things about it. Jho Low in truth, is a power networker. He managed to squeeze every last bits of his connections to broker these deals and eventually channel the money into his own accounts. He was cozy with the former Malaysian PM’s son, Riza Aziz and convinced Najib Razak of the set up of the 1MDB scheme where nothing was there in the first place.
What were Malaysians buying really, as opposed to sources of renewable energy and promises of a better future? An overpriced and outdated power plant and a couple of rusty old ships. Overpriced is an understatement as billions of dollars are still missing for the exchange of these MacGuffins. The money went clean into dubious accounts set up overseas, almost impossible to track. For this manouvre, Jho Low was able to live the best times of his life, throwing parties to put a Facebook Christmas party to shame, with guest performers that even your Spotify can’t keep up with.
But let’s leave Jho Low for a minute here. The 1MDB scandal exposed the frailties of Malaysian politics and embarrassed the country in an international level. Corruption has always been the norm in South East Asia, and no matter what lip service politicians pay to the public in regards to anti-corruption, it is not going to go away. It is embedded into the progress of the country — you scratch my back, I’ll come on yours. The only difference is that the discrepancy here is too big to ignore, and when the US Department of Justice comes looking, people will be exposed.
Najib Razak, out of his passivity and enjoying the kickbacks, were caught up in the storm, ended up losing the top job and was under house arrest for a while. Without his family’s pedigree he may have been worse off, but as far as I know he’s as free as a 9 to 5 employee now, pending charges (Update: he’s in jail, but still fighting). Jho Low is still missing and is likely to be under the protection of other countries, or partying in his boat off the coast of Thailand.
Billion Dollar Whale is about money and our obsession with it, our dependence to it. Everybody involved was caught in the drama and the fiction of money, of promises, that even more money was needed to uphold this fiction. Fortunately, the fiction has an expiry date and it had to end eventually. But we are still waiting to see how the rest will play out, stories like this don’t end in the book and though we may not enjoy the closure of a conclusion, we may still be able to avoid such mistakes in the future. That, or criminals like these will find smarter ways to hide and channel their money, and the rest of us will still be worse off.
