Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World Paperback – Illustrated, October 22, 2019

Wright, T., & Hope, B. (2019). Billion dollar whale: The man who fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the world. Hachette Books.Tom Wright and Bradley Hope founded Project Brazen, an initiative to identify and tell extraordinary stories. As Wall Street Journal investigative reporters, they were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.Whale is a term used by nightclubs and casinos to describe big spenders. According to the Project Brazen website, whale can more broadly represent "people, usually armed with extraordinary amounts of money, that play a larger role in global affairs than their public profile might suggest." The whale referred to in this book is Jho Low, the guy who stole ~$5 billion from Malaysia's 1MDB fund. The 1MDB sovereign wealth fund was created by Prime Minister Najib as a vehicle for "green energy and tourism to create high-quality jobs for all Malaysians." At least this was the marketing line. This book describes how for over a decade, Jho Low managed to siphon off billions of dollars from the 1MDB fund by cultivating relationships and exploiting loopholes and weaknesses within the financial system. The scope of the corruption was staggering including: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United States, Malaysia, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Coutts, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, BSI (a small Swiss bank), etc. Both accounting firms KPMG and Deloitte issued audits that allowed the fraud to continue further. Law firms such as Shearman & Sterling helped facilitate the flow of hundreds of millions of stolen dollars into the United States to launder ill-gotten gains. These are some of the institutions that ultimately helped perpetuate the theft, movement, and ongoing scheme. When auditors, bankers, and lenders asked questions about funding and viability, Low leveraged his cultivated network such that others vouched for him, his credibility, and financial viability. Central to his capacity to pull off such a prolonged heist was others' greediness and lust for power. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. As investigative reporters raised questions on aspects of the story, Low increasingly became paranoid and reckless. So too Prime Minister Najib moved from the language of democratic governance to authoritarianism as the scope of the corruption, money laundering, and theft were coming to light.I'm fascinated by stories of largescale corruption. Wright and Hope suggested that "Low's bashful manners belied a hard core of ambition the like of which the world rarely sees. . . . Low was not so much timid as quietly calculating, as if computing every human interaction, sizing up what he could provide for someone and what they, in turn, could do for him." He fictionalized a narrative to create the impression of coming from a wealthy family and being a financial and business wizard. He systematically cultivated relationships with key people in positions of power and decision making and with access to wealth to help perpetuate his scheme. When questions were asked, he had an extensive network of people who would vouch for him, look the other way, or even craft an approach to work around obstacles. These stories are rarely about a sole actor working alone but instead, a web of relationships who collaboratively work to keep the ruse and the monies coming. This is such a rich case study from which to explore systems, social networks, impression management, celebrity, the financial sector and ethical decision making.

Tom Wright and Bradley Hope’s Billion Dollar Whale is an imperfect but still essential read for those interested in the 1MDB scandal and chronicles of financial malfeasance and fraud in general. But there are some limitations to be aware of in this otherwise briskly reported book: Unlike other recent chronicles of lies, power, and politics gone wrong like Bad Blood, Black Edge, or Dark Money, you will not find a meticulous appendix or a voluminous list of citations and references. Instead, Wright and Hope focus the bulk of their narrative on the life and lies of Jho Low, the man who orchestrated the massive theft of money from 1MDB, the so-called sovereign wealth fund.Deciding to focus on Low is perhaps the greatest strength and weakness of the book. The authors tell at times exceedingly long and vivid anecdotes of Low indulging in his vices (parties, celebrities, gambling, mansions, art, jewelry, etc.), so much so that there are times where one wishes Wright and Hope brought the same narrative detail and word count to the arcana of their financial crimes. For example, in one early section of the book Wright and Hope cite the first of many “rumors in banking circles” as early as 2009 that “Low had siphoned” millions in bond money in one of his earliest schemes. It would have been helpful to learn more about who and how such “rumors” were propagated and why no one did anything. Well before the end of the book, the long accounts of Low’s debauched parties in Aspen, Las Vegas, the yacht Equanimity he had built with stolen money, and elsewhere begin to blur together.As Low’s crimes grow and more institutions and individuals are brought into his circle of graft his parties risk overshadowing the more important part of the book: how these crimes were possible, what kind of culture and systems made such lies go unchecked for so long, and how many of the 1MDB scandal’s perpetrators still walk free and unpunished even today. Low proved astonishingly adept at taking advantage of lax oversight, making the right social favors, and the willful ignorance of corruption in the face of political power and money. But none of his crimes would have been possible had he not been aided and abetted by those in power and used to the systemically corrupt politics and ethnic tensions in Malaysia who deployed money meant for its citizens to a global coterie of bankers, lawyers, businessmen, and hangers-on all too eager to take some of the cash Low was bringing to bear and ignore glaring compliance issues.Finally, the most disturbing and saddening conclusion the Wright and Hope’s reporting seems to reach is how such stories of crime and corruption are not solely the problems of developing countries. The problem is global, the rot is widespread, and the sickness runs deep. My running tally of the banks in the book whose internal compliance and due diligence teams raised issues only to have them overridden includes not just Goldman Sachs, but JP Morgan Chase, Coutts, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, BSI (a small Swiss bank), and more. Both accounting firms KPMG and Deloitte issued audits that allowed the fraud to continue further. White shoe law firms like Shearman & Sterling helped facilitate the flow of hundreds of millions of stolen dollars into the United States to launder ill-gotten gains. This is an incomplete list of institutions where leaders chose to ignore warning signs. The perpetrators have used their power and money to fight back against the law, both internationally and domestically. Justice has yet to be rendered on Low and his conspirators. Wright and Hope suggest the dismal possibility that few individuals will be held accountable and that these large companies have adapted to weather even billions in financial penalties, risking a repetition of the same mistakes.

Highly interesting, unbelievable con by one young man of billions of dollars involving multiple countries.How the dollars are spent is entertaining, making major movies and recordings, paying numerous big-name actors, entertainers and others hundreds of thousands of dollars just to show up and party, making the conman look important.The book is meticulously reported, well told and difficult to put down.