MANY must have wondered why a short, podgy and bespectacled businessman was constantly surrounded at parties by glamorous celebrities.
But the Malaysian wannabe playboy, going by the name Jho Low in a nod to the Hollywood diva, knew how to make friends and influence people.
The sensibly suited 41-year-old, educated at English public school Harrow, showered models, singers and movie stars with the most incredible gifts imaginable.
He splashed £6million on jewellery and a crystal piano for Aussie model Miranda Kerr, told Kim Kardashian to keep his £200,000 casino winnings and paid Britney Spears £800,000 to jump out of his giant birthday cake.
There were tales of Low blowing £1.5million on champagne in a single night in St Tropez — and flying stars from one New Year’s Eve party in Australia to another in Las Vegas.
His most famous associate, though, was Leonardo DiCaprio.
Not only did Low’s production firm fund the actor’s 2013 movie The Wolf Of Wall Street, but Low bought a £30million mansion a few doors down from him in Hollywood.
He also gifted DiCaprio a £2.5million Picasso painting and invited him to countless debauched parties.
But the money Low was spending did not belong to him — it belonged to the Malaysian people.
And now his fraud is laid bare in new documentary Man On The Run, which hits cinemas next Friday.
It has taken years of digging by British investigative journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown and America’s FBI to uncover Low’s trail of corruption, which is believed to amount to more than £3.5BILLION and has added to his nation’s crippling debt.
Cristal champagne
Low, dubbed the Asian Great Gatsby for his high-rolling, star-studded parties, is rumoured to be hiding in China and has not yet faced justice.
Clare believes he maybe never will.
She tells The Sun: “I’m very sceptical Jho Low is still with us. He has so much toxic information about deals with China, and they can’t have him going to a Western court room to spill all this.”
But the unravelling of Low’s web of deceit has led to the conviction of The Fugees rapper Pras Michel, the jailing of a former Malaysian Prime Minister and the conviction of two Goldman Sachs bankers.
But Low’s rise was as dramatic as his fall.
Jho Low — full name Low Taek Jho — came from a rich family who sent him study in England from 1988. There he met Riza Aziz, stepson of ex-Malaysian PM Najib Razak. That allowed him in 2009 to create a development fund called 1MDB with Razak.
The scheme was supposed to bring investment into Malaysia, for the benefit of its people, but instead much of the money was squandered by Low and his pals.
He first gained attention in the year of the fund’s foundation, when the New York Post told how the “international man of mystery” had sent 23 bottles of Cristal champagne to Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan as she celebrated her 23rd birthday.
A year later, Paris Hilton was seen sunning herself on his yacht in the South of France — and in 2011 he invited guests including Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Beyonce to a party in an Arabian-style tent on top of the swanky L’Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills.
Recently released FBI documents reveal how Low once gave Kim Kardashian £83,000 for fireworks — and how the 300 guests at his 30th bash in Las Vegas in 2012 included Kanye West.
The next year, he was pictured at a charity ball in New York posing with singer Alicia Keys.
But what caught Clare’s attention was his involvement in financial fraud movie The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Aziz and Low had co-founded Red Granite Pictures, which released the film, and she suspected the pair were getting the money from the 1MDB fund, which was rumoured to be hugely in debt.
Clare recalls: “I was waging a Twitter war with Leonardo DiCaprio from the launch of the movie, saying, ‘You better know there is suspicion about the money behind your movie’.”
Instead, the production firm’s lawyers threatened Clare with legal action, and DiCaprio thanked Low after winning a Best Actor Golden Globe for the film in 2014.
She continued writing about the 1MDB scandal on her website The Sarawak Report, named after a state in Malaysia. But that made her even more dangerous enemies.
Malaysia tried to place Clare on the Interpol Red Notice list for the “terrorism” of her reporting, but the international police body refused.
London-based Clare, 64, who is married to former PM Gordon Brown’s brother Andrew, was also followed by private detectives and warned her life was in danger.
She says: “I was sitting with my then 15-year-old son and got a message that I was being targeted by a hitman.”
Former Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, 76, and whistle-blower Xavier Justo, 55, a Swiss banker, claim in the documentary that they were jailed for exposing Low’s dodgy dealings.
US special agents investigating Low filed a civil lawsuit in 2016 in a bid to reclaim billions embezzled from 1MDB.
They revealed 30million had been spent on artworks, £250million on a yacht and £4million on diamonds for Razak’s wife Rosmah Mansor.
DiCaprio reportedly handed back the Picasso, as well as a £7million Basquiat painting gifted to him by Red Granite Pictures.
Kerr returned the jewellery, although Clare claims: “She also had a room made around a crystal piano, but it was too big to get it out of the room, so they said keep it”.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by DiCaprio or any of the other celebrities who received gifts from Low.
Huge wealth
It seems Low wished to use his association with these big names to help him strike deals across the globe, including in Kuwait, China and the United Arab Emirates.
The trial this year of Fugees star Michel revealed how Low also tried to use him to influence American presidential politics.
In May, Michel was found guilty of breaking the law by secretly funnelling money to Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential election campaign.
In 2017, Michel tried to lobby Donald Trump’s camp on behalf of Low, to help extradite dissident Guo Wengui to China.
DiCaprio, a former pal of Michel, gave evidence on behalf of the prosecution during the trial. The rapper awaits sentence.
Meanwhile, Razak is now serving 12 years in jail for corruption relating to the 1MDB scandal, having unsuccessfully appealed his case.
Yet the shamed politician puts the blame for his downfall on Low, telling the documentary: “I trusted in the wrong people but the system failed me.”
In May 2020, Malaysian prosecutors dropped money-laundering charges against Razak’s stepson Aziz, after a monetary settlement.
Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was sentenced to ten years in jail in New York in March after being found guilty of conspiring to launder money and violating anti-corruption law.
His colleague Tim Leissner is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to launder money.
Prosecutors said the two men helped to launder money used to bribe Malaysian officials. In 2020 the investment bank agreed to pay £3billion to the Malaysian government for its role in the 1MDB scheme, but last week new Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim threatened to sue Goldman Sachs.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian and US authorities are still seeking to bring Low, who has not been convicted of any offence, to trial. But with China denying he is even in their country there is little chance of knowing if he is alive or dead.
After the US authorities linked Low to the Malaysian fraud, he reportedly fled to Antarctica on his yacht, and in 2019 he was spotted at Disneyland in Shanghai.
But having made enemies across the globe, the party seems well and truly over for Low.
