Watch Man on the Run (2023) Full Movie For Free
Transcript
00:00:00 [Paper rustling]
00:00:04 [Silence]
00:00:15 [Ominous music]
00:00:23 [Train sounds]
00:00:37 [Train sounds]
00:00:50 [Foreign language]
00:01:00 [Foreign language]
00:01:08 The funds that were stolen from 1MDB were used to fund Jho Low and his family and friends' lavish lifestyle.
00:01:18 This is the largest kleptocracy seizure in U.S. history.
00:01:23 It was just outright greed and kleptocracy.
00:01:27 More than $3 billion that was stolen from 1MDB and laundered through a complex web with bank accounts in countries around the world.
00:01:36 The investigation is ongoing.
00:01:38 The way I see it is concentric circles of knowledge.
00:01:42 At the center is Jho Low.
00:01:44 [Music]
00:01:46 [Music]
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00:02:57 [Music]
00:03:05 I like to plan my evenings and make sure that I always go to the best parties.
00:03:10 Jho Low was like this Roman candle that just burst onto the scene and became so flashy and well-known that there was no hiding it or denying it.
00:03:22 [Music]
00:03:30 He was a man that had so much mystery around him.
00:03:32 No one knew where he was really getting this money from.
00:03:36 [Music]
00:03:38 His hobby literally was to hang out in every hot club in Manhattan until the lights went on just to observe what the celebrities were doing.
00:03:46 I remember this guy always being in the center of these huge tables, right, surrounded by these celebrities.
00:03:53 And then you had this like short little Asian guy spraying Cristal.
00:03:58 He was surrounded by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton.
00:04:03 Bradley Cooper went to a lot of his events.
00:04:06 Robert De Niro was there, Kanye West and Jamie Foxx.
00:04:09 I got a friend, you know, he got some money, he got some money.
00:04:14 He flew me, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and some other cats and we flew to Australia.
00:04:21 We did the countdown in Australia, then jumped back on a plane and then did the countdown in Vegas.
00:04:25 That's crazy.
00:04:26 [Music]
00:04:28 So for Jho Low's birthday, he rented out a five-acre lot on the Las Vegas Strip.
00:04:33 This party was absolutely bananas.
00:04:36 Every single celebrity in Hollywood was there, right, from Kanye West to Kim Kardashian,
00:04:40 Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Phelps, 300 people.
00:04:45 Everybody had to sign an NDA before they walked through the door.
00:04:49 He had a little bit of a crush on Britney Spears.
00:04:52 He paid her a million dollars to come out on stage and pop out of a fake birthday cake.
00:04:58 It was crazy.
00:04:59 Some of these parties that Jho Low threw were so legendary.
00:05:02 There was no party that was better than that party.
00:05:04 We were thinking, like, how does this man attract all these big-time Hollywood celebrities?
00:05:10 What we didn't realize is a lot of them were getting paid just to be there.
00:05:16 Shouldn't their managers or agents say, "Guys, something doesn't add up here. Who is this guy?"
00:05:22 End of the day, it's a check. It's payday. It's money.
00:05:27 If you look at Leonardo DiCaprio's friends over the years, he always has a Jho Low.
00:05:31 I don't think Jho Low and Leonardo DiCaprio were close.
00:05:34 I actually spoke recently to someone who was on the yacht once with Leo,
00:05:39 and Leo actually asked this guy, like, "Everybody says the money is clean, but are you sure?
00:05:43 Do you know anything about it?" And this person reassured him, like, "Oh, it's fine. This is how the world works."
00:05:48 Money is money. Everybody wants it, and a lot of people do whatever it's going to take to get it.
00:05:54 [music]
00:06:08 Jho Low is a fat Chinese boy who I first discovered partying with Barry Hilton,
00:06:18 drinking bottles of crystal champagne. I've got no idea what that is.
00:06:24 Both kind of idiotically brazen and somewhat, I hate to use genius, but clever.
00:06:33 Jho Low is a crazy guy. Some people say that he's smart, he's clever, but I say he's nut.
00:06:41 He's a crazy guy because I don't see how he thought he could get away with it.
00:06:46 It was just a matter of time before he was caught.
00:06:49 Jho definitely, for a young person, really understood quickly how the world works.
00:06:54 Somebody once told me that one of his favorite films was The Count of Monte Cristo.
00:06:59 Obviously, it's better known as a book, but he watched the film.
00:07:04 In that film, the guy is able to reinvent himself with all this money.
00:07:09 These big parties he was throwing gave him this kind of mysterious power over people.
00:07:14 Jho Low knew early on that if he could be the wizard behind the curtain,
00:07:18 sort of like the wizard wandering around the edges of the party, that he would have a bigger status.
00:07:23 He went to private school in Europe.
00:07:27 Harrow has become one of Britain's most expensive schools.
00:07:30 No fewer than seven prime ministers have been taught here.
00:07:33 And then he got his degrees at Wharton.
00:07:36 But no one in Malaysia had a clue who he was, except thanks to Najib's stepson,
00:07:43 Riza Aziz.
00:07:45 He got to know the prime minister and Riza's mommy, Rosemarie.
00:07:51 At that point, Najib was the Minister of Defense.
00:08:05 And so Jho was interested in this. This is a powerful political family.
00:08:09 Sometimes the Najib family referred to themselves as the Kennedys of Malaysia, which is very generous.
00:08:15 When Jho Low was creating this first company called Winton, Riza could be involved somehow.
00:08:21 He had the right pedigree, the right background, the right name to kind of lend legitimacy to the company.
00:08:27 Najib was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
00:08:31 His family comes from an aristocratic family in the state of Pahang.
00:08:36 His father, Tun Razak, was the second prime minister of Malaysia.
00:08:42 He was born for the job.
00:08:44 He was destined to be prime minister one day.
00:08:47 It was just a matter of time.
00:08:49 A portrait, favorite portrait of my late father when he was prime minister.
00:08:56 I decided to pose in a same, almost the same manner and juxtapose the two in one photograph.
00:09:06 So that's how it came about.
00:09:10 Prime Minister, you've introduced the concept of One Malaysia.
00:09:17 What is One Malaysia to you?
00:09:19 One Malaysia is about a sense that we are together as one people.
00:09:25 One MBB was created, at least ostensibly, as a development fund.
00:09:31 As a fund intended to raise money and help the development of infrastructure in Malaysia.
00:09:40 A country that has a lot of excess money will take that excess surplus government money
00:09:49 invested in business projects and deals so that they can make a profit for their government.
00:09:54 The Kuwaitis have a famous one.
00:09:56 So does Qatar.
00:09:58 So do the Saudis.
00:09:59 And so does the UAE.
00:10:02 Malaysia came up with the same idea in One MDB.
00:10:06 In contrast, One MDB didn't have any money.
00:10:09 Didn't have a supply of excess government cash that it could use to build infrastructure.
00:10:16 A supply of excess government cash that it could invest.
00:10:20 So it went out and it borrowed it.
00:10:22 It acquired debt.
00:10:24 The idea of borrowing billions of dollars to invest it back into Malaysia
00:10:31 and back into infrastructure and things that are going to better the lives of Malaysians
00:10:37 is a noble idea.
00:10:39 The first thing they did was to announce that they were going to build the tallest skyscraper
00:10:44 in Malaysia and to build one more shopping mall as if KL needed any more.
00:10:52 And then the next thing you know, they're investing money in Saudi Arabia.
00:10:56 What does that have to do with Malaysia and with trying to find the new sources of economic growth for the 21st century?
00:11:04 But very little information was made available publicly because it was not a listed company.
00:11:10 So what we did was we got whatever was publicly available and then we started asking questions.
00:11:16 Why this? Why that?
00:11:18 I was stopped many times from pursuing any form of queries or investigations into One MDB.
00:11:27 What is the purpose of the loan that was given to One MDB?
00:11:31 But even then, I never expected it to be so wrong, to be so huge in nature.
00:11:38 There were murmurings about some transactions were not cautious and of course, Jho Low.
00:11:44 Everybody has heard about Jho Low by then and that he was involved in One MDB.
00:11:51 As newsmen, sometimes we can feel or smell something.
00:12:01 One MDB, yes. Well, it's an organisation set up by our former PM.
00:12:10 Yeah, then the rest are all in the news.
00:12:19 Yeah, I heard about One MDB is something very, it's a champion of the world.
00:12:27 It's kind of complicated, you know.
00:12:30 Companies are in a sense, legal fiction.
00:12:33 There must be always human individuals, human personalities directing and deciding for companies.
00:12:40 Who are the people making the big decisions for One MDB?
00:12:44 It's definitely between Najib and Jho Low.
00:12:47 They are the two people controlling it and directing the affairs.
00:12:51 Najib was Prime Minister, he was Finance Minister and he also was the Chairman of One MDB.
00:12:58 So the pattern would go something like this.
00:13:01 Jho Low goes to the President of One MDB, who reports to Najib and says, "The boss wants you to do this."
00:13:08 So the President of One MDB says, "Oh, okay."
00:13:12 And then Najib signs off on that as Chairman of One MDB.
00:13:17 And it has to be reviewed by the Finance Ministry.
00:13:20 And the Minister of Finance, who is Najib, says, "Sounds good to me."
00:13:25 And then it's reviewed by the Prime Minister, who also happens to be Najib.
00:13:29 There were absolutely no checks or balances.
00:13:34 Jho Low never had any official role in One MDB, but he's always seen with the Prime Minister.
00:13:41 Obviously, the One MDB executives knew that Jho Low actually calls the shot.
00:13:49 What he says is what the Prime Minister wants.
00:13:53 What is never clear is the relationship between the two of them.
00:13:58 Who is the puppet master and who is the puppet?
00:14:01 That's the real riddle because it's really between the two of them.
00:14:04 Jho Low used political connections, whether it was in the United States or whether it was in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or Malaysia,
00:14:15 to then get an in to make the business deals that he wanted to do.
00:14:18 One of the things he did was he was able to facilitate a relationship between the Malaysian political elite, i.e. Prime Minister Najib, and the Abu Dhabi elite.
00:14:28 So Jho Low's first connection was Yusuf Al Utaiba.
00:14:32 He met him when he was in college and got introduced to him back when Yusuf Al Utaiba was not a globally known name.
00:14:39 Jho Low was kind of this up and coming guy who reached out to him to ask for advice on how to navigate the halls of power in the Gulf.
00:14:49 And Al Utaiba took a lunch with him and took a liking to him.
00:14:54 Yusuf started doing introductions for Jho.
00:14:58 Jho would do deals with those people and then he would pay Yusuf money as almost kind of like a commission for helping make the introduction or helping make the deal.
00:15:07 One of Jho Low's earliest enterprises was Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, Kuwaiti investment funds.
00:15:17 So he had been boasting about Shaker Tiber as one of his fancy Middle Eastern contacts.
00:15:23 It seems that a Tiber was clearly a very important early contact for Jho Low.
00:15:28 He and his allies were doing everything they could for Jho Low.
00:15:33 And it definitely appeared as if they were benefiting quite strikingly.
00:15:39 They are always what we sometimes call fixers, operators for those in power.
00:15:49 They never have any official role, but they are the ones connected to the power.
00:15:54 Everyone was talking about 1MDB as Najib's slush fund.
00:15:58 It was known that his advisor on this fund had been this rather flamboyant young Chinese guy.
00:16:05 But no one really knew more than that.
00:16:08 The media is very cautious in Malaysia, so it was all whispers.
00:16:12 I started writing about this from a safe distance.
00:16:15 No local journalist could do these stories.
00:16:18 I had the internet, so I was reaching a large and very interested Malaysian audience.
00:16:24 Christmas of 2013, Najib's notorious wife, Rosma Mansor,
00:16:30 who was always considered to be the pants in that household,
00:16:33 informed the education ministry that she wanted every schoolchild in Malaysia to see a film.
00:16:39 The upcoming Wolf of Wall Street was to be shown in schools.
00:16:43 I started to go through the launch pictures.
00:16:46 And then there was Najib's stepson, Reza Aziz, the producer, and next to him, always Jho Low.
00:16:53 Riz and Jho, thank you for being not only collaborators, but taking a risk on this movie, truly.
00:17:00 That was just an electric moment, because it was there in plain sight what was going on.
00:17:08 Paris Hilton began hanging out with Jho Low,
00:17:13 and he flew her via private jet to Whistler in Canada for this opulent ski vacation.
00:17:20 Joey McFarland came along with Paris Hilton.
00:17:24 Riza Aziz was there too, and this is the first time that Jho and Riza had met.
00:17:31 Riza was a movie buff, supposedly.
00:17:34 Joey McFarland had come to LA from Kentucky,
00:17:37 and at one point he had become a purse carrier for Paris Hilton around town,
00:17:41 but he got connected in this whole little group, and that really made his career.
00:17:46 He suddenly became a real producer on big films, because he was the only one of the three,
00:17:51 Jho, Riza, and Joey, who actually had any knowledge whatsoever of how films are made,
00:17:56 or what a producer might do on a film.
00:17:58 So that's how they came up with the idea to create their own company, Red Granite.
00:18:02 Look, this was an incredibly hard film to get financed from the onset.
00:18:07 I'm thankful to the people that we ran into in Red Granite,
00:18:11 that were willing to take a gamble on making a very adult American epic about the state of our culture.
00:18:17 There is no nobility in poverty.
00:18:20 I have been a rich man, and I have been a poor man, and I choose rich every fucking time.
00:18:26 Suddenly, Leo and Martin Scorsese thought they could fund all their slate using this connection.
00:18:33 And actually at the time, Jho Low told everyone that it was Abu Dhabi money that was backing it.
00:18:39 I knew this was a massive story. I didn't have anything but questions.
00:18:44 Sometimes questions are everything.
00:18:47 So I asked if the hundreds of millions of dollars that were going into the Wolf of Wall Street production
00:18:55 had any connection with the billions of dollars that were not being accounted for in 1MDB.
00:19:06 On the issue 1MDB, I was the first to raise it publicly and in Parliament.
00:19:10 That led me to my imprisonment afterwards.
00:19:22 This is an admission that we have no cash.
00:19:30 By the end of 2013, that is nearly four years after 1MDB has been established,
00:19:38 there were enough glaring red flags that tells me there's a shitload of issues
00:19:50 or even scandals to be uncovered underneath 1MDB.
00:19:56 What we did was we decided that we're going to go and look back at all their transactions.
00:20:03 And our first article was actually in February of 2014.
00:20:08 It was a cover story in The H Weekly and it was simply titled 'The 1MDB Story'.
00:20:14 Well, I by that time was doing what journalists do, asking everyone,
00:20:20 "Do you know anything about this 1MDB? Have you got any leads?"
00:20:23 And I heard from someone that there was a guy who was indicating
00:20:29 that he had the inside data on 1MDB and he was trying to sell it.
00:20:37 So I got a number for him.
00:20:40 If one day there is a problem with the Petro-Saudi 1MDB deal,
00:20:46 I just want to prove that I had nothing to do with that.
00:20:49 If you come to Thailand, we can meet.
00:20:53 It was quite frightening, meeting with a complete stranger,
00:20:57 and Bangkok's a big, dangerous city.
00:21:01 [Music]
00:21:03 Sometimes, to make a fortune, you have to commit a crime.
00:21:26 In February 2010, Mr Tareq Obaid called me to offer me a job in Petro-Saudi London.
00:21:33 And I was the number three of the company.
00:21:36 You have two masterminds in Petro-Saudi.
00:21:39 Tareq Obaid is a money-loving guy.
00:21:42 He wanted to live the life of a billionaire.
00:21:45 Patrick Mahoney is different.
00:21:48 He wanted also money, but he was more like a deal-maker.
00:21:53 He knew how to structure deals, to use offshore companies.
00:21:56 They made a deal, a joint venture, with this Malaysian sovereign fund called 1MDB.
00:22:03 For a joint venture, there are two parties.
00:22:06 Each of them has to bring something.
00:22:08 So the Malaysian brought the hard cash.
00:22:12 Petro-Saudi side had nothing.
00:22:14 So they came up with a plan to bring in some assets,
00:22:18 meaning some oil fields in Turkmenistan.
00:22:22 Petro-Saudi never ever had the possession of those oil fields.
00:22:27 Ostensibly, the joint venture was capitalized by $1 billion from 1MDB.
00:22:35 And then on the Petro-Saudi side, certain energy concession rights in Turkmenistan and Argentina,
00:22:43 purportedly valued something like $2.7 billion.
00:22:49 The Age, an independent financial newspaper in Malaysia,
00:22:53 was actively pursuing the stories with regards to 1MDB.
00:22:58 We had to get some evidence to prove that we were right.
00:23:02 We were under non-stop attacks against us,
00:23:05 saying that we were publishing nonsense, fake news.
00:23:09 Claire Ruckelsall told me that she has obtained a possible source from Petro-Saudi.
00:23:18 That will unravel the fraud that took place between the joint venture of 1MDB and Petro-Saudi.
00:23:28 She was looking for someone who would be willing to fund the exchange of information.
00:23:36 She is extremely, extremely persistent.
00:23:40 The asking price was US $2 million.
00:23:45 So we then connected with Claire to arrange to meet her and the whistleblower in Singapore.
00:23:54 It was a sort of significant day because on that morning that we met,
00:24:00 the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was taken off in a van to jail
00:24:06 on a trumped-up case that was designed by Najib to hobble the opposition.
00:24:12 I remember very distinctly when I walked into the lobby and Claire pointed out,
00:24:18 "That's the guy." I said to myself, "That's not a Malaysian? I thought it would be a Malaysian."
00:24:26 He sat down and he said, "Look, I'll let you see what I've got."
00:24:30 And he opened up his disk and flipped through the screen.
00:24:34 "I'm trying to take notes." He said, "Don't take notes." I said, "I still did."
00:24:37 And there was this transaction, $700 million in one transaction into this account, Goodstar Limited.
00:24:47 And I remember just thinking, "Who owns that?" He said, "That's Jolo's company."
00:24:54 What really happened is that 1MDB, instead of sending $1 billion to the joint venture,
00:25:02 sent $300 million and then sent the other $700 million to a shell company called Goodstar
00:25:11 that was controlled by none other than Mr Jolo.
00:25:15 At that moment, I knew that I had a huge story if I could get this data off Savye.
00:25:22 I have always wondered, why did Justo agree to hand it over to us without money being paid?
00:25:31 At the end of the day, there was no more question of money.
00:25:35 It was just a question of doing the right thing.
00:25:58 During that period, Goldman was very, very interested to build a business in Malaysia.
00:26:04 So when Joe did the first Petro-Saudi deal, Goldman heard about it.
00:26:08 "This is the guy that we need to know."
00:26:10 Goldman Sachs played the classical, stereotypical, caricatured role of the greedy banker
00:26:23 that seeks only to maximize his profits regardless of the cost to society or the world at large.
00:26:32 You like those two ears now, huh?
00:26:34 What about cash? Cash, cash, cash?
00:26:37 Institutionally at Goldman Sachs, "bad for the client" isn't a phrase.
00:26:41 All right, we have a 24 bid now for 12s and 13s.
00:26:44 Institutionally at Goldman Sachs, is it good for Goldman?
00:26:47 Well, we wanted the funds for 1MDB. And as you know, you're rather, you know, in a way, seduced by the name of Goldman Sachs.
00:26:58 You think Goldman Sachs is the gold standard of Invermsen Bank.
00:27:04 You never imagined that they would do something inferior, or something illicit, or something unethical.
00:27:13 [MUSIC]
00:27:25 Andrea Vella was the brains behind structuring deals.
00:27:29 Vella had this history of arranging deals that could sound good in a presentation,
00:27:35 but in reality, they were geared towards making Goldman Sachs a lot of money,
00:27:39 sometimes at the downside of the client.
00:27:42 I met Andrea Vella for the first time during my time at Goldman,
00:27:49 working with the Libyan Investment Authority.
00:27:53 I became very concerned.
00:27:56 There was a high probability for Libya to lose the full value of the investment.
00:28:02 I decided to write an internal email to highlight why I was worried.
00:28:08 The reaction that I received was swift and extreme.
00:28:14 And I knew straight away that I would be losing my job.
00:28:18 As I had anticipated, the value of all these trades went down to zero.
00:28:28 [MUSIC]
00:28:31 So after Libyan Investment Authority, Andrea Vella went to Asia,
00:28:35 and that's where he got hooked up with Tim Leissner.
00:28:38 Leissner was more of the salesman.
00:28:40 He's a relationship guy that's friends with all these billionaires and tycoons.
00:28:45 That's how he got to be what he is.
00:28:48 One thing that stood out right away was that he called himself Dr. Tim Leissner.
00:28:54 So I discovered that actually this doctorate was issued by an Indian business
00:29:01 that had an office above a pizza shop in East London.
00:29:05 How could he imagine that that would never be found out by someone?
00:29:11 The other thing we found out was he was really connected in Malaysia
00:29:15 to some of these other major business people,
00:29:17 in a way that also raised more questions.
00:29:19 I'd picked up on two names.
00:29:23 There was Roger Ng, who had come from Deutsche Bank,
00:29:26 and with all his political connections, come over to Goldman Sachs,
00:29:31 and was known to be working hand in glove with this bright star party guy, Tim Leissner.
00:29:38 So Roger and Tim Leissner went out their way to be introduced to Jolo.
00:29:46 Then they said that, "Look, the next few deals on MDB,
00:29:50 Goldman Sachs better be the investment banker."
00:29:53 Goldman is the 400-pound gorilla of Wall Street.
00:30:04 It is one of the most storied and powerful banks in the world.
00:30:09 They're an investment bank.
00:30:10 They make their money by advising clients on financial transactions,
00:30:16 everything from a merger and acquisition to raising capital,
00:30:19 and then to buying and selling securities on behalf of other investors.
00:30:24 Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today
00:30:30 as you examine some of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis.
00:30:34 To be betting against the very securities which you're selling to your clients,
00:30:40 and internally, your own people believe that these are crappy securities.
00:30:48 The bad news, in your own words, was that your clients lose money,
00:30:54 but the good news is that Goldman Sachs made money.
00:30:58 Obviously very disconcerting.
00:31:00 But you still got fined.
00:31:01 Well, we got fined, but everybody got fined, and we got fined for...
00:31:05 To my knowledge, none of the directors lost their jobs.
00:31:17 It was sort of a reset, and on we go.
00:31:20 Sorry about that. We promise we won't do it again.
00:31:23 After the financial crisis, they went around the world looking for other,
00:31:26 essentially, rubes to take advantage of,
00:31:29 because they had already done it with the American people,
00:31:31 and now they went looking for other people to do bad deals with.
00:31:34 They wanted to do sovereign wealth transactions for Malaysia,
00:31:40 but Malaysia, as a developing country, didn't have the financial wherewithal to do it.
00:31:46 They needed to borrow money from all the deep pools of money in the world.
00:31:50 So what they did was a huge round of bond offerings.
00:31:54 These looked good, because they were issued by Malaysia, they were backed by Abu Dhabi,
00:31:58 so there's two sovereign nations with a lot of money behind these.
00:32:01 Goldman Sachs underwrote three different bond issuances in a total amount of $6.5 billion.
00:32:10 One entity was willing to pay a premium to have a more confidential and quicker series of bond issuances,
00:32:18 and they did that without really having to show where the bond proceeds were going to go.
00:32:23 Goldman Sachs funded the bond transaction, and then they got to sell it to investors after the fact.
00:32:31 These were government deals with these massive projects, power and energy plants, roads, hospitals, bridges,
00:32:39 the kind of thing that Malaysia desperately needed.
00:32:42 Our entire industry was built on the back of issuing bonds.
00:32:46 It's a way to capitalize an economic enterprise up front.
00:32:51 These bonds were different than that.
00:32:53 One of the things about the Goldman Sachs rule that stood out was how much money they had made on these bonds.
00:32:59 Typically, when you arrange a bond for a company or especially a country,
00:33:03 the profits aren't huge, because it's really safe debt, you know, it's backed by a country.
00:33:08 And so typically you could make 1%, but in this deal, they made about 10%,
00:33:13 which is just an insane amount of money to be making.
00:33:16 You would never do that deal if you could help it.
00:33:18 They should have made something close to $60 million, but they made $600 million instead.
00:33:23 So we covered it, like it's the news, right?
00:33:25 We wanted to find out why did 1MDB pay Goldman such huge fee?
00:33:31 And I remember we did a series of articles, and Goldman actually got a bit worried.
00:33:36 We had a conference call with Goldman Sachs out of Hong Kong,
00:33:38 where they keep on saying that nothing, nothing wrong.
00:33:42 All the deals were kosher. No commission was paid. No brokerage fee was paid to anybody.
00:33:47 Because the profits made in the Libya deals and in the Malaysia deals
00:33:53 were in the magnitude of hundreds of millions of dollars,
00:33:58 which was quite significant by Goldman standards,
00:34:02 then the good news of how much money was made
00:34:07 would have traveled right to the top of the organization.
00:34:13 The fact that it was 10% that they made, that alone, you don't need to know anything else.
00:34:20 And there's no way Lloyd Blankfein didn't know that.
00:34:22 You needed the investment bankers to be on board,
00:34:25 because they're the ones who are going to structure it.
00:34:27 They're the ones who know how to underwrite the bonds.
00:34:29 They're the ones who know how to price it.
00:34:31 They're the technocrats who are going to come in and actually execute.
00:34:35 And they found two bankers, Tim Wiesner and Roger Ong,
00:34:40 that were willing to play ball with them.
00:34:42 This deal could not have been done without the highest in Goldman knowing about it.
00:34:48 We now know what happened to the money.
00:34:50 They actually stole most of it.
00:34:53 I mean, it's absolutely crazy. These guys are nuts.
00:34:57 [♪♪♪]
00:35:01 A very good friend of mine in the FBI was our legal attache in Kuala Lumpur.
00:35:19 He is a Malaysian-American who spent multiple tours in Malaysia,
00:35:26 was extremely well-connected to all their major law enforcement entities
00:35:32 and his assistant legal attache, who was another extremely competent FBI agent.
00:35:37 There was nobody who knew Malaysia better.
00:35:40 His knowledge and reputation was unparalleled.
00:35:44 I was one of the first to staff the FBI legal attache office in Malaysia.
00:35:52 So my dad came out to Malaysia in 1959, met my mom, who is a local Malaysian.
00:35:59 I was born here in Malaysia and lived here a good part of my childhood
00:36:05 and formative years before returning to the U.S. in the early '80s.
00:36:11 The first time I heard about 1MDB was probably around 2014 or '15.
00:36:19 We started to get information about this purported fraud that had transpired.
00:36:26 Through Joe Lowe's collaboration with Prime Minister Najib,
00:36:30 there was this attempt to funnel money out of this 1MDB sovereign wealth fund,
00:36:40 and that money was not going to where it was supposed to go.
00:36:46 Probably around February, March of 2015, Chuck called me up on a Sunday
00:36:51 and he said, "Hey, we want to go to Attorney General Ghani's house."
00:36:56 Chuck had just come back from Washington, D.C. with Attorney General Patel,
00:37:00 and they had met with Director Comey.
00:37:02 And, you know, the subject of 1MDB came up.
00:37:05 Ghani, point blank, asked us,
00:37:11 "Hey, you guys are hearing these allegations that are out there.
00:37:15 Do you believe there's any validity to that?"
00:37:18 He had asked the Prime Minister if there was any validity to these allegations
00:37:27 and was told no.
00:37:30 The fact that that was the first real inquiry from the Malaysian government
00:37:37 was significant to me.
00:37:40 And that probably is what spurred Dave and I to continue to send information back.
00:37:46 June 2015, I was made aware that the various investigations into 1MDB
00:37:54 had established that two days after the third Goldman Sachs bond deal,
00:38:00 $681 million had arrived into Najib's personal bank account.
00:38:09 That was when Wall Street Journal got into the story.
00:38:12 The Journal was putting itself on the line,
00:38:15 because when we were writing that story,
00:38:17 Boyce Shiller, the same firm that represented Harvey Weinstein,
00:38:21 were telling us, you know, "You could be at very serious risk of defamation.
00:38:25 Najib has done nothing wrong."
00:38:27 There's a lot of pressure on us to answer the questions, to solve the case.
00:38:33 When I got the data on Najib's own bank accounts,
00:38:38 and I gave that to other mainstream media,
00:38:41 that turned the tide on the story.
00:38:44 This was the smoking gun.
00:38:50 $681 million went into Najib's account.
00:39:00 It's not often that a prime minister gets $681 million transferred into his account.
00:39:06 So that was a dynamite story.
00:39:26 There were massive protests going on in Kuala Lumpur.
00:39:30 They were called the "Bursi" protests.
00:39:35 The one Malaysia DB, the $2.6 billion.
00:39:39 Where's the answer? We want the answer.
00:39:41 We need a clean government.
00:39:44 The streets in Kuala Lumpur were just packed.
00:39:46 When Najib claimed that the $681 million that suddenly showed up in his bank account
00:39:53 was a gift from a Saudi prince,
00:39:56 it's very hard to suppress your laughter, let's put it that way.
00:40:00 Who in their right mind would give you $681 million
00:40:06 into your personal private bank account with no strings attached?
00:40:10 I was shocked at kind of how brazen that was.
00:40:14 It was pretty obvious that this was related to 1MDB.
00:40:19 Their stories had the main effect of unleashing domestic investigations in Malaysia.
00:40:25 The financial intelligence unit here said, "Will you help us on this case?"
00:40:31 And I was like, "Sure, whatever we can do."
00:40:35 Najib had reluctantly allowed these to go into operation
00:40:39 until those investigations started to deliver some extremely interesting information.
00:40:44 Clearly, this fraud had touched on U.S. territory,
00:40:49 making it under FBI jurisdiction to investigate.
00:40:52 All roads and the allegations led back to the Prime Minister,
00:40:57 Dr. Sreeni Najib, in collaboration with Joe Lowe,
00:41:01 mastermind of the fraud.
00:41:05 That was the one and only meeting of that little task force.
00:41:09 A couple weeks later was Night of the Long Knives.
00:41:13 At that time, there were a lot of rumors that they were going to arrest and charge Najib.
00:41:19 I received an anonymously sent document.
00:41:23 It was the arrest warrant for Najib Razak.
00:41:26 So I bit the bullet and I published it.
00:41:31 And that was when everything went wild.
00:41:35 Malaysian police raided the Attorney General's office,
00:41:38 took him to custody, and disbanded that special task force,
00:41:42 and even took away some of their case files.
00:41:45 I arrived that day and the elevator opened and it was pandemonium.
00:41:49 I mean, there were people everywhere.
00:41:51 And then I went back to the embassy and subsequently heard that Ghani had been retired.
00:41:56 That was the end of that task force and end of our overt cooperation.
00:42:04 He removed the Attorney General and he suspended the H.
00:42:09 We are very disappointed with the decision of the KDN.
00:42:12 What is their motivation? That's something for them, for other people to answer.
00:42:17 I have the honour of being the person most litigated against by the sitting Prime Minister.
00:42:25 The Malaysians had true institutions that were doing their job.
00:42:31 Najib decided to sever that independence.
00:42:35 So all the institutions that should have been able to act as a check and balance
00:42:39 were immediately destroyed.
00:42:41 The young lawyer in the Attorney General's office who had drafted that arrest warrant
00:42:55 was pulled from his car on the way to work in the middle of KL, disappeared.
00:43:02 The police is urging anyone with information on an accident at Jalan Duta Mas Kuala Lumpur
00:43:11 on the 4th of September at about 7.51 in the morning to come forward.
00:43:15 Is he still a missing person?
00:43:19 He's still a missing person.
00:43:21 A car resembling his was found right here.
00:43:25 The whole area was strewn with melted items from the car,
00:43:29 a possible indication of how big the fire was.
00:43:33 He was found murdered, his body in an oil drum.
00:43:45 It succeeded in terrifying everyone. Every white-collar bureaucrat in Malaysia got the message,
00:43:54 "You move against Najib and that's what's going to happen to you."
00:43:58 In June 2015, there was a bunch of police that came to my house and arrested me.
00:44:14 It's still very fresh in my memory.
00:44:16 In a couple of seconds I was arrested, thrown into the house, handcuffed,
00:44:24 and that's where the nightmare started.
00:44:27 Clearly this was orchestrated by Najib and Jono and their contacts in Thailand.
00:44:33 Xavier was horrifyingly thrown into jail, he was treated like a terrorist.
00:44:39 He was then forced to sign a confession.
00:44:42 Petro Saudi, mainly Patrick Mahoney, were threatening my wife,
00:44:48 saying I will probably disappear and she will be arrested and my son will end up in Thai orphanage.
00:44:54 I had no options. I mean, it's either that and you die or you do whatever they want.
00:45:00 So I choose the only option I had.
00:45:02 So, yes, give me the paper, I will sign whatever you want.
00:45:05 Want me to confess that I killed Kennedy? I will confess it.
00:45:08 I just want to end this nightmare.
00:45:12 The story that they wanted is that I stole the data.
00:45:16 I discovered later why, because by stealing the data,
00:45:23 they wanted to have that not receivable in the court of justice.
00:45:27 They wanted me to say that I cooperated with the journalist,
00:45:32 Clare Castle Brown and The Edge, in order to overthrow a legit government
00:45:38 that we tampered with the data.
00:45:41 And that's what I brought.
00:45:44 I spent 547 days in jail.
00:45:49 Sorry.
00:46:02 Some emotions.
00:46:05 You have moments in your life that you will never forget.
00:46:08 And this is one of the moments I will never forget.
00:46:12 I was branded an enemy of Malaysia by Najib.
00:46:20 A request was made to Interpol by Malaysia to put me on their red notice list
00:46:26 to be arrested at any point as a terrorist for activities detrimental to democracy, as they put it.
00:46:33 Unfortunately, in this part of the world, corruption is a part of everyday life.
00:46:39 I think at the end of the day, you're surprised at the massive scope of the corruption,
00:46:44 but not that he was engaged in corrupt practices.
00:46:49 Malaysia was always an autocratic regime with a velvet glove.
00:46:55 At this point, Najib took off the velvet glove.
00:46:59 He was desperate. We were reaching the endgame.
00:47:03 And he was struggling to survive.
00:47:07 A major shake-up in the Malaysian government,
00:47:11 based primarily on a US investigation, was extremely tense.
00:47:17 And there was a lot of pressure being applied on people in the embassy to just go away
00:47:24 and stop investigating this.
00:47:28 The events following the night of Long Knives changed the atmosphere in Malaysia.
00:47:34 What that was designed to do was send a clear message.
00:47:39 And that objective was achieved.
00:47:44 To me, anyone that believes in a democratic system of government
00:47:51 should be absolutely appalled by the firing of your Attorney General
00:47:55 and the dismantling of your Anti-Corruption Commission.
00:47:58 And yeah, I think it did make our team just double down all that much more.
00:48:03 Say, you know, if we don't do it, who will?
00:48:07 Now our strategy changes to, we have our own investigation.
00:48:14 We're trying to enlist assistance from the Malaysians to support our investigation.
00:48:20 Chuck and I both agreed that we were going to continue to do what we could.
00:48:25 But it would be much more covert. We'd have to watch what we did and who we spoke with.
00:48:31 Did someone leak to you the warrant for your arrest before the night of Long Knives?
00:48:39 Yes, there were leaks.
00:48:42 But you know, such things, it's hard to keep a lid on it. There are too many people involved.
00:48:50 So just to reassert this, you knew that there was a pending warrant for your arrest?
00:48:55 There could have been. There could have been. I didn't know for sure. There could have been.
00:48:59 But you had a strong suspicion?
00:49:01 I was given the transcript, yes.
00:49:05 [MUSIC]
00:49:09 I'm excited to be here.
00:49:15 It surprised me the extent to which Mr. Loh was able to establish himself very quickly,
00:49:22 being a young man, as a mover and a shaker, coming from nowhere.
00:49:26 The Loh family has been involved in philanthropy for the past 70 years.
00:49:30 Joe Loh was trying to create a fictional backstory for himself that justified having all this money.
00:49:36 We decided as the third generation to institutionalize this effort.
00:49:40 He was trying to rebrand himself as the actual secret heir of a billionaire fortune.
00:49:46 Step one, we dig deep.
00:49:48 Like a lot of lower level criminals, they don't have a long term plan.
00:49:53 And he kind of fit that mold, except he was able to inject himself into this top 001% of the world.
00:50:03 Step two, collaborative design.
00:50:06 There's at least one email where Oteba is exchanging concerns with an Emirati colleague of his, saying, "What is Joe Loh doing?"
00:50:15 Step three, we think very long term.
00:50:18 They're saying, "Joe, can you please calm down? Stop spending a million dollars and saying, 'Religion in the house.'"
00:50:24 Religion in the house!
00:50:28 Step four, we invest big.
00:50:30 He's starting to become a story himself because of his flamboyant partying around the world.
00:50:36 And so there was a real concern that, who have we gotten ourselves in bed with here?
00:50:43 And is this going to end the way we're worried it might end?
00:50:46 And lastly, step five, we measure to grow.
00:50:49 He was putting heat on himself.
00:50:51 People like Leissner, people like Yusuf Al Oteba, all of them were saying, "Joe, take a lower profile."
00:50:58 They were basically trying to teach him how to do these shady deals, which is, you do the deals, you make a lot of money, but you don't get a public profile.
00:51:05 That's the number one rule, and he was breaking that rule.
00:51:07 What's unique about General Foundation is our ability to cut across all borders to achieve a common vision.
00:51:13 They start worrying about Department of Justice interest in Joe Lowe.
00:51:19 Their lawyer informs them that FBI is looking for him, and they say to themselves, "Why is the Department of Justice looking at a scam that originated out of Malaysia and may have involved the Emiratis and us?
00:51:32 It doesn't have anything to do with the United States."
00:51:34 And the lawyer writes back, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but the Department of Justice considers itself to have jurisdiction over any transactions carried out in U.S. dollars that went through U.S. financial institutions."
00:51:49 Let's all think big, let's all be bold, and let's really think about our place in this world.
00:51:54 You know, they say timing is everything, and in the 1MDB case, on multiple levels, I would say that timing was everything.
00:52:03 There is no movement for changing the government. I don't see that.
00:52:17 He was in total control again. Just when people thought that he was going to fall, the 681 million U.S. dollars that went into his account, how he was going to explain it, right?
00:52:27 And he was going to be charged. But all of a sudden, he just came back, he removed those who were making a move against him, he suspended us, and then he was totally, totally in charge.
00:52:40 What had happened did not, to me, did not affect the fact that we were still going to work this.
00:52:47 Even while Najib was in power, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission basically worked with the FBI to make this case possible.
00:52:53 They reported to Najib, but they worked with the FBI on the side.
00:52:57 Abu Kassim told me, "I'm the head of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, and this is one of the biggest corruption cases in the world. I feel a sense of responsibility to work with you and to get to the truth."
00:53:10 This is an individual, to me, that demonstrated that fortitude, that bravery, to take a stand with what he believed was wrong.
00:53:22 He did feel this passion as a person who fought corruption his entire life. Ultimately, it ended his career.
00:53:46 My tour in Malaysia ended in my return to the U.S. I felt pretty downtrodden because there seemed to be, from the Malaysian perspective, a gag order, essentially, on the 1MDB investigation.
00:54:04 I remember I got a message, "Watch the news later today. They're going to talk about 1MDB."
00:54:13 Today, the Department of Justice has filed a civil complaint seeking to forfeit and recover more than $1 billion in assets associated with an international conspiracy to launder funds stolen from 1MDB.
00:54:34 I can never stop thanking the FBI and the DOJ. I was so happy. I didn't believe that this was happening because we were fighting this uphill battle for so long.
00:54:46 A number of corrupt 1MDB officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.
00:54:53 We had put together the largest international corruption case and civil forfeiture filing in the history of the Justice Department.
00:55:00 When the FBI and the DOJ came out and laid it out, exactly how the money was stolen, which companies it went through, where it ended up, and how it was spent.
00:55:14 $137 million of the pilfered money was spent to purchase works of art.
00:55:20 A Bombardier jet for the purchase price of about $35 million.
00:55:24 $250 million on a silly yacht.
00:55:28 They used the money to pay gambling debts at Las Vegas casinos.
00:55:32 Miranda Kerr, picked up by Joe Lowe and taken on the cruise in this super yacht and given $8 million worth of matching pink diamonds as a Valentine's Day present.
00:55:46 Most of the stuff he bought her, she had to give back. It was seized by the government.
00:55:51 He also presented her with a acrylic see-through piano.
00:55:55 The house was built around this grand piano and there's no way to get it out.
00:56:01 So I think the government just threw up their hands. Just keep it. Just keep the piano.
00:56:05 It's perversely poetic that some of the billions of dollars stolen from the government of Malaysia was used to fund the movie The Wolf of Wall Street,
00:56:16 which is a movie about greed, about excess, and about how money can, at least for a time, make somebody seem invincible.
00:56:27 Malaysians were both horrified and hooked by this drama.
00:56:32 $500 million alone on Rosma's diamonds and excesses.
00:56:41 Rosma Mansoor, Najib's wife, is probably the most vain, narcissistic, greedy and corrupt wife of a prime minister or sitting ruler of any country around the world.
00:57:01 It was a 22-carat pink heart-shaped diamond that was given to Rosma with funds stolen from the Malaysian people.
00:57:11 This particular asset became one of the symbols of the graft of the 1MDB investigation.
00:57:17 The $27 million diamond that Jho Low purchased for Rosma Mansoor came from funds that passed through the bank account of the person named in the complaint as Malaysian Foreign Official 1.
00:57:34 Because of my rule with DOJ, I can't identify, you know, on camera, I can't say who Malaysian Official 1 is.
00:57:45 It sends a message to kleptocrats that if you take your illicit proceeds and bring them to a place like the United States, you don't control the narrative anymore.
00:57:57 So when 1MDB started to fall apart, basically the shit hit the fan, Jho Low had sort of disappeared from the map.
00:58:03 We called a great source and they said to us, "You wouldn't believe where Jho Low is right now. He's in the Arctic Circle.
00:58:11 He has this giant yacht called the Econemity and it's an ice-class yacht, so it can actually break ice.
00:58:17 Like, he's literally the furthest place he could be on Earth from the scandal."
00:58:21 That's what finished Najib. Looking at how this money was spent, aided by Jho Low, how could you vote back such a scandal?
00:58:37 In 2018, the lead-up to the election, in the words of a State Department official, "Najib's going to get re-elected and that's going to be the end of your case."
00:58:47 1MDB resonated among the middle class, the professional class, who understood what 1MDB was about, about the theft of billions of dollars.
00:59:00 He was very confident. Never has the ruling government, but it's a national, never have they lost in a national election.
00:59:10 Everybody here is because they want to look for a change, a better future for all their grandchildren.
00:59:27 We have had enough. Enough is enough.
00:59:30 It was a tense time. I remember talking to some senior police officials who were saying, "You know, you go out in the communities and you see the rallies where Mahathir is speaking, there's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm."
00:59:48 In 2018, it wasn't merely about changing government, it was a liberation of mindsets, in which now Malaysians know that they are ultimately in control.
00:59:56 His predecessor, Mahathir, started to come out and to say that Najib was a liar and a criminal.
01:00:05 He had galvanised a fractured opposition to oust what he calls a government of thieves.
01:00:11 The opposition under Anwar Ibrahim and all the others, they were able to get to the door, but they couldn't open the door to power.
01:00:19 Mahathir was able to open the door because a lot of conservative Malays who would never vote for Anwar Ibrahim, voted for the opposition because of Mahathir, because Mahathir was one of them.
01:00:35 Anwar Ibrahim used to be a student radical in his early days and eventually became Deputy Prime Minister under Mahathir, but he was a political prisoner early on.
01:00:47 Anwar has spent a lot of his life in jail. He's now 75 years old.
01:00:55 You mentioned that you read thousands of books while you were in prison. What is the book that meant the most to you?
01:01:03 One of the classics was important to me. Initially it was very difficult because one book a week.
01:01:09 To them, books can be a weapon in prison.
01:01:14 Why did I form an alliance with Mahathir? It was very difficult, one of the toughest decisions I have to make in my life.
01:01:32 There are sometimes bigger agendas in life, bigger tasks. The nation supersedes your personal desires or anger.
01:01:45 And I think for now, it is to save the country from corruption and atrocities under Datuk Sri Najib. And we therefore have to form an alliance.
01:02:00 They were rivals in the past, but they came together for the sole purpose of defeating Najib.
01:02:07 Both of us realised that if you quarrel with each other, the winner will be Najib.
01:02:15 I remember I had just gotten back from the US and I was pretty much resigned to the fact that he was going to win.
01:02:24 Just before I went to sleep, I looked at the ongoing results and you know, Mahathir was ahead, but it was still early.
01:02:30 About 2am, U Lee called saying, "Is what I think happening, happening?" And I was wide awake then.
01:02:39 And I remember going into my living room and turning the television on and just, you know, just a state of shock that this had actually happened.
01:02:49 And we won the election in 2018.
01:02:54 Celebrations across Malaysia after a shock result in the national elections.
01:02:59 Mahathir Mohamad has won a stunning victory in Malaysia's election, ending the six-decade rule of Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition.
01:03:12 The people rose up, challenged this kleptocratic state, no longer just silencing themselves.
01:03:18 Free for Mahathir! Free for Mahathir! Free for Mahathir!
01:03:23 They shout the name of the movement launched 20 years ago when their leader Anwar Ibrahim was jailed, ironically on orders of the man who has led them to victory today.
01:03:35 Enough of intimidation! No! We have entered a new era for Malaysia!
01:03:43 Take a look at this. This is footage we got in just in the last few minutes from Malaysia.
01:03:55 Former Prime Minister Datuk Srinajit Tun Razak has been arrested over the 1MDP scandal.
01:04:01 The media was engorged in fascination as police conducted raids on properties linked to Najib Razak.
01:04:06 There were 284 boxes containing handbags and there were 72 bags containing cash, jewellery and watches.
01:04:16 So the total cost of all the items, the retail price, will be touching 910 to 1.1 billion ringgit.
01:04:30 With some breaking input that have just come in from Kuala Lumpur.
01:04:34 Malaysia's former leader Najib Razak has been found guilty of all seven corruption charges.
01:04:40 He's always maintained his innocence but the country's high court didn't buy it.
01:04:45 Who was most responsible for 1MDB?
01:04:54 Datuk Srinajit, the then Prime Minister, must be held fully responsible and accountable.
01:05:00 I've sent my office to the studio. Who's doing the interviewing?
01:05:21 You're doing it. You have the understanding in case it borders on sub judice and contempt of court.
01:05:28 I've got to stop that because the trial is on.
01:05:32 Whose idea was it to create 1MDB?
01:05:37 It wasn't my idea. I had no idea whatsoever to create 1MDB.
01:05:43 But it was also based on a rationale that we wanted to attract more investment for Malaysia, particularly from the Middle East.
01:05:53 Who was Jho Low?
01:05:57 Well, I didn't know Jho Low to begin with.
01:06:02 He came via his appointment by the previous king and he also came with the strong connections with the Middle East, particularly with Saudi and UAE.
01:06:17 Were you aware that Jho Low and your stepson Riz Aziz were funding Hollywood films with 1MDB money?
01:06:22 I was not. I was totally unaware.
01:06:26 I also have this personal request, Your Highness, that relates to Lisa, my son, and his movie.
01:06:39 The problem is relatively small. If there can be an agreement with Che Mansoh to have a loan agreement signed and he will pay back according to the schedule, that would show that it's a legitimate financing package.
01:07:04 It's not money laundering.
01:07:08 In March of 2013, you signed a letter asking Goldman Sachs to raise $3 billion in a bond sale, with the Malaysian government guaranteeing the debt in case of default.
01:07:18 And at that point, Goldman had raked in $600 million in profit.
01:07:23 Did this not raise any red flags for you?
01:07:28 We wanted the funds for 1MDB and as you know, you're rather, in a way, seduced by the name of Goldman Sachs.
01:07:38 I guess I was more interested in raising the fund rather than looking into the details of it.
01:07:44 Were you aware of the size of the fees they were charging?
01:07:46 I was not exactly aware of the amount, no.
01:07:53 In 2013, $681 million was deposited into your personal accounts from a bank account associated with Jolo.
01:08:01 How do you explain that?
01:08:06 To begin with, when I met King Abdullah, he promised that he would help me and he believed that Malaysia as a government is an example of how Muslim country should be run.
01:08:22 Were any favours requested in exchange for this money? Was it a quid pro quo on a personal level with the Saudi government?
01:08:29 No. I made it very clear that there was no quid pro quo. It was given to me and I could use it as I deemed fit.
01:08:36 You can see why people have a hard time believing that.
01:08:39 Well, that was my understanding with the late King Abdullah.
01:08:43 How do you respond to allegations that you had to have known about the 1MDB deals because your signature is on all the documents required for the deals and investments?
01:08:55 Maybe I was too trusting, perhaps. But it was required because the Ministry of Finance is the sole shareholder of 1MDB and my signature was required.
01:09:10 But I never, never imagined that it was part of a scheme to defraud 1MDB at all.
01:09:19 Did you review these documents before you signed them?
01:09:22 I didn't know that the management was also in cahoots with Jho Low and they were also, and also members of my office were also in cahoots with Jho Low and they did receive a substantial amount of money.
01:09:37 Your assertion is that everyone around you was in cahoots with Jho Low except for yourself?
01:09:44 Jho Low was very manipulative and he made sure that the people around me, plus the system was on his side and he could influence them.
01:09:58 The names that were supposed to protect you, to protect the government, failed in their responsibilities, including the Central Bank.
01:10:08 What about you though? Did you fail?
01:10:11 Yeah, I failed in a sense I trusted the wrong people and I should have not assumed that things would happen in the way it did.
01:10:25 There are too many people who should have alerted me, they didn't alert me.
01:10:29 Do you believe you're the victim of a vast conspiracy?
01:10:33 Well, a lot of things were deliberately kept away from me, put it this way.
01:10:39 I mean, I wouldn't be so stupid. I mean, I must be really the person with the lowest IQ in the world.
01:10:50 Do you believe you failed the people of Malaysia?
01:10:53 In a sense, I failed in, I trusted the wrong people, yes.
01:11:00 But the system failed me as well. I think that has to be noted. The system that was supposed to support me, failed me, failed the people of Malaysia.
01:11:12 In America, we have a saying popularised by Harry Truman, "The buck stops here, because ultimate responsibility lies with the leader."
01:11:22 Now you're telling me that you trusted the wrong people and the system let you down. But does that absolve you of responsibility?
01:11:30 Do you believe that you should not be held accountable?
01:11:32 What was I accountable for? And that's important. You don't just say, "Oh, the buck stops with him."
01:11:39 But, you know, as a Prime Minister, as I said, you are supported by the entire system.
01:11:47 And there are many people who are supposed to advise you, but up to now, no action was taken against them.
01:11:53 So that is my bone of contention. People are equally, or if not worse, in terms of their capability, why action has not been taken?
01:12:05 When people receive money for their personal use, no action has been taken.
01:12:11 I mean, does it mean that just because you take action against the man at the top, everybody else is absolved?
01:12:17 I'm sure it doesn't mean that. I mean, if you commit a wrongdoing, then you should be prosecuted.
01:12:23 But so far, none have been prosecuted. This is what I feel is wrong with our reaction to the whole 1MDB saga.
01:12:39 Have you no shame? That is what everyone's asking of Majib. You know you're lying. We know you're lying.
01:12:48 Have you no shame for what you've done to your country?
01:12:52 I was Finance Minister for eight years. It's just impossible, ludicrous, to assume that there is billions of schemes under the government auspices that you don't know.
01:13:06 You're either completely ignorant or an idiot or blatantly corrupt. I don't believe any sensible person could believe that.
01:13:15 This morning, the department filed criminal charges in New York against the Goldman Sachs Group and its Malaysian subsidiary,
01:13:24 charging each with conspiracy to violate the anti-robbery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
01:13:32 which requires the bank to pay a total of over $2.9 billion in criminal fines, penalties and disgorgement.
01:13:40 The timing of this happening is stunning. How quickly, after the financial crisis, with all the same players in their chairs.
01:13:48 Many people will say these fines are just a cost of doing business.
01:13:54 The fines are a deterrent to this type of activity, no doubt. Without higher level decision makers eventually going to prison for them, it's not the ultimate deterrent.
01:14:06 Do I think that they've been held to account as much as they should have? I personally don't.
01:14:12 But those decisions were made at extremely high levels of DOJ.
01:14:21 For Lysner's role in that fraud, we apologize to the Malaysian people.
01:14:26 As you would expect, we have looked back and continue to look back to see if there is anything that we as a firm could have done better.
01:14:36 At the same time, I want you to know before each transaction, considerable due diligence was conducted.
01:14:45 With that, let's switch gears and review our performance. We generated firm wide net revenues of $36.6 billion, our highest in eight years.
01:14:54 Ng is the only Goldman banker to stand trial.
01:15:05 In Malaysia, his charge was helping London, billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB.
01:15:10 Ng faces as many as 30 years in prison.
01:15:14 Roger Ng was more like as a proxy for Joe Loh. The trial was about Joe Loh and Joe Loh's crimes.
01:15:20 Tim Lysner would have been the worst trouble of all, but he sang like a canary.
01:15:24 Roger Ng wasn't really on our radar, but he'd never come across as an instrumental person.
01:15:29 We later learned he was the guy on the ground dealing with 1MDB, whereas Tim was more the high flying guy that was overseeing the strategy.
01:15:40 In Malaysia right now, there are some people who sympathize with Roger Ng.
01:15:45 Why did DOJ pick a Malaysian to charge? Why did they do a deal with Lysner?
01:15:53 What about all the other Goldman Sachs guy? What about the Arab who stole from 1MDB?
01:15:59 Tim Lysner talked about how helpful Oteba was to Joe Loh, because at the very elite world, so much of it runs on trust and who you know.
01:16:11 What Lysner's testimony tells us is that Oteba was seen as a person getting them approvals within the UAE,
01:16:19 easing the process, if it were ever slowed down, to enable Joe Loh to have the scheme, to have the UAE backing,
01:16:27 to have the UAE sovereign wealth fund, IPIC, be the guarantor of 1MDB.
01:16:32 The Wall Street Journal in particular was able to show $66 million flowed into companies connected to Oteba during the period that the 1MDB scam was active.
01:16:43 The UAE is punching so far above its weight, thanks to Oteba here in Washington,
01:16:49 that removing him would come at such a high diplomatic cost that there's really no benefit that would make it worth doing it for them.
01:17:00 And that includes whatever blowback they're going to get around the Joe Loh scandal.
01:17:06 Conspiracy is everyone has a job to do.
01:17:12 A short time ago, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted former Goldman Sachs managing director Roger Ong.
01:17:19 It's like an orchestra and everyone plays an instrument and even that guy at the last minute that hits the cymbals,
01:17:25 his cymbals is also part of the conspiracy.
01:17:29 Today's verdict is a victory for not only the rule of law, but also for the people of Malaysia.
01:17:35 Roger Ong was the guy with the cymbals.
01:17:38 People often forget that Najib and Joe Loh as the architects who conceived and designed the scheme,
01:17:45 could not have achieved all this without helpers, people who assisted them, enablers.
01:17:51 All of them were compliant.
01:17:53 In this case, you really see so many different middle level kind of bureaucratic organizations that made enormous amounts of money,
01:18:02 but didn't really get held accountable.
01:18:06 Accounting firms that looked at the books of 1MDB, law firms that didn't really ask enough questions,
01:18:12 PR firms just doing the job they were told.
01:18:16 All of this is being conducted by British, American, European professional classes.
01:18:23 The sort of people I went to school with, the people I meet in parties,
01:18:27 they turn a blind eye and they make themselves rich facilitating this corruption
01:18:34 and then pretending that it's got nothing to do with them.
01:18:37 This is a global problem, it's a global system, but there are other consequences
01:18:42 because that dirty money now is coming into our countries
01:18:47 and the people who control it are starting to influence our way of life,
01:18:53 our politics and our decision makers, our political parties.
01:18:58 Joe Loh was trying to influence American elections.
01:19:02 He was getting money to the Obama campaign.
01:19:04 Later on he was trying to get money to people around the Trump campaign and the Trump administration.
01:19:09 Frank White had connections to the Obama family and was targeted by Joe Loh
01:19:17 and hired for some very improbable business deals.
01:19:22 That leads into Joe Loh then getting an invitation to the White House holiday party that year.
01:19:29 Cut to April 2014, Obama is on his first official state visit to Malaysia
01:19:35 where he takes a selfie with Prime Minister Najib Razak.
01:19:39 Elliot Broidy, a former Republican National Committee Deputy Finance Chair,
01:19:46 was also implicated in the Joe Loh and 1MTV scandal.
01:19:51 Broidy and his wife told Joe Loh's representatives they could make the Justice Department probe go away.
01:19:58 His aspirations went from getting rich and then it gradually came to global influence, global power,
01:20:04 to play a role between countries and he actually succeeded at becoming that person.
01:20:09 In finance we use the phrase "extract value" as if that's what we do.
01:20:16 That's parasitic.
01:20:18 What value did you contribute is what we should be asking.
01:20:22 We need to learn that we're interdependent with each other.
01:20:26 It is an unjust, oppressive system.
01:20:30 This unbridled capitalism enriching the few at the expense of the vast majority.
01:20:36 So I think what's the answer? The answer is back to the people.
01:20:41 In a lot of corruption cases, money laundering cases,
01:20:47 there is this perception sometimes that these financial crimes don't have victims.
01:20:52 And that really is not true. Someone still has to pay back these bonds.
01:20:56 And all the interest payments on these bonds.
01:20:59 Because it's not going to be Joe and it's not going to be Prime Minister Najib.
01:21:02 It's the Malaysian government that's holding the bag.
01:21:05 They're going to have to then turn to their people and the schools that they were going to use it for,
01:21:10 the hospitals, the infrastructure, the economic development that they really wanted to do is not going to happen now.
01:21:17 (Malay Language)
01:21:21 The opportunity cost for Malaysia's economic future is that you can't get to that higher level
01:21:35 in terms of the incomes that your citizens earn. They're stuck there.
01:21:41 We are trapped whether we are to truly transition from a developing country to a developed country
01:21:47 or whether we will regress further.
01:21:49 (Music)
01:22:16 We begin with breaking news out of Malaysia.
01:22:19 A partnership that emerged to rid Malaysia of corruption and economic stagnation has collapsed.
01:22:25 So people do expect the new government to undertake massive change.
01:22:31 You want to delay, they'll punish you.
01:22:33 Mahathir Mohamad's sudden resignation has thrown the country into uncertainty.
01:22:38 The PH government fell for one reason. The Prime Minister of the day just resigned without telling anybody.
01:22:44 All the cabinet ministers went to the office on the morning of Monday, the 24th of February
01:22:50 thinking they were ministers and at five o'clock in the evening of the same day, they were sacked.
01:22:55 Anwar was pushing a lot of pressure on Mahathir to fulfil his promise to hand over power, which Mahathir refused.
01:23:06 We came together to remove Najib. That they did.
01:23:09 But then coming together to work as a government, that's a different story.
01:23:14 (Music)
01:23:16 I've seen it in other countries around the world.
01:23:19 The opposition, once they come into government, seems unable to govern.
01:23:24 They can't get their act together and the next thing you know, they vote the crooks back in power again.
01:23:35 The past two years have shown us that Malaysians, our frustrations run deeper than these most recent political battles.
01:24:00 (Chanting)
01:24:05 In the last one or two years, his popularity has risen incredibly.
01:24:26 That's an objective fact and I cannot explain that.
01:24:29 Our frustration is rooted in knowing that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them.
01:24:39 The biggest problem is the political will to handle basic needs of the society.
01:24:47 There's budget because our country is rich.
01:24:50 We have oil, we have petronas, we have palm oil, we are the second biggest exporter in the world.
01:24:56 It's just, I would say the diversion of funds for some party and political, they want to stay in power, you know.
01:25:07 There are those within the society who are more than happy to glorify a crook,
01:25:18 who are willing to betray our future in exchange for favours and political patronage.
01:25:27 It's rooted in the fear that their kids won't be better off than they were.
01:25:33 And that is a dangerous and growing inequality.
01:25:41 (Speaking in Mandarin)
01:25:47 Malaysian democracy is at a critical juncture.
01:25:52 At a juncture in which we could potentially regress and forever be stuck in a developing country status,
01:26:00 or one in which we could turbocharge to make Malaysia a developed and dignified country.
01:26:05 We have not matured as a democracy. Poor governance and therefore fragile institutions has led to massive endemic corruption.
01:26:16 (Speaking in Mandarin)
01:26:28 (Sound of a helicopter)
01:26:35 Do you hope to be Prime Minister again?
01:26:47 My intention now is to clear my name and we hope that the system will give us a fair hearing.
01:26:53 Do you think you'll be successful in clearing your name?
01:26:56 Who knows about the future? Who knows?
01:26:58 It's just not Najib. It's systemic. Najib is of course the icon of that corrupt establishment.
01:27:12 But the system has been totally compromised.
01:27:16 We are not fighting against one man.
01:27:20 We are actually challenging an entrenched corrupt system.
01:27:26 I don't have a choice.
01:27:28 In the years that I still have, I will continue to endeavor for change and reform.
01:27:34 And I think this country and Malaysians deserve something better.
01:27:40 (Sound of helicopter)
01:27:45 (Music)
01:27:50 Was it worth it?
01:27:52 I would still do whatever we did again.
01:27:56 I still have some hope that justice is going to be served in this.
01:28:12 We see these apartment buildings go up and wonder who's actually going to afford to live in those luxury apartments everywhere.
01:28:19 And then you come down here. This is the real Malaysia.
01:28:27 Are these people's lives better today?
01:28:33 Are they making a better life for themselves and their children?
01:28:38 (Music)
01:28:54 (Speaking in foreign language)
01:29:07 (Music)
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01:29:32 Where do you think Jolo is?
01:29:34 I have no idea.
01:29:36 In fact, the police should be able to answer that question.
01:29:43 Why have the Malaysian police been unable to locate Jolo?
01:29:46 You would ask them.
01:29:47 Okay.
01:29:48 (Music)
01:30:00 (Speaking in foreign language)
01:30:10 (Music)
01:30:14 Under our criminal law system, the accused must be in the dock physically,
01:30:19 which is why Jolo's prosecution never took off.
01:30:23 He's not physically in Malaysia.
01:30:25 If he's still alive, I believe he's in China.
01:30:32 My best guess is Jolo is between this triangle of cities.
01:30:37 Macau, Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
01:30:41 He's been laying low for a long time.
01:30:43 The Chinese made a calculation that it was in their interest to allow Jolo to remain there in China when the scandal broke.
01:30:54 Jolo obviously has some level of value to them.
01:30:58 I do think, though, that that value is perishable.
01:31:02 (Music)
01:31:10 He is responsible for killing Malaysian democracy and hurting the lives of millions of Malaysians.
01:31:16 And we need to do whatever we can to ensure that he's brought back to face justice.
01:31:21 (Music)
01:31:30 There is times in your life that you have choices to make.
01:31:35 That are important choices.
01:31:41 (Music)
01:31:50 If you love your country,
01:31:51 you have to act.
01:31:56 (Music)
01:32:15 Jolo is still out there.
01:32:17 I don't know if we'll ever have a full closure in this case.
01:32:21 I hope so someday, but I don't know if we'll ever get there.
01:32:25 I think corruption is so damaging to our world.
01:32:29 I'm proud that I had the opportunity in my career to fight it in some way, and some successful and some not.
01:32:35 But you never get the full satisfaction of that, and that's the frustrating part.
01:32:40 You never get that full closure.
01:32:44 You never feel like, you know, you've done enough.
01:32:47 I love this country.
01:32:53 Somewhere deep down, I still have to retain hope that things are going to work out.
01:32:59 I just hope people here, too, don't give up hope.
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