Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

by Tom Wright

In early December, Joanna Yu, the AmBank employee who ran Prime Minister Najib’s secret accounts, was in a panic. “Very stressful these days. ANZ running the bank,” she texted to Jho Low, referring to the Australian bank that held a stake in AmBank. “We need to close the accounts soonest please,” she said. Low texted back “okay” but seemed distracted, and as the month wore on, and the accounts remained open, Yu got increasingly worried. In a series of messages, she explained to Low how the situation was perilous. Cheah Tek Kuang, the chief executive who had given cover to the enterprise, had stepped down to take on an advisory role. The new chief, Ashok Ramamurthy, was an appointee from ANZ, and he’d found out about Najib’s secret business. By now, the prime minister had a number of accounts at AmBank, and Ramamurthy was watching. Late in 2014, the new chief executive became fretful about a series of huge cash payments into Najib’s accounts. In the last few months, the prime minister had been running short on funds, as he paid off politicians. Desperate to stop the accounts from becoming overdrawn, which would attract attention from compliance, Low arranged for an associate to make last-minute cash deposits, taking sacks of cash into an AmBank branch. It was a huge miscalculation and alarmed Yu, who pleaded with Low to stop. Heedless of the advice, he kept sending the associate with sacks of cash—literally bundles of notes in bags—to AmBank branches. The deposits totaled o...

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