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

by Tom Wright

Concerned about its reputation, Deloitte was demanding a quick repatriation of the $2.3 billion in the Cayman Islands fund. The 1MDB board, apparently under the illusion there was money there, upped the entreaties on management to comply. Since first taking cash from 1MDB, Low had relied on accounting magic to make this problem disappear, but through three different auditing firms there it remained, like a pebble in his shoe. Before, he’d gone on taking more, and spending wildly, seemingly under the assumption he could cover it up with new trickery down the road. Now, as his desperation mounted, Low was coming to a stark realization: He would have to give up some real funds. The trouble was, he didn’t have $2.3 billion at his disposal. He had to find another manuever—and it would be his most reckless yet. Turning to Yeo Jiawei, the former BSI fund specialist, Low looked for a way out. How could they turn a few hundred million dollars—the remainder of the Deutsche Bank money not used for jewelry and other purchases—into $2.3 billion? This kind of alchemy was beyond even Low, but accounting tricks had worked for years to hide his thefts from 1MDB, so why not one last, monumental sleight of hand to fool Deloitte and the board? Yeo had an idea, and he looked to Amicorp, the Singapore-based financial company that administered funds in Curaçao, to put it into practice. To make it look like 1MDB was bringing the money home, Yeo devised a complex and circuitous flow of payments. I...

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