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

by Tom Wright

The $2.2 billion acquisition of EMI, finalized a month earlier, was led by Sony Music Holdings, the Estate of Michael Jackson, and U.S. private equity giant Blackstone Group. Low’s Jynwel Capital had invested alongside Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi fund run by Khaldoon Al Mubarak. His share, just over $100 million, was by far his most legitimate-looking deal to date. Low had set up Jynwel with his brother, Szen, and told financiers it was his “family office,” investing his grandfather’s billions. His partners in the EMI deal had fallen for it. Low’s share, in truth, was financed by the 1MDB bonds that Goldman had sold for the fund. To hide the origin of the money, Low used an old trick, getting his associate Fat Eric to set up an offshore shell company called Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners. This firm was designed to look like a bonafide subsidiary of the Blackstone Group but was controlled by Fat Eric, who worked for Low. On official documents, it would appear that Fat Eric owned scores of shell companies and assets, permitting Low to keep his involvement secret. By now Low had siphoned off more than $1 billion of the 1MDB money generated by the bonds sold by Goldman Sachs. With the help of IPIC managing director Khadem Al Qubaisi, Low had secured control of the cash, which was sitting in a shell company that looked like a subsidiary of IPIC. The money was supposedly to compensate IPIC for guaranteeing 1MDB’s bonds, but it was now Low’s to do with as he pleased. Looking fo...

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