Instead of paying in cash, Bridge Partners set up a Cayman Islands investment fund, effectively giving 1MDB units in the fund in return for the stake. The fund, called Bridge Global, had only one client—1MDB—and hadn’t even registered with authorities in the Cayman Islands for permission to make investments. Magically, 1MDB now claimed in its financial statements the Bridge Global investment was worth $2.3 billion—a profit of $500 million on the money it had lent to PetroSaudi.
