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

by Tom Wright

As Low amassed his art collection, he paid no heed to the 60 percent of Malaysian households who lived on less than $1,600 a month. The 1MDB fund had amassed $10 billion in debt, which would weigh on future generations. Prime Minister Najib boasted the country would attain developed-world living standards by 2020. But the leaders of the country, as they enriched themselves, were failing to achieve this. With national income of $10,000 per person, a fifth of the United States’s level, Malaysia was stuck in the middle-income trap, no longer poor but not yet rich. In an earlier era, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan had reached developed-world status. Now, rampant corruption was condemning Malaysia, as well as Brazil, Russia, and a number of other nations, to mediocrity. But the elite—and those serving them—continued to thrive.