Jho Low Is Said to Give Up $900 Million in Assets in 1MDB Scandal
A tentative deal will not grant Mr. Low special treatment in the criminal case against him involving a looted Malaysian fund.
ByMatthew Goldstein
The mysterious Malaysian financier at the center of an international money laundering scandal that toppled a prime minister and rocked Goldman Sachs is poised to give up his claim to hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury apartments, yachts, jets and artwork that prosecutors say were bought with stolen money.
In a tentative deal with federal prosecutors, the fugitive financier, Jho Low, has agreed to relinquish any claims to roughly $900 million in assets that were seized starting in 2016, according to two people familiar with the matter. It is one of the largest civil asset forfeiture recoveries by the United States government.
Mr. Low, who is believed to be living in China, did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the draft agreement, according to the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly until the deal was finalized. It also did not include any provisions offering him special treatment in the criminal case pending against him.
There was one favorable provision for Mr. Low: Federal prosecutors will allow some of the seized assets to be used to pay more than $10 million in fees billed by Mr. Low’s legal team, which includes the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and lawyers from the firm Kobre & Kim.
The agreement was expected to be detailed in a series of filings in federal court in Los Angeles. Federal prosecutors there and at the Justice Department’s money laundering division in Washington have overseen the dozens of asset forfeiture actions against Mr. Low and his suspected accomplices.
In all, federal authorities say, Mr. Low and his associates, who include the former prime minister of Malaysia, bought more than $1.7 billion in real estate, yachts, jets, jewelry and even financed a Hollywood movie with money looted from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn are leading the criminal case against Mr. Low and two former Goldman Sachs bankers. One of the bankers, Tim Leissner, a former top partner at the firm, pleaded guilty in August 2018 to bribery and money laundering. The other, Roger Ng, has pleaded not guilty. His trial could begin next spring.
The forfeiture actions were the opening salvo in the long-running investigation by federal authorities and prosecutors in Malaysia into a series of bond deals put together by Goldman Sachs that raised roughly $6.5 billion for 1MDB.
The fund was supposed to finance infrastructure and other development projects to benefit the Malaysian public. Instead, according to prosecutors in the United States and Malaysia, it became a font of corruption for people close to the prime minister at the time, Najib Razak. The looted money paid for an enormous spending spree that included the purchases of diamonds, Hermès Birkin bags, and paintings by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. Money from the fund also helped finance the Hollywood film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
The bond deals generated $600 million in fees for Goldman Sachs but have caused nothing but headaches for the firm since.
The guilty plea by Mr. Leissner — once a highly valued senior partner at the firm — raised the possibility that Goldman itself could be forced to make up billions of dollars in losses at the fund. Officials in Malaysia have also brought criminal charges against the firm and more than a dozen other Goldman employees.
The asset deal with Mr. Low will allow prosecutors in the United States to turn their attention to a settlement with Goldman, which is cooperating with the investigation and has said it expected to pay a significant penalty.
Negotiations between federal prosecutors and Goldman stalled earlier this year but recently restarted. The bank has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with the bond offerings and has claimed Mr. Leissner’s conduct was not sanctioned or approved by his bosses.
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