THE US Department of Justice (DOJ) last week initiated action to seize two properties bought by Low Taek Jho or Jho Low with money stolen from 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
The properties are a Time Warner penthouse (US$31 million) and a Greene Park apartment (US$14 million), both in New York.
Proceeds from the seizure and subsequent sale of these properties will be returned to Malaysia.
Up until now, the US DOJ has returned US$57 million to Malaysia that it had seized from Red Granite Pictures, the producer of The Wolf of Wall Street. Money from 1MDB was siphoned off to Red Granite, which is partly owned by Riza Aziz, the stepson of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
The US DOJ will also be returning US$139 million that it had seized from the sale of the Park Lane Hotel in New York. Jho Low had a stake in the company that bought the hotel in 2013 for US$660 million.
Fugitive Jho Low is consistently issuing statements through his lawyers and public relations company, denying any wrongdoings even as authorities in the US, Malaysia and Singapore continue to take action to seize assets from him and his co-conspirators in the world’s biggest-ever case of kleptocracy, with at least US$4.5 billion stolen from 1MDB.
We show how money that originated from 1MDB flowed through various bank accounts controlled by Jho Low and gang and was used to buy the three properties that are now part of the many that the DOJ will and has seized.
This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on June 3, 2019 – June 09, 2019.
Original source: The Edge Malaysia