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

I had heard about this book a while ago and when it was mentioned again in Apple in China, I decided to see if it was available through my library, and sure enough it was.

This book goes through the history of the 1MDB scandal. For those unaware, 1MDB was a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that ended up being a slush fund for the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak and his family, Jho Low, and several other conspirators in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others.

The book was a fascinating look at how the fund was formed and how Jho Low was able to expertly navigate the world's financial systems to bypass all safeguards they had put in place.

This, like many other financial scandals that have occurred throughout the world, had many red flags thrown throughout the grift, and every time bankers either were strong-armed into believing questionable statements or were willing to look the other way to make money.

The book was written in such a way that I was able to easily understand what was going on. It allow the reader to follow the progress of all the different happenings and ways that Low and his conspirators were able to dodge investigations and any roadblocks that were thrown in their path.

One quote towards the end of book proves prescient still even today.

Low's genius was he sensed that the world's largest banks, its auditors, and its lawyers would not throw up obstacles to his scheme if they smelled profits. It's easy to sneer at Malaysia as a cesspool of graft, but that misses the point. None of this could have happened without the connivance of scores of senior executives in London, Geneva, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere.