Billion Dollar Whale summary

In 2001, Low enrolled at the business-focused Wharton School in Philadelphia. Intelligent but lazy, he neglected his studies and focused on socializing. He hosted lavish, champagne-fuelled parties at which sushi was served on the bodies of dancers wearing nothing but lettuce-leaf bikinis. Soon enough, students were calling him the “Asian Great Gatsby.” 

Low showed little sign of enjoying these events. While others downed high-end tequila and danced, he nursed a Corona and made awkward attempts at small talk. But partying wasn’t a leisure activity for him – it was a calculated investment sponsored by his father, Larry, a social climber who knew the value of connections.

If you wanted to get to know the leading movers and shakers in the Emirates in the early 2000s, the name Khaldoon Khalifa al-Mubarak would have been at the top of your get-to-know list. Like Otaiba, Mubarak was closely connected to the royal family. But he had another string to his bow.

Mubarak had access to money – lots of it. As director of Mubadala, a state-owned investment company or sovereign wealth fund established in 2002, he controlled $3.5 billion by the time Low met him. The idea behind the fund was simple: borrow against the UAE’s future oil revenues and use that cash to diversify the economy by investing in new sectors like technology and real estate. 

The 2007 Iskandar deal left Low stranded financially but well-situated politically thanks to his alliance with the rising political star Najib Razak. That, however, looked like a long-term investment. As long as Najib lacked any real power, Low needed a project of his own.

Inspired by Khaldoon al-Mubarak, Low toyed with the idea of creating a new sovereign wealth fund and installing himself as its director. That called for cash. But where was he going to find it? 

When Najib Razak became prime minister of Malaysia in 2009, he had two goals. First, he wanted to restore UMNO’s credibility. Second, he wanted to modernize Malaysia and catch up with the “Asian Tigers” – nations like Singapore and Taiwan whose economies had boomed between the 1960s and 1990s. Both projects required money. 

Low convinced Najib that there was only one credible source of investment, the Middle East, and only one man who could make it happen – himself. A few months after assuming office, Najib announced the creation of a sovereign wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad or 1MDB with $1.4 billion of bonds to its name. Najib was the official chair, but it would be Low – who remained unmentioned in the official paperwork – who pulled the strings. 

Low used his position as 1MDB’s unofficial head honcho to pack the venture with his cronies and associates. Getting them in place was vital to the second stage of his plan to exploit this Malaysian gold mine.

In early September 2009, Low set up a joint venture account with BSI, the private Swiss bank that handled PetroSaudi’s accounts. But there was a hitch. When Low traveled to Geneva to meet BSI’s account managers and explained that he’d be taking a cut of the $1 billion payment about to be wired from Malaysia, they balked.

Low’s heist wasn’t a carefully constructed Ponzi scheme or a sophisticated bit of financial wizardry; it was daylight robbery. He simply took millions of dollars out of one account and put them into another – his own. Neither the government, which issued the funds, nor the banks, which processed them, tried to stop him. 

So what was his plan – after all, surely someone was going to notice a $700-million hole in 1MDB’s accounts? Low didn’t have a plan. Things had moved quickly after the establishment of 1MDB, and he had gotten used to improvising. He trusted his ability to ad-lib his way out of any trouble that might come his way. 

Leonardo DiCaprio was already Hollywood royalty when he met Low in late 2010. The star of countless blockbusters including Titanic, one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, he was used to being courted by hangers-on. Wherever he went, folks did him favors, and he regarded that as something to which he was entitled rather than a perk. Low, however, wasn’t your average fanboy. 

DiCaprio might have had plenty of money of his own, but there was one thing he couldn’t afford – independence from Hollywood’s studios. And that’s what Low offered him. 

Low completed another deal in 2012. This time he’d teamed up with the International Petroleum Investment Company or IPIC, an Abu Dhabi-controlled sovereign wealth fund. On May 21, 1MDB wired $1.75 billion to a front organization supposedly in the market for Asian power plants. Days later, $576 million of that money landed in an IPIC-linked bank account. It was another fake “loan repayment” that once again found its way into Low’s hands. 

Here was the rest of the capital that was used to make The Wolf of Wall Street, pay off Najib’s Malaysian voters and continue financing Low’s lavish lifestyle. But there was a hitch – there were still loose ends from Low’s first heist.

News of Low’s theft triggered a civil war in the ruling UMNO party. A reformist faction led by former prime minister Mahathir Muhamed called for Najib’s resignation and a wide-ranging investigation into the 1MDB scandal. Najib was confident he could weather the storm but took the precaution of ordering Low to leave the country before the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee had a chance to question him. 

The public mood was rapidly deteriorating. In late August 2015, around 100,000 protestors took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur. They came from every walk of life and voiced their anger as well as their fear that the debts incurred by 1MDB would leech funds away from education and social welfare for years to come.