Olivia: In 2012, one man spent over two million euros on champagne in a single night in Saint-Tropez. But this wasn't old money or a tech billionaire. This was a 31-year-old from Malaysia, and he was spending money he'd stolen from his own country. Jackson: That is an absolutely wild opening gambit. Two million euros on champagne? That's more than most people make in a lifetime! Who does that, and how on earth do they get away with it? Olivia: That man, Jho Low, is the subject of the book we're diving into today: Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope. And that single, absurdly extravagant act perfectly captures his entire strategy. Jackson: Right, and these aren't just any authors. These are the Wall Street Journal reporters who were Pulitzer Prize finalists for breaking this very story. They lived this investigation for years. Olivia: Exactly. They transform what could be a dry financial story into a genuine thriller. And it all starts with the power of illusion, which Low mastered from a very young age.

Jackson: Okay, so take us there. The book opens with this insane party, right? The one that even by Las Vegas standards was considered the "ultimate party." Olivia: It’s almost unbelievable. We're talking about Jho Low’s 31st birthday. He didn't just book a club; he had a venue constructed that was the size of an aircraft hangar. One side was a circus, complete with a Ferris wheel, the other side was a nightclub. Guests had to sign NDAs and give up their phones. Jackson: That's some serious secret-society stuff. Who was there? Olivia: This is where it gets crazy. Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Martin Scorsese were there to talk film ideas. Jamie Foxx was on stage. And for the grand finale, Britney Spears jumped out of a giant, fake wedding cake to sing "Happy Birthday." Jackson: Come on. That sounds like a scene from a movie, not real life. But how? How does this seemingly random, awkward-looking guy from Malaysia command this level of celebrity and spending? Was he a prince or something? Olivia: That’s what everyone thought! But no, he wasn't royalty. The book digs into his early life, and it turns out he was faking it from the very beginning. He came from a well-off but not fabulously wealthy family in Penang, Malaysia. When he went to the elite Harrow school in the UK, he was surrounded by actual princes and billionaires' kids. Jackson: So he felt like he had to keep up. Olivia: Exactly. There's this incredible story in the book from when he was a teenager. He invited his rich Harrow friends to Malaysia for the summer. To impress them, he borrowed a massive yacht and a holiday home from a family friend. But before his friends arrived, he went through the yacht and the house and replaced all the owner's family photos with pictures of his own family. Jackson: No way. He literally created a fake life. That's some next-level commitment to the bit. Olivia: He even told his friends he was a "prince of Malaysia." It’s like a real-life Talented Mr. Ripley. He learned very early on that the appearance of power and wealth opens doors. He even forged a letter on Brunei Embassy letterhead to get his underage friends into an exclusive London nightclub. It worked. Jackson: Okay, so he was a con man from the start. But faking a yacht is one thing, faking billions is another. Where did the actual money start coming from? Olivia: It started at the Wharton School of Business. He used his family's money to throw these legendary parties. He rented out a whole Philadelphia nightclub for his 20th birthday, spent $40,000, and even had a model covered in sushi. He got the nickname the "Asian Great Gatsby" because he would just stand back and watch, orchestrating everything. Jackson: He was building the brand. He wasn't just throwing a party; he was creating a myth around himself. Olivia: Precisely. And that myth attracted the people he needed. He networked relentlessly, especially with students from the Middle East. After Wharton, he took a tour of the Gulf states and met key figures in Abu Dhabi, like Yousef Al Otaiba, an advisor to the crown prince. He sold them on the idea that he was the key to unlocking deals in Southeast Asia. He understood that if you look rich and act connected, people will assume you are, and then the real connections and real money follow.

Jackson: That makes a terrifying amount of sense. The appearance of wealth attracts real wealth. But he still needed a source, a big one. Where did he find his golden goose? Olivia: And that's the perfect transition, because his networking paid off. He found the perfect partner in the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, and the perfect tool: a sovereign wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. Jackson: A sovereign wealth fund... that sounds official and important. For those of us who don't work on Wall Street, what exactly is that and why was it so easy to steal from? Olivia: Think of it as a country's investment portfolio. It was set up by the Malaysian government, supposedly to fund development projects—green energy, tourism, things that would benefit the people of Malaysia. But Jho Low saw it as a personal piggy bank. He convinced Prime Minister Najib that it could also be a secret political slush fund to help him stay in power. Jackson: So the man in charge was in on it. That explains a lot. But you still need a global bank to help you move billions of dollars. You can't just walk into a local branch with a suitcase. Olivia: And that’s where the story gets even more disturbing. The key enabler was one of the most prestigious names on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs. A banker there named Tim Leissner, a rising star in Asia, saw Malaysia as a huge opportunity. Goldman was looking to "monetize the state," as they called it internally—making huge profits from government deals. Jackson: "Monetize the state." That phrase alone gives me the chills. So Goldman helped 1MDB raise money? Olivia: They did. They helped 1MDB sell billions of dollars in bonds to international investors. And the fees they charged were astronomical. For three bond deals, Goldman Sachs made nearly $600 million. For context, the typical fee is around 1-2%. Goldman was charging closer to 10%. Jackson: Hold on. Six hundred million dollars in fees? For a bank like Goldman Sachs, which was supposedly chastened after the 2008 financial crisis, how did they justify that? Surely alarm bells were ringing all over the building. Olivia: They were! The book details how some people inside Goldman were deeply uncomfortable. But senior executives, like Gary Cohn, defended it. The profits were just too big to pass up. And this is where the first major heist happens. In 2009, 1MDB formed a joint venture with a Saudi oil company called PetroSaudi. 1MDB put in $1 billion in cash. Jackson: Okay, so the money goes into a joint venture. Seems legitimate so far. Olivia: Except it didn't. On Jho Low's instruction, $700 million of that billion was immediately diverted to a secret Swiss bank account. The account belonged to a shell company Low controlled called Good Star Limited. Jackson: A shell company? And the banks, like Deutsche Bank and Coutts, just let this happen? It feels like every single gatekeeper failed. It wasn't just Low; it was the entire system. Olivia: It was a total systemic failure. The book is so powerful because it shows it wasn't just one bad apple. It was a whole ecosystem of greed. You had bankers at Goldman Sachs, driven by massive bonuses. You had lawyers at prestigious firms like Shearman & Sterling, whose client trust accounts were used to launder the money. You had auditors who were fired and replaced with more compliant ones, like KPMG and then Deloitte, whenever they asked too many questions. Jackson: So everyone who was supposed to be a watchdog was either asleep at the wheel or getting a cut. Olivia: Or they were simply dazzled by the illusion. Low created a fake Abu Dhabi fund, a look-alike Aabar company, to receive stolen money. He was a master of creating a paper trail so complex and official-looking that people just signed off on it. He exploited the fact that the world of global finance is built on trust and prestige, and he had manufactured both.

Olivia: But a scheme this audacious, this loud, with two-million-euro champagne bills, eventually attracts attention. And the unraveling didn't start with the FBI or Interpol. It started with a disgruntled employee and a determined journalist. Jackson: The classic whistleblower! This is where the story gets good. Who was it? Olivia: A Swiss man named Xavier Justo. He was a former director at PetroSaudi, the Saudi company in that first bogus joint venture. He felt he'd been cheated out of his severance pay and, as revenge, he had copied the company's entire computer server before he left. Jackson: Oh, he had the receipts. All 140 gigabytes of them. Olivia: He had everything. The emails, the bank transfers, the secret agreements. He tried to sell the data back to PetroSaudi for $2 million. They refused and threatened him. So he started looking for a journalist who would expose the story. Jackson: And he found one? Olivia: He found the perfect one: Clare Rewcastle-Brown. She's a British investigative journalist who runs a blog called Sarawak Report and had been exposing corruption in Malaysia for years. She met Justo in a hotel in Bangkok, saw the data, and knew it was the key to everything. Jackson: And how did Najib and Low react when the "Heist of the Century," as she called it, finally broke? I can't imagine they just sat back and let it happen. Olivia: They went on the attack. This is where the story turns really dark. Prime Minister Najib cracked down hard. He fired the Attorney General who was preparing to file charges against him. He suspended the publication licenses of newspapers like The Edge that were reporting on the scandal. People were arrested under sedition laws. Jackson: It became a full-blown authoritarian response. Olivia: It did. And it got even more chilling. A Malaysian prosecutor named Kevin Morais, who was working on the 1MDB case and had helped draft the charges against Najib, was kidnapped. His body was later found in an oil drum filled with concrete. Jackson: Wow. It went from white-collar crime to something much, much darker. That's terrifying. It just shows the stakes involved. Olivia: Absolutely. But despite the threats, the story was out. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times picked it up, and international law enforcement, including the FBI, finally launched full-scale investigations. The bonfire of secrets had been lit, and there was no putting it out.

Jackson: What an incredible, sprawling story. It’s almost hard to believe it’s real. When you step back from all the yachts and celebrities and shell companies, what’s the central lesson here? Olivia: I think it’s that Jho Low, as brilliant and audacious as he was, was really just a symptom of a much larger disease. He was the architect, but he built his fraudulent empire on a pre-existing foundation of global greed and willful blindness. Jackson: It's a chilling reminder that the systems we trust—banks, governments, auditors—are only as strong as the ethics of the people running them. And it seems like for a very high price, ethics are for sale. What's the takeaway for us? For the average person listening? Olivia: I think it's a call for radical skepticism. The book is a masterclass in how easily we are dazzled by the appearance of success. When you see extreme, inexplicable wealth, whether it's a social media influencer or a so-called business mogul, it's worth asking the hard questions about where it really comes from. Jackson: Because behind the glamour, there can be a very dark story. Olivia: A very dark story. As the authors put it, this was a truly global endeavor that produced nothing—just a shift of cash from a poorly controlled state fund in the developing world, diverting it into the opaque corners of an underpoliced financial system that’s all but broken. The people of Malaysia are the ones who ultimately paid the price for those two-million-euro champagne parties. Jackson: A powerful and infuriating lesson. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does this story make you more cynical about the global financial system, or more hopeful that these schemes eventually get exposed? Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.