THE movie based on Billion Dollar Whale will show how Low Taek Jho exploited Western power brokers’ ignorance of Asian culture in his scheme to defraud 1Malaysia Development Bhd of billions.
Ivanhoe Pictures has acquired the film rights to the bestselling book by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, and will team up with actress-producer Michelle Yeoh to produce the flick.
Ivanhoe president and CEO John Penotti said the movie will showcase the potential for fraud due to a lack of due diligence and ignorance of foreign cultures.
“Sophisticated people in finance blanket-accepted things that were unfamiliar to the West, and Jho Low and others exploited the unfamiliarity,” he told entertainment news portal The Deadline.
It reported that when a banker asked Low why a wire transfer would go to his father, who would then give the money to him, the wanted businessman said it was according to the Asian culture of respecting one’s elders.
“When you look deeper… how we accepted as validated the kind of wealth that was moved around is mind-boggling, and the potential for fraud was able to continue because of a lack of due diligence,” said Penotti.
Ivanhoe previously produced Crazy Rich Asians, a box-office success that earned US$235 million (RM940 million) worldwide.
The smash hit starred Yeoh, who is set to pick an Asian-heavy cast for the movie adaptation of Billion Dollar Whale.
The new project will be “the perfect depiction of the intersection of East and West”, said Penotti.
“We will hire writers, and are still working on our way in, but this is about preconceived notions of how foreign cultures and wealth generation work, and how Asian and Western cultures just don’t understand each other.
“A lot of what may have driven the ability for this type of excess to have developed between Asia and the US went well beyond the film business, and involved other areas of the financial business, including banks, sovereign funds, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian companies.”
Ivanhoe has not said whether it has begun casting for the lead roles.
Clare Rewcastle-Brown, the editor of whistle-blower site Sarawak Report, has said her book, The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé, which was published in September, may also be made into a movie.
Meanwhile, The Kleptocrats, a documentary directed by Sam Hobkinson and Havana Marking, will premiere at the DOC NYC film festival in New York tomorrow.
The film is about the siphoning off of US$3.5 billion from 1MDB, and the ensuing investigations by global enforcement agencies.
Among its producers is Alex Soros, the son of hedge fund manager and philanthropist George Soros.
The US Department of Justice, in civil suits last year, said 1MDB funds had been diverted to bankroll 2013 blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street.
It has charged Low and two former Goldman Sachs bankers over the 1MDB scandal.
Reports said Low, 37, is believed to be hiding in China with his wife and two children. – November 8, 2018.
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