CONTROVERSIAL businessman Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, has been spending his time aboard a gigantic super yacht and a luxurious hotel in Shanghai, The Australian reported. 

The report, which describes Low as the key target of an international investigation into Malaysian state investor 1Malaysia Development Bhd, said Low’s yacht, The Equanimity, was sailing off the coast of West Papua. 

The yacht had also cruised the seas of Southeast Asia, with stops in Cambodia, Thailand, Bali and some of Indonesia’s tiniest islands, in the past six months, the report said. 

The report said despite Low’s close relationship to Prime Minister Najib Razak, he reportedly had been warned against returning to Malaysia. 

“Instead, amid reports he could be arrested and charged within weeks or months following an international investigation, Low is said to be splitting his time ­between Equanimity’s gold-plated interior and the equally luxurious Peninsula Hotel in Shanghai, overlooking the Huangpu River,” the report said. 

The report, citing US court documents, said it was during a “frolic” aboard Equanimity in 2014 that Low gave his then girlfriend, Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr, a diamond jewellery set worth US$2 million (RM8.2 million). 

“The excursion was planned at Low’s direction by a high-end concierge service, and meticulous planning went into arranging the manner in which Low would present each piece of the matching diamond jewellery set to Kerr,” the Department of Justice said in a US Federal Court filing last month.

Jho Low’s family has longstanding links Down Under through Jho Low’s father, Larry Low Hock Peng, who was part of a raid on the Australian corporate scene in the early 1990s that stung media billionaire Kerry Stokes, the report said. 

“From 1992, Larry Low was a ­director of a listed Australian ­company called Ledge Group. A company sharing Low’s address in Penang, Corum International, also owned nearly 27% of Ledge. Ledge changed its name in 1994 to MediaTech,” it said. 

The senior Low also did stints as a director of two listed mining minnows, Accent Resources and Dynasty Resources, in the middle and late 2000s, the report said. 

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal investigation into funds allegedly siphoned from 1MDB and has sought to delay civil suits filed in the past two years to seize more than US$1 billion (RM4.3 billion) in real estate and other assets.

In the civil cases, the department alleged that between 2009 and 2015, more than US$4.5 billion belonging to 1MDB was diverted by high-level officials of the state investor and their associates.

In June, DoJ filed another suit to seize US$540 million in assets, including the US$165 million yacht Equanimity and the rights to comedy movie Dumb and Dumber To, which was produced by Red Granite, a production house co-owned by Riza Aziz, Najib’s stepson.

The US investigation is part of a global effort to track how much of the US$6 billion that 1MDB raised for development projects was allegedly embezzled or involved in money laundering. – December 14, 2017.