Launching the latest Bakun clearance project, which has now been revealed as an eco-catastrophe in the making (see the Save Rivers/Borneo Project press alert below), a Sarawak state government statement described this latest ‘Rich Venture’ by the tycoon Hii family as ‘necessary’.

Speaking in 2023, the GPS leader, Abang Johari, explained this was because the administration has not yet fulfilled a ‘Development Strategy 2030’ target to put 10,000 hectares under commercial bamboo plantations “which means that we need to develop more land for bamboo plantation”.

The question has to be why choose what has been now inflated to 20,000 hectares of remaining forest land in an area already largely destroyed by the controversial Bakun Dam, which involved the displacement of over 10,000 indigenous peoples (from the Kayan, Kenyah, Penan, Lahanan and Ukit communities) who are striving to survive with their traditional pursuits in what is left?

Do these communities ‘need’ for this last corner of their foraging and hunting lands to be destroyed?

Is it really a good idea to kill off remaining examples of the most valuable and endangered iconic animal species left in Sarawak that have managed to find a diminishing refuge in this shard of once officially protected natural forest?

Apparently the state government has not troubled to consider the situation on the ground because when the loggers moved into the area in 2025 native groups lodged a police report, having not been consulted or given their consent.

Meanwhile, global wildlife and conservation groups are left aghast. Amongst the now incredibly rare species which have been recently spotted by a Borneo Project environmental survey are Borneo Bearded Pigs, a Sun Bear with cubs, White-fronted Langur, Tufted Ground Squirrels, Bornean Great Argus which are all classed as protected species (see featured picture) and two macaque species listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

The native protestors articulated their concerns directly in a meeting with the premier whilst the logging was suspended following their police report. Yet, as they have explained below, these seem to have been ignored given the timber extraction has now re-started.

So, who IS the state government listening to and why has it been decided to choose an area packed with valuable timber and supposedly protected bio-diversity to start this monoculture plantation project – instead of, for example, utilising some the millions of hectares already cleared for other plantations in Sarawak, many of which have proven to be unsuccessful or neglected?

The answer seems to be the powerful influence of the Hii family, who are driving this project and have already made themselves into tycoons from the earlier plunder of native lands. The Hiis have a long history as politically engaged benefactors to the ruling establishment in Sarawak and have plenty of experience in navigating indigenous protests .

Like other timber barons the Hiis have been caught up in high profile logging disputes over the years (see below press release) and doubtless see this situation as just another bunch of troublesome native people who need to be out-manoeuvred.

After all, there is money to be made and to such concerns what else matters? The names they have chosen for their various companies eloquently spell out the family focus – “Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd” is the name of the present project, as a sister company to “Rich Venture Sdn Bhd’.  Another controversial and destructive logging project gloried in the title of ‘Billion Venture Sdn Bhd“.

Where cash is concerned the Hii companies have shown little compunction in smashing through the rules, it seems.  However, these are marginalised peoples already driven from their original territories and the world famous species that will die as a result of these clearances are on the brink of extinction. The world will never forgive such vandalism.

Sarawak cannot leave it to the money tycoons to exert self restraint in such matters as it is well-known that those who already have too much money can never have enough or ever be satisfied. Such entities and their companies are impelled to acquire more and more until they hit the eye of the needle – and any obstacle in their way, such as social or environmental concerns, are merely to be overcome.

It is therefore the responsibility of the state government to intervene, reverse this vandalism and save Sarawak’s face. It must do the job in representing the wider interest and its global responsibilities, even if that means thwarting the unquenchable greed of the Hiis and their associates who are doubtless pressuring their political dependents in every possible way.

Another area must be chosen for this bamboo project: why not on lands already destroyed by previous logging by the Hii family, for example?

The sad truth is that the only reason this forest area has been selected by these business interests is because their primary target is the timber itself.  That has been the story of all plantation projects in Sarawak which have made easy profits out of logging in the name of plantation projects and developments that have too often been half-hearted failures.

If the real purpose is to grow bamboo then the state government can prove that by planting elsewhere.

Meanwhile, wake up!  Sarawak’s dwindling natural areas are the state’s real precious resource and the real billion dollar treasure that could sustainably benefit future generations and generate wealth today. The now rare beauty of Borneo’s tropical rainforests attracts paying visitors from the world over and the scientific value of Borneo’s unique DNA and natural evolutionary footprint is an immense potential cash cow for the present and future.

The timber barons can only see the price of pulp and paper, but their industry and knowledge is sadly primitive and outdated. Yet, because of their limited vision and single minded greed Sarawak may lose its glorious future by felling and burning its greatest treasures.

The leaders of the state talk often about future planning and forward thinking, so they need to demonstrate that in practice and conserve the real treasures they have left.

Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8th, 2026

Sun bear mother and cub caught on camera as Bakun bamboo plantation restarts clearing

Community camera-trap survey confirms forest slated for Rich Venture’s 44,545-hectare bamboo project is a biodiversity hotspot; satellite imagery shows old logging roads reopened

BELAGA, SARAWAK: Indigenous communities living beside the Bakun reservoir have documented a sun bear mother and her cub, along with 26 other mammal and bird species, inside a forest concession currently being cleared for a commercial bamboo plantation by Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd. The camera-trap survey, carried out by local teams over two months, provides the strongest evidence yet that the licence area is a biodiversity hotspot that should be protected rather than converted to monoculture.

The Bornean sun bear is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and is a Protected Species under Sarawak’s Wild Life Protection Ordinance. The capture of a mother with a cub indicates a breeding population that depends on intact forest for survival. Sun bear populations across Borneo have fallen by an estimated 30 to 35 percent, and the species is increasingly rare in Sarawak because of habitat loss and poaching.

The survey also recorded the White-fronted Langur, the Tufted Ground Squirrel, and the Bornean Great Argus, all of which are Totally Protected under the Wild Life Protection Ordinance, and two macaque species listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The sighting of a Bornean Bearded Pig in the survey is also particularly significant – as populations across Borneo collapsed after African swine fever in 2020.

Clearing resumes after months of dormancy

According to documents obtained by the community, Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd holds License for Planted Forests LPF/0056, with plans to convert more than 20,000 hectares of native forest to bamboo. Clearing began in early 2025 and prompted seven Kenyah, Kayan, Lahanan and Penan communities (Uma Belor, Uma Lahanan, Uma Kelep, Uma Penan Talun, Uma Balui Liko, Uma Juman and Uma Daro) to lodge a police report in September 2025 demanding suspension of the licence.

“We have already raised this directly with the Premier,” said Denis Hang Bilang, Chairman of the Customary and Native Land Committee of Hulu Balui. “When we met with him at his office on 25 February 2026, we asked him to re-establish our rights over the unsubmerged land within 10 kilometres of the reservoir bank. That land is ours, and it is where these animals live.”

Operations were largely dormant for much of 2026. But satellite monitoring by The Borneo Project shows activity has resumed in recent months, and that old logging roads through the area have been re-established. Many communities were already displaced once, when the Bakun reservoir flooded their ancestral lands in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The forest now under licence is much of what remains of their ancestral lands.

“The sun bears and other wildlife caught on our camera traps may well be the very animals that were rescued and released during the Wildlife Monitoring and Rescue (WiMoR) programme in 2010–2011, a joint effort by the Sarawak Forestry Corporation and Sarawak Energy”, continued Bilang. “The state spent time and money saving these animals once. Why destroy their habitat now?”

Owner implicated in multiple allegations of deforestation in biodiversity hotspots

Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd is 80 per cent owned by Miri timber tycoon Hii King Chiong and his son Hii Wei Wen, according to Companies Commission of Malaysia records. The company’s registered business is timber as well as plantation, and the Hii family also owns Rich Venture Sdn Bhd, a separate log extraction and trading company registered at the same Miri address, whose directors are Hii King Chiong, his wife Datin Ting Hua Eng and his son Hii Wei Wen.

Bruno Manser Fonds’ August report, Plundering the Baram Peace Park, also identifies Hii King Chiong as the principal shareholder of Borneoland Timber Resources Sdn Bhd, the company granted a timber concession over more than 100,000 hectares of a proposed Indigenous-led conservation area in the Upper Baram.

Sarawak Premier Abang Johari witnessed the signing of Rich Venture Plantation’s bamboo MoU with the state timber agency STIDC in 2023, and government and company press releases record him alongside Hii family representatives on several other occasions.

“Communities affected by both companies say their complaints to the government have gone largely unanswered” said Celine, Managing Director of SAVE Rivers. “Given the relationships on the public record, it is fair to ask whether those complaints are being heard at all.”

ENDS

Media contact
SAVE Rivers WhatsApp: 60 13-997 6810

• Deforestation Alert: New Bamboo Plantation on Bakun Dam
• Communities Protest Bamboo Plantation Near Bakun Dam
• NEW REPORT: Plundering the Baram Peace Park

As ex-PM Najib Razak returns from the comfort of his ‘prison’ accommodation (the Governor’s house at Kajang Jail) to the full luxury of his own grand residence (the product of years of kleptocracy) others remain to pay the punishment.

One particular whipping boy at the forefront of many minds is Azila Hadri, Najib’s body guard, who whilst on duty on October 19th 2006 had deserted his post to speed with a colleague over to the house of Najib’s advisor from where they kidnapped and then murdered a woman they did not know.

In a plea for his life the former guard later claimed he had been ordered to do this by Najib who had called him into his office to explain that his former translator and alleged lover, Altantuya Shaariibuu, was a spy. It is well known that Altantuya had been noisily demanding cash to pay for her unborn child outside Baginda’s house – otherwise she threatened to spill the beans on Najib’s corrupt Scorpene Submarine deal (later detailed in a French court).

Azilah’s death sentenced was indeed commuted in 2024, not least because Altantuya’s family had pleaded for mercy based on their request that the Malaysian courts should instead proceed with their civil case against Baginda and the Malaysian government. Instead Azilah is condemned to life in harsh prison conditions for following orders from above.

Meanwhile, Najib is now free to enjoy his ‘conditional pardon’ with his jail sentence –  already earlier halved by a previous royal intervention – commuted to ‘house arrest’ (expect to see his entourage about town).

Najib, of course, was separately convicted to a further 15 years in jail in December for yet another kleptocracy offence, namely the 1MDB scandal itself. Since he is appealing, the new incarceration threat remains suspended while the case grinds through to the Federal Court.

There is therefore a political logic to the timing of these manoeuvres, which have taken place in the wake of PKR’s dire state election results earlier this year. Najib’s existing sentence, for looting the KWAP civil service pension fund, does not expire till August 2028. Najib’s key allies will hope to win back power at the next election due at the latest in February 2028.

Most have themselves been caught and either charged or convicted for similar gross thefts and are now let off, thanks to their manipulation of a system of pardons and commutations conveniently on offer for those with the power to return favours to those who grant them. No need to mention names to any Malaysian who can read.

Once they have exploited these favours to seize back control these warlords plainly consider that they will have every opportunity to carve a deal with the grandest kleptocrat of all to ensure that any further sentences he may receive are also served ‘at home’. Alternatively, if their ruthless plans are better served by putting him back behind bars, they can call the shots.

Meanwhile, those who have brought these crimes to light can expect little such mercy for acting in the pubic interest. They include the author of this website, whose two year jail sentence for alleged defamation was dismissed as a mistrial by the courts at the start of this year.

Despite that ruling, the egregious charges, brought by one royal figure in such a way as to heap unwarranted shame on another, which were revived by Najib’s political allies in 2021 years after being originally dismissed by prosecutors, and were then put to trial through multiple violations of judicial procedure, remain unrescinded by the ‘reformasi’ government.

The only fly in the ointment remains the failure to secure the pardon of Jho Low himself. Negotiations towards just such a solution have taken place several times, the latest being during a settlement with China over 1MDB last year (see the upcoming book The China Contract).

Eventually, Malaysians can perhaps expect to see Jho Low detailed back to KL as the Ambassador from China to a future Najib-friendly government.

As the Malaysian government pursues its efforts to recoup billions lost by 1MDB to fraud, negligence and professional collusion across the globe, there have been concerns over profiteering even from the recovery of the stolen wealth.

One key whistleblower in the affair, Bachar Kiwan, was forced to flee Kuwait in 2017 after reprisals from Jho Low’s allies who were money-laundering Malaysia’s diverted public funds through businesses he jointly owned.

Having suffered torture and imprisonment before making a daring escape, Kiwan approached Sarawak Report with devastating evidence of the scheme, sanctioned at the highest levels in China which collaborated with Jho Low and his ‘Big Boss’ (then prime minister Najib Razak) to cover-up the losses from 1MDB.

Subsequent reporting on this website resulted in the trial and imprisonment in 2023 of Sheikh Sabah Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah, the son of the former Kuwaiti prime minister, who had taken fat commissions for his role, together with his lawyer and key aide.

Bachar Kiwan was himself also sentenced, in absentia alongside Jho Low, having been accused of being part of the conspiracy he exposed. He has always maintained his innocence and was found to be a victim of political persecution by the Spanish courts and the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. He now lives as a free citizen in France.

In the meantime, Kiwan has made clear he believes he holds further evidence about the laundered Kuwaiti funds and has approached the Malaysian authorities in the hope of supplying this information in return for assistance in getting the remaining charges dropped in Kuwait.

Indeed, he told Sarawak Report that he believes his conviction largely owed to misinformation supplied by the Malaysian authorities when they responded to Kuwaiti mutual legal assistance requests in 2022. MACC negotiators have subsequently assured him they are willing to set the record straight.

In April he provided this statement to Sarawak Report with respect to whether his offer of information was dependent on a whistleblower reward and or payment of his legal expenses:

‘To be clear, the bonus or reward has never been my motivation in this cooperation. What matters far more to me is recognition of the truth and compelling the Kuwaiti authorities to restore my dignity and honour – notably through the cancellation of the unjust judgments against me, and a fair resolution regarding my expropriation [the loss of his businesses].
The Malaysian side have made it a clear condition that I must be proven to have received no financial benefit from Jho Low’s original money laundering schemes. If it turns out I did they will no longer treat me as a proper whistleblower, and I am happy with that since I never did benefit, quite the opposite’.

Sudden Dash For Settlement in 2026

Previously, Bachar Kiwan’s offers to provide evidence to Malaysia had proven unproductive. The former MACC Commissioner, Azam Baki, told a press conference in 2023 that a visit to Paris by his officers the previous year to meet with the Kiwan had provided ‘no substantive information‘ on 1MDB’s still missing funds.

That meeting was attended online by the law minister Azalina Othman Said, Azam confirmed. Kiwan claimed in response that his visitors told him there was a lack of appetite at the time in the then AG’s department to pursue a case that would further expose Najib.

This negativity changed, says Kiwan, late last year after a second MACC team revisited him in Paris, again under the auspices of Ms Othman, who remains a minister in the present coalition government.

During these discussions, Kiwan says that it emerged that Kuwait had recently notified Malaysia that it was ready to return a relatively small proportion of the $1.02 billion judged to have been laundered through Sheikh Sabah’s accounts, a still significant sum of KUD15 million (RM200 million) that remained in those accounts.

Kiwan responded with his own research pointing to a far greater sum (KUD 160m/RM 2bn), which he maintains can be traced internationally to Sheikh Sabah’s network of assets funded by 1MDB. He says negotiations were then launched to set terms under which he would cooperate with the MACC in KL.

In early December, a letter confirming a ‘Cooperation Framework And Establishment of International Working Group’ was sent by the MACC to Kiwan’s Paris lawyer.  The wording indicated a significant reversal of the commission’s previously dismissive public remarks:

“As agreed, Mr. Bachar Kiwan’s cooperation in interviews, statements, and the provision of any related information regarding the investigation and asset recovery will be crucial to the work of this Group … MACC appreciates your client’s willingness to assist in the recovery of Malaysia’s sovereign assets and looks forward to a constructive and professional engagement.“

It was signed by the MACC Commissioner Azam Baki on December 2nd, just two days after the high level meeting which had been proposed by the MACC at short notice in Paris (involving no fewer than 6 MACC officers sent from KL). At this meeting there had been another unexpected development, according to Bachar Kiwan, involving his representation.

MACC Requests Najib’s Lawyer To Represent Kiwan

Shortly after the meeting began, Kiwan says, the Malaysian officials urged him to replace his existing Malaysian lawyer, whom they claimed was conflicted owing to a client the same firm was defending over separate case that was being prosecuted by the agency.

The MACC team then revealed that they had brought with them a recommended alternative lawyer all the way from KL: the lawyer was waiting just outside. The lawyer, who was then invited to join the meeting, was none other than a member of the former prime minister, Najib Razak’s legal team; namely Tania Scivetti, who is the wife of Shafee Abdullah, Najib’s lead advocate for many years.

Scivetti was accompanied by a gentleman described as a liaison and communications expert with strong ministerial connections: he proceeded to demonstrate this by bringing Azalina Othman onto an immediate video link via his mobile phone.

Presented with this situation Bachar Kiwan agreed to substitute this pair to represent him and later in April 2026 he visited KL where he had extensive meetings with a view to sealing an agreement.

Part of this agreement involved presenting a detailed report on traceable funds, which Kiwan and his lawyer committed to prepare. However, much of the discussion appeared to concern financial arrangements with regard to anticipated reward monies.

Kiwan has told Sarawak Report that Scivetti & Partners had proposed to provide their services in anticipation of payment from a whistleblower fee which the law firm suggested ought to be in the region of 25% of any recovery obtained.

If that seems excessive, Kiwan says that the person who advised him on the matter explained that a lot of people needed ‘looking after’.

Sarawak Report has viewed subsequent proposed terms of engagement received by Bachar Kiwan’s Paris law firm, dated 26th April 2026 on Scivetti & Associates headed paper. The terms include a “Success-Based Fee Structure” stating that:
“Upon payment of any Reward, the Reward shall be distributed [between] Scivetti & Associates, which shall retain forty-five per cent (45%) of the total Reward as its professional fees for the purposes of this engagement; and Mr Kiwan, who shall receive the remaining forty-five per cent (45%) of the total” (with the remaining 10% payable to the Paris law firm).

This document appears to have been signed by ‘Datuk Tania Scivetti’. There was an element of haste involved, he said, not least because there appeared to be money already on the table (the RM200m being offered by Kuwait); moreover rival settlements were being discussed during ongoing negotiations with China which sought to close down further claims against both countries.

Had the deal gone through with the repatriation of RM200 million from Kuwait, in the light of what Kiwan had been told, the law firm might therefore have expected to have received in the region of RM50 million as their ‘success fee’ for representing Mr Kiwan and receiving and distributing the anticipated Reward.

If the further information yet to be delivered by Kiwan was also acted upon and proved solid that amount could have been considerably higher.

However, Kiwan and his legal advisors have told Sarawak Report that by the time they received these proposed terms they had taken wider soundings and lost confidence in the process. In an earlier message Kiwan had expressed his misgivings: “At this stage, we feel that the current working dynamic involving Tania, [and the other officials] is not providing enough clarity or comfort, particularly in terms of governance, accountability and outcome security. There seem to be too many grey areas, and the decision-making centre feels somewhat diluted.”

They never signed the document

Meanwhile, there was increased uncertainty created by the growing public clamour against the planned re-appointment of the Commissioner himself, whose term of office was due to expire shortly in May.

Azam Baki was, in the end, replaced and a re-shuffle then took place within the agency which removed many of those who had been involved in these negotiations from their positions. Yet, at the start of May, Bachar was still being told that the officials concerned were confident of completing the planned retrieval of cash from Kuwait and proposed reward, if he moved more swiftly to to cooperate.

On June 14th Sarawak Report contacted Azalina Othman asking for comment on these negotiations and the decision by the MACC to recommend the law firm Scivetti & Associates to represent Bachar Kiwan on a success fee basis in anticipation of a whistleblower reward. We have received no response.

However, shortly after, Sarawak Report learned that MACC officials were made aware of those enquiries.  Less than a week later, on June 19th, Bachar received a sudden ‘termination letter’, from Scivetti & Associates stating they had decided to withdraw from their proposal to engage him as their client.

Sarawak Report has also submitted requests for comment from Azam Baki (both directly and via the MACC) and, likewise, Scivetti & Associates.  However, none of the parties we approached have responded since late June.

Bachar Kiwan has told Sarawak Report that he is concerned that Malaysia therefore continues in its failure to pursue what he believes are rightful reclamations from Kuwait where court cases have now demonstrated that multiple parties failed to respond to his early whistleblowing alerts and then continued to investigate the matter in the face of growing evidence.

It took a change of government in the Gulf state and new prosecutors before official reports that proved the levels of corruption were finally acted on.

Following his conviction in March 2023, the Kuwait court fined the Sheikh a hefty KUD 140 million (RM1.85 billion) yet none of this penalty was paid to the injured party, namely Malaysia.

As the whistleblower, Bachar Kiwan believes he too is an injured party.  Yet Malaysia, which did so much to damage his position previously, has done nothing to restore his situation in return for his having alerted the international community to Kuwait’s role in the 1MDB mega-theft.

[The full story of Kuwait’s role in the 1MDB cover-up and collusion with China is told in the upcoming book The China Contract, written by the editor of Sarawak Report and due to be published October 15th]

The recent revelations that Jho Low has once again sought to negotiate a pardon from both Malaysia and the United States revives concerns about how this fugitive managed to escape to China with so much of his stolen Malaysian loot apparently still available for him to access.

When his name appeared on a notorious ‘‘250 pardons for 250 years’ list that the US president Donald Trump purportedly mulled signing on July 4th, there were even reports Jho had offered key intermediaries at least a billion dollars to arrange the favour.

Sarawak Report simultaneously learned the fugitive was separately negotiating a similar pardon from Malaysia as part of a settlement designed to draw a veil over China’s damning role in the criminal cover-up of 1MDB.

This is not the first but the third recorded episode of pardon seeking by Jho, who plainly desperately longs to escape from China The previous round in July 2022 was confirmed by the intermediary, ex-AG Apandi Ali, during which RM1.5bn ($370m) was reported to have been offered by Jho’s US lawyers to the Malaysian authorities to wipe his slate clean.

How the fugitive retained such enormous levels of ready cash and where it is being managed and protected is therefore a question of considerable interest to the people of Malaysia to whom the money actually belongs.

Did ‘Swiss Banking Secrecy’ Protect Jho’s Stash?

It is now a decade since the devastating press conference at the Department of Justice in July 2016 which initiated the US action against the Malaysian fraudster.

The then Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and her colleagues described 1MDB as the world’s largest recorded theft, conducted on behalf of Jho’s political master, the now-jailed former PM Najib Razak, who is still facing a recovery action through the civil court.

Many of the stolen assets were subsequently confiscated and returned, but the evidence suggests  by no means all. Malaysia remains burdened by the crippling costs of the original $5.6 billion dollar theft and then the further theft of similar sums incurred during the later attempts to cover it all up [for the full details of this cover up refer to SR’s upcoming book The China Contract]

However, during the course of this subsequent decade the various investigations, law suits and official disclosures have bit by bit revealed more, not only about how the money was stolen but about how it was laundered and where it ended up.

In particular, details from regulatory actions taken against employees of Rothschild Bank and affiliated Rothschild trust in Switzerland, which came to light in 2023, raise a number of questions that Sarawak Report has now put to the Rothschild group about how much of the stolen wealth they managed on behalf of Jho and the Low family was surrendered to the authorities at the time they were revealed to be fraudsters, as opposed to being quietly moved elsewhere at a later date?

Top Customer 

It first came to light that Jho Low was a client of the Swiss based Rothschild Bank SA (and of its subsidiary Rothschild Trust SA) in 2017, after FBI investigators traced the ownership of Jho Low’s assets in the US to a series of BVI companies placed under a separate New Zealand based trusts which had been incorporated and were being managed by the Rothschild group in Switzerland.

These included his Beverley Hills mansion, New York apartments, his private Bombardier jet, flats and buildings in London and Paris, a super-yacht, company shares in EMI, shares in the New York Park Lane and L’Hermitage hotel groups, incorporated under 23 named companies each held by these separate trusts.

Rothschild dutifully surrendered its control of these contested assets to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and a major court battle ensued whereby the Low family, together with Jho, sought to remove the bank from its formal control as trustees in order to appoint another management outfit called FFP in the Cayman Islands that was willing to resist the US seizure orders.

In early 2017 the Low family won an initial victory in the New Zealand court which agreed they could appoint the new managers, thereby side-lining Rothschild. Reporting on the litigation Reuters and others put a value on the trusts at stake of $260 million.  These were transferred to the management of FFP which then continued to support the family in their legal battle with the DOJ.

Eventually, in October 2019, the Low family reached a ‘global settlement’ with the DOJ surrendering those assets, including ownership of Jho’s share of the Park Lane Hotel (earlier off-loaded to Greenland Properties in Hong Kong), which the US press release of the time claimed now represented a total value of $700 million.

The US court’s relevant confiscation order named the 23 trusts that were involved in that settlement and the asset each represented. At which point it was widely assumed that Rothschild Bank’s relationship with Jho Low, which had by then been denounced by the Swiss regulator FINMA as a ‘serious breach’ of compliance rules, was over.

Indeed, FINMA had stated at the time that this admonishment of Rothschild, which took place earlier in July 2018, represented the ‘conclusion of its final 1MDB proceedings‘, leading observers to logically conclude that there was no more stolen Malaysia money in the Rothschild banking group – nor indeed any Swiss bank subject to FINMA regulation.

No financial or other penalties were exerted against the bank itself over these blatant institutional failings on the basis that a new monitoring process had been agreed and implemented by FINMA to supervise future activities by Rothschild Swiss and its subsidiary, Rothschild Trust.

The CEO of the group, the British banker Nigel Higgins (who had spent 36 years at the bank) departed shortly after to take up a new position as the Chairman of Barclays in the UK, where he remains in situ.

However, a full four years later and barely remarked by wider media, further proceedings prosecuted by Switzerland’s Federal Department of Finance against a relatively lowly compliance officer and the former CEO of the Rothschild trust management subsidiary revealed some startling new information, which slipped out into the financial press in 2023.

Those proceedings took place in German and were covered primarily only by specialist finance platforms, such as the French language site Gotham City which memorably described the charges laid against the former chief compliance officer as reading “like a horror novel when it comes to banking supervision”.

The officer pled guilty to failings in his reporting obligations with respect to blatantly suspicious dealings and money-laundering, and was fined CHF 40,000, even though it was acknowledged that he was only acting according to the views of his superiors at the bank.

Indeed, the prosecution papers clearly show that the senior personnel of the back had been regularly consulted on the thorny issues surrounding their most lucrative client and consistently decided over the course of more than five years not to report him.

Of these, only the Trust company CEO was prosecuted. He was found guilty and fined CHF 185,000, but has appealed.

Thus it is established that the hierarchy at Rothschild Swiss and its wider group successfully decided to ignore red flags for over five years, despite evidence presented that shows Jho Low failed numerous due diligence investigations and reports by independent consultancies who concluded they were ‘unable to verify many of the business activities described in [Jho’s company’s] annual report’ or indeed ‘any significant professional activity since he left university’.

The same reports also pointed to the dire news coverage that followed the young man’s mysterious ostentation, but Rothschild didn’t flinch. The reason is clear from an email sent by the CEO of the trust company to board members of Rothschild Global in January 2015:

 ‘As you know, our largest client relationship in terms of revenues is a Malaysian family. We manage and oversee assets worth $500m and bill around CHF 3m a year (the relationship has been with us for over five years now). The family runs a business in third generation and is estimated between $2 and 3 bn. The family are extraordinarily connected across the globe and we belief [sic] there is more scope for us to offer Rothschild services if we get things right’.

Indeed, insiders have confided to Sarawak Report there was a whole department at the trust management division dedicated to Jho Low’s affairs.

Thus it was that the bank had chosen not to report blatantly suspicious transactions till as late as November 2015, months after the exposure of the role of Jho Low’s Good Star Limited account at Coutts Bank in Zurich during the initial heist from 1MDB. Good Star was the source of hundreds of millions of dollars funnelled into Rothschild, according to the complaint by the regulators at the Swiss Federal Finance Department (FFD), yet Rosthschild still said nothing.

Jho Low’s 130 Rothschild Trusts

The detail to emerge from the FFD submissions regarding the “Over $500 million” Rothschild managed by 2015 is even more pertinent to the questions surrounding Jho Low’s evident remaining wealth.

The regulator reveals that Rothschild’s mystery client had been introduced to the bank by none other than a Swiss wealth manager at Goldman Sachs, the bank with whom Jho Low and Najib had connected with in 2008 to advise on the Terengganu Investment Authority and which later colluded in raising of 6.5 billion dollars in bonds for 1MDB, much of which was stolen.

That introduction took place as early as October 2009, days after Jho Low had made his first $700 million windfall from the bogus 1MDB joint venture with PetroSaudi (money that was paid into Good Star Limited in Zurich).

The wealth manager had tipped off Rothschild that even Goldman Sachs had decided Jho Low was too hot to touch in terms of a personal account.  He nonetheless performed an introduction for Jho Low, accompanied by his brother and father, to Rothschild bankers at the Goldman Sachs offices in Zurich in full knowledge of those concerns.

Rothschild had proceeded to onboard Jho and his family, and just over a year later the Goldman banker who had made the original introduction moved over to become the CEO of the Rothschild Trust subsidiary.

These are not the only facts that stick out from the belated indictments. For the first time, the case revealed that there had, in fact, been no less than 130 trusts with 130 matching bank accounts held on behalf of the Low family by this one bank by the time the matter was brought to the attention of the Swiss authorities.

According to the 97 page FFD ‘criminal order’, the amount of money that had entered this network of cash and assets totalled $613 million by the time of the DOJ crackdown in 2015. As of August 2015, there remained $80 million in cash plus the 130 trusts curating assets purchased with that inflow. $313 million had entered from Good Star Limited 2009-2011, after which just under $300 million was later added from other sources connected to Jho Low.

Those figures, which only became available in 2023, are in considerable excess of what was published at the time of the DOJ settlement in 2019, which named 23 trusts representing a reported investment of $260 million (according to the media reports on the court case).

Neither did the 2019 DOJ settlement make mention of any surrender of the $80 million in cash now known to have been held by Rothschild on behalf of Jho Low.

It appears that $350 million worth of cash and assets may have therefore remained, undeclared, in the Rothschild accounts – assets that could be now worth many times more with the benefit of expert investment.

Hong Kong Hideout?

Sarawak Report repeatedly asked Rothschild Bank to confirm whether all of Jho Low’s accounts were surrendered to the authorities at the time of the US asset seizure in 2016.  If not, we asked the bank to explain what happened to the $350 million that appears not to have been accounted for?

Rothschild responded that “Rothschild & Co has fully cooperated in the 1MDB matter with the relevant law enforcement authorities since 2016 and provided full transparency …. Rothschild & Co has no remaining role in the management of Jho Low’s wealth“.

When asked for clarification as to whether the remaining hundred plus trusts and accounts that apparently were not surrendered to the DOJ in 2016 contained any assets, the spokesman declined to comment further, saying “The previous statement provides our full response on this matter“.

It was not till over one year after that surrender that FINMA announced its conclusion, in July 2018, that Rothschild had been in “serious breach” of suspicious transactions and money laundering reporting requirements with regard to Jho Low, placing the bank and its trust management subsidiary under special monitoring. The announcement did not state whether any assets remained within the bank belonging to Jho Low or his family at that time.

However, enquiries by Sarawak Report have confirmed that US investigators faced considerable hurdles during their original investigations relating to Swiss banking secrecy. The burden remained on the FBI to present its own findings to the bank in order to gain the cooperation and surrender of the trusts they had identified as purchased by the Low family through the money laundering of stolen assets.

There was no commitment made by the bank to reveal further details about their client and at no point did Rothschild offer to open up the Low family portfolio to reveal what other assets were being curated by the bank.

This, despite the fact that Jho Low had been unmasked as a fugitive from justice who had stolen billions from Malaysia and had no legitimate independent wealth. Sarawak Report has written to FINMA to enquire if it investigated whether any of Jho’s wealth remained at the bank or had been transferred elsewhere; so far, we have received no response.

In November 2018, just months after the reprimand from FINMA, Rothschild SA facilitated a ‘management buy-out’ of its trust subsidiary, enabled by a loan provided by the bank to its former staff. This now ‘independent’ operation was named Sequent and appears as a result of the sell off to have no longer been subject to the enhanced monitoring put in place against Rothschild as a penalty by FINMA.

Responding to questions on this matter Rothschild has replied “The sale of the trust business in 2018 was unrelated and a consequence of a strategic review of the entire Wealth Management business of Rothschild & Co.”

It was more than another two years before the Swiss FFD completed its investigations into the Low family funds that entered Rothschild and brought its cases against the two officers in 2022.

Meanwhile, shortly after the Low family’s October 2019 settlement with the US Department of Justice, another development took place in Hong Kong (from where the Low family based their businesses and had worked with local Rothschild investment managers prior to the scandal breaking out). In early 2020, a senior and well-connected former member of that Rothschild team announced the setting up of a private investment fund valued at well over half a billion US dollars.

Sarawak has received information that the fund is believed to represent wealth beneficially owned by Jho Low and his family members: Rothschild itself is a substantial minority shareholder in the relevant fund management company.

The fund management company has failed to respond to questions. Rothschild’s spokesman has told Sarawak Report that, as a minority shareholder, the bank does not have direct access to the investors’ ownership details, however the bank has “received assurance in writing … that none of its investors , nor any of the ultimate beneficial owners of its investors, are connected to Jho Low.”

The fund has advertised minimal activity, supporting just three named investments during the past six years. One investment in a European tech company was originally purchased by a Rothschild trust vehicle for $200 million in 2017 then divested for an extraordinary mark up of $1.3 billion in 2022 to a separate Rothschild Trust vehicle, investing alongside the Hong Kong fund and another private equity partner.

A second investment is likewise linked to a Rothschild-related earlier investment and the third was soon divested. In response to questions as to whether Jho Low or his family did at any point retain a beneficial interest in these investments Rothschild have answered “we have checked our investor records, including the anti-money laundering and Know-your-customer records of … the indicated transaction. According to these records, that are kept in line with our regulatory obligations, we did not identify Jho Low as one of the investors“.

Sarawak Report has asked for clarity on which of the string of transactions this refers to.  The bank has subsequently responded “2022” to which we asked for details on what appears to have been a complex reconstruction of the ownership of the company, acquired in 2017, involving a private equity buyout and buyback in by Rothschild combined with the Hong Kong fund.

Rothschild has responded “we do not comment further”.*

Meanwhile, it seems clear that barring further investigation or the release of further information from the bank, a sum of over $350 million invested in some 100 trusts and accounts, remains inadequately accounted for following the surrender of Jho Low’s identified US assets to the DOJ in 2016.

There appears to have been little oversight of those trusts or the bank over much of the relevant period, during which the later heavily criticised institution was free to manage the accounts and assets as it chose.

If this wealth were to have been transferred to Hong Kong, by 2020 it would have come under the aegis of an increasingly opaque financial centre by then controlled by China, a country which chooses to harbour and protect this global fugitive who has carried out numerous missions on behalf of the Chinese state in Malaysia, the Gulf and United States.

Most recently, in July, Sarawak Report reported the fraudster’s key engagement in the negotiations to settle outstanding 1MDB related debts still owed by Malaysia to China.

Yet, as all Malaysians know, any assets remaining under Low family beneficial ownership are theirs: assisting in their transfer post 2016 would have amounted to aiding and abetting a known criminal.

As for those pardon offers, given the level of profit realised from other investments made by the 1MDB looters (Tarek Obaid’s Palantir shares, for example, were bought for $2 million and are now worth $468 million) the $353 million apparently unaccounted for in 2016 could very well represent billions now – certainly enough to fund the pardon offers Jho Low is reputed to have made.

[* This represents an update to the original article].

In May a decision by the Federal Court was reported as being the ‘end of the road’ for the Sipitang based Sabah Forest Industries (SFI) wound up by the courts last year. Their appeal was refused and an RM80 million compensation order by a lower court set aside pending appeal.

However, the legal complaints by the receivers that the company’s woes owe to a conspiracy and collusion between the state government and one of Malaysia’s richest men continue. Judicial Reviews against the Sabah State and a suit against the CM remain stalled in the courts.

The receivers for the company, Grant Thornton had originally accepted a RM1.2 billion buy out offer from Syed Mokhtar for which they received a 10% down payment in 2018. However, instead of completing the deal, the accountancy giant says that Mokhtar started to conspire with the incoming Sabah administration to squeeze SFI out of its assets to enable him to acquire the company for free.

Sarawak Report has already reported how the Sabah administration first confiscated the licenses on which the company value was based, on grounds of ‘public interest’, and then handed over the self-same licenses to companies said to be acting on behalf of the state, but which were in fact owned by Mokhtar himself.

By this means Mokhtar had acquired the company without having to put down the rest of the RM1.2 billion he had originally offered, argue the outraged stakeholders of SFI. Mokhtar has even sued to get back the RM100 million he did pay as his deposit.

[The] Sabah Chief Minister literally nationalised (compulsorily acquired) all SFI assets and offered only 200m (not a cent paid to date) instead of the 1.2bn tendered by SM in 2018. The Chief Minister in turn had awarded all SFI forest concessions (288,000 ha) for free to three Syed Mokhtar controlled companies. Syed Mokhtar sued SFI for the return of the 10℅ deposit paid, and offered to used that deposit in a global settlement including SFI’s claims against Sabah State and Chief Minister. In short, the collusion/conspiracy between Syed Mokhtar and CM to defraud SFI is as clear as daylight.

is how an ally of the litigating parties summarised the situation to Sarawak Report. Meanwhile, it is the company workers who have suffered most during this on-going wrangle, not least because they have apparently been targeted by the state itself due to its collaboration in undermining SFI.

Some 500 workers and their family members had been accommodated in SFI’s forestry worker settlements who were suddenly made redundant. Their wages were stopped in XXX and they received no redundancy settlements.

As the legal battles raged from 2019 the state electricity company simply switched off supplies to these isolated communities leaving them without basic amenities and forced to live off the land as best they could. The objective would appear to have been to drive this community from the area, thereby breaking up the workforce.

Likewise, the abandoned factories were mysteriously vandalised with expensive machinery belonging to SFI sabotaged as part of what appeared to be a coordinated attempt to undermine the company that the receivers were seeking to sell as a going concern.

Sarawak Report has documented other abuses, such as apparent illegal logging of the area which the state authorities sought to justify on the grounds that diseased trees were being removed (Sarawak Report identified the timber was nonetheless being exported to Sarawak – in total violation of health controls had the trees genuinely been diseased).

Now, there has been another development in that campaigners for these workers have called foul over the ‘disappearance’ of a promised state fund of no less than RM130 million that had been announced back in 2022 to bring compensation and support to help this abused and beleaguered community.

The allegation goes back to a question in the State Assembly put in November of that year on behalf of his constituents by the then Sindumin (Sipitang area) YB Dr Yusof Yacob to the Chief Minister asking whether any form of compensation had been provided to the workers of SFI?

The Chief Minister, Hajiji Noor, replied with a major commitment claiming:

“the State Government has provided approximately RM130 million in financial assistance to affected workers and their family members through a special fund established specifically to assist those who lost their source of income following the cessation of SFI’s operations”.

Three and a half years later, the community champions complain, none of those families have seen a shred of support from any such fund. The YB had recently quit the opposition Warisan Party to act as an ‘independent’ more friendly to the GRS ruling coalition and appeared not to pursue the matter further.

It has taken the election of a new member to the seat at the state election allied to the opposition to get the issue raised once more. YB Yusri Pungut is a newly elected Assemblyman representing Warisan. He is a lawyer by profession and during the recent State Legislative Assembly sitting, he questioned the Chief Minister about the RM130 million Special Fund, asking whether the money had already been distributed to the former SFI workers and, if so, who had received it. The Chief Minister responded he would reply with a written answer which is currently still awaited.

It was this state of affairs that prompted a report made to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission last month, making the point that the Hansard record of that interchange in 2022 makes clear that money had already been set aside in a fund supposedly to support these workers.

Speaking on behalf of the workers Jeffridin Baudi has therefore asked for an investigation into what has happened to that money?

Matters he wants clarified on behalf or workers families, “many of whom continue to suffer from loss os employment and income” are:

1. The destination and use of the RM130 million ‘Special Fund’
2. The parties responsible for administering and distributing the fund;
3. The list of recipients, amounts paid, and the methodised to distribute the funds; and
4. Whether there was any element of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation, corruption, or other misconduct in relation to the management of the fund.

These are, of course, matters that any properly transparent State Government would have made public years ago in taking responsibility for the rights and wellbeing of citizens without jobs thanks in a large degree to state policy. According to Baudi, the MACC/SPRM has indicated it is now investigating the matter instead giving hope that answers not provided from political sources may be obtained by the anti-corruption forces instead.

The rumours swirling around Malaysia that Rosmah pledged a house in name of her son-in-law to an influential official in order to gain a Royal Pardon for Najib have caught the eye of investigative journalists at the New York Post.

After all, the property concerned, 2 Margo Way, a ‘swanky Alpine Mansion’ billed as one of  New Jersey’s most expensive homes in history, was purchased for just $10 in March of 2025, according to property records, says the Post. The buyer was indeed one of the key figures in the rumours that have circulated in Malaysia, Daniyar Kessikbayev.

‘The castle-like property had last been on the market for $34 million in 2011, before it sold a year later, in 2012, for $20 million in cash to an anonymous shell company that was linked to Kessikbayev’

Daniyar Kessikbayev is married to Najib’s daughter Nooryana Najwa Najib and is the ex-step nephew of Kazakhstan’s former dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

According to the claims and documents first uploaded by an anonymous online portal in Malaysia last month, Nooryana’s mother Rosmah was involved in the purchase and then transferred the ownership through an offshore manoeuvre in May to Daran Investments Capital Inc., a British Virgin Islands registered company.  It was claimed businessman Daing A Malek Daing Rahaman was the shareholder of the company.

All of the claims pertaining to Rosmah and Daing have been denied. The Post says insiders confirm the home remains under Kessikbayev’s ownership, as reflected in the property records.

However, the New York Post’s report connects the property to a much wider scandal that hit the New York property market a decade earlier involving Rosmah’s son-in-law. Back in 2012 the 17,150 square feet, the 9 bedroom mansion (complete with its own basketball court, two pools, home theatre and bowling alley) had sold for $20 million dollars in cash to buyers whose identities were not known to the seller. It was a rushed purchase, according to the seller, the developer Joe Scott. “An older Russian man and an Oriental woman made the deal. I heard a million stories [about the owners] but I don’t care. As long as they paid me, that’s all I care about,” he told the Post.

The purchasing pair would appear to have ostensibly been, Daniyar’s mother Maira Nazarbayev, and his stepfather, Bolat Nazarbayev, brother to the notoriously kleptocratic former president of Khazakstan. However, the details were shrouded in mystery and the purchase vehicle an anonymous off-shore company.

Daniyar and his mother have a history of questionable property transactions, reminds the Post, which covered the ugly court cases after Bolat and Maira separated in which Bolat claimed he had been cheated by his wife and step-son.

Indeed, if $10 seems cheap for a New Jersey prestige mega-mansion, Daniyar previously snagged a $20 million Plaza Hotel condo for just $1.

The allegation was that the young man had been entrusted with power of attorney by Bolat, and had proceeded first to put his mother’s name on the deeds and then bought the flat from her for that one dollar.

By 2012, the couple had separated on toxic terms. Bolat first had Maira arrested under an Interpol Red Notice then filed a lawsuit against both Maira and Kessikbayev, alleging they “swindled” him out of more than $100 million, records the Post.  It was shortly after that the $20 million sale of the Margo Way was made to an anonymous shell company.

When the matter came to trial Bolat’s lawyers claimed that Maira and Kessikbayev had also bought 2 Margo Way with his money. The case was eventually settled out of court in 2014. The terms included giving Bolat the Plaza Hotel condo and other residences while he agreed to drop his claim to a stash of jewels and 2 Margo Way.

Rosmah would have been impressed and indeed Nooryna and Daniyar married the following year. It seems the couple have now benefitted from a similar looking deal whereby that New Jersey property has now been transferred to Daniyar. Whether it was passed on again, as has been suggested, to help Najib out, is not registered, as would be legally required, in any of the US records according to the Post investigation.

Read the Full Story at The New York Post

[Featured Image – left to right Daniyar Kessikbayev, Maira Nazarbayev, Rosmah, Najib, Nooryana, and stepfather Bolat Nazarbayev].

Back in 2022 Sarawak Report published list of questions it wished to put to Robin Rathmell a UK and US qualified lawyer who has represented Jho Low and his family’s myriad suits since we exposed the fraudster in 2015.

At the time, Rathmell had just returned from failed negotiations in KL with the Ismail Sabri government to buy Jho’s freedom for RM1.5 billion, mediated by Najib’s former tame Attorney General, Apandi Ali. The story leaked and the plans collapsed, however it has been noted ever since that the Red Notice published  by Malaysia for the arrest and extradition of the fraudster to the scene of his crimes in Malaysia has disappeared from the INTERPOL website.

Despite calls for that public warrant to be clearly re-instated (including by Najib’s own lawyer Shafee Abdullah) no steps have been taken to do so, implying that the negotiations around Jho Low’s freedom for favours proposals, referred to in our previous article, remain ongoing. In that article Sarawak Report revealed that Jho Low has been at the centre of negotiations to settle $3 billion of 1MDB related debts owed to China, incurred through bogus Belt & Road projects: as part of the negotiations he has demanded Malaysia’s charges be dropped against him.

Mr Rathmell declined to answer our questions about his representation of Jho Low, but there is every reason to believe he still does so and that he is behind the parallel legal attempts to buy a similar pardon deal in the United States also revealed last week. Presumably this entails working  not only through the official request published in the US but also through blandishing those around the Trump administration and private network, which is something readers of Sarawak Report will know Jho Low already has a long track-record in doing.

It is our information that such forms of blandishment also explain Jho’s continuing survival in China where he plainly represents a major flight risk given his constant attempts at negotiating an escape. Should he succeed, the fugitive holds the potential to cause China major embarrassment pertaining to his inside knowledge of the corruption of the superpower’s signature Belt & Road initiative in order to subjugate target recipients, such as Malaysia under Najib.

Subsequent to the 2022 attempt (which followed an earlier approach spurned by the Mahathir government in 2018) there has clearly been a complex and ongoing campaign to balance the incentive of alleged hundreds of millions, still locked off-shore and apparently available only to a liberated Jho Low, with obtaining free passage for the fugitive.

In 2024 the US government settled a further civil asset seizure case with the Low family, confiscating over a hundred million dollars of properties, artwork and frozen accounts which had been identified over and above the earlier asset seizures against the fraudster. However, at the time the US government made clear it had not settled the outstanding criminal charges against Jho Low as part of such a process.

Indeed, he is wanted in the United States not only for money laundering through those assets but also for assisting spies on behalf of China and subverting federal workers and lobbyists, and pals of Donald Trump and Barak Obama, to achieve various ends including espionage using his stolen cash.

Nonetheless, Jho has clearly persisted in his attempts to buy his way out of trouble, and acting as his legal representative is undoubtedly lucrative work (Sarawak Report is aware of the ‘principle’ that every fugitive oligarch deserves legal representation to defend themselves, using money they have stolen, as well as to bully journalists who expose their antics).

We noted that Robin Rathmell left the original law firm Kobre & Kim which originally represented Jho Low in the July following the May 2022 attempted negotiations in KL.  He took his toxic client to Kasowitz, Benson & Torres, according to Foreign Agent Registration (FARA) filings, and then in 2025 set himself up as a founding partner in a new ’boutique law firm’ named Rathmell Short LLP. The firm advertises itself somewhat tellingly as:

“A single focus firm that specializes in represent[ing] high-net worth individuals, their families, and their businesses in distressed circumstances around the world. Our core areas of expertise are sanctions remediation, white collar criminal defense, asset forfeiture defense, asset protection, and serious civil fraud litigation. We negotiate with the United States and other governments on behalf of our clients.”

Rathemell Short’s FARA filings indicate the firm has two such clients so far, one a Putin connected ex-KGB Russian oligarch being pursued by the US government, and a Chinese company named XH Smart Tech China Co. Ltd which is itself facing sanctions by the U.S. Treasury for supplying electronic components to Russia’s military.

Today, the ex-WSJ Jho Low watchers from the Brazen Project provided further information on that China based concern, strengthening obvious suspicions that the company is connected to Jho Low.

According to this latest research the law firm has been paid for this representation (a handsome $5.5 million fee) not by the company itself but by a third party, much in the same way that Jho Low paid Rathmell’s previous law firm Kobre & Kim through the now jailed Sheikh Sabah from Kuwait, as exposed by Sarawak Report.  The Sheikh acted as a front for money laundered from bogus Malaysian infrastructure contracts with China paying off Jho’s legal and other bills.

According to Project Brazen’s review of the FARA filings, the third party funder is a Hong Kong company called Intemath Trading Limited, which is owned by a 24 year old woman based inn Zhuhai, which they claim is “the exact same city where the sanctioned tech company is based, and where Jho Low is believed to operate”.

Several journalists have now approached Mr Rathmell for comment as did Sarawak Report back in 2022.  Let’s see if they are more fortunate than we were in receiving a reply. Likewise, let’s see if the US President agrees to issue such a pardon to Jho Low, which has been strangely termed as a request for pardon ‘after completion of sentence’. The only sentence Jho Low is known to have served is that of a gilded exile in China.

In the latest development, Malaysia’s police chief has now stated he is investigating the allegations made by Sarawak Report that Jho Low has been negotiating the removal of charges against him in KL.

The Westbourne Press, an arm of Saki books, have launched pre-sales for the upcoming book on China’s Belt & Road entanglement in Malaysia’s 1MDB cover up.  The China Contract, written by Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown and due for publication in October can now be ordered from The Westbourne Press and will be available through Amazon.

The filing of the plea by Jho Low for a Presidential pardon in the United States took place in January against an extraordinary background, whereby the Malaysian fraudster played a key role in secret negotiations between China and Malaysia to write off 1MDB-related debts at the end of last year, according to exclusive information obtained by Sarawak Report.

Meetings even took place involving the fugitive fraudster in KL itself under the protection of the Chinese delegation, sources have claimed.

The pardon plea was published by the Wall Street Journal overnight, just as the US President Donald Trump was boarding his flight to Beijing for a critical summit with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The talks will focus on the deteriorating global situation following America’s sudden initiation of hostilities against Iran, however the suggestion that the Chinese fugitive believes he can ‘buy’ a pardon by settling his debts over 1MDB brings embarrassment to both leaders.

In the US there has been a flurry of social media comment relating to the Trump administration’s existing record in providing pardons to foreign fraudsters believed to have found ways to benefit the President’s own family businesses. Meanwhile, there are huge questions over China’s own complicity in facilitating Jho Low’s record breaking fraud at the expense of the Malaysian public purse and then continuing to provide apparent refuge.

Sarawak Report has learned from its own government sources that Jho Low’s engagement in Chinese politicking and influence buying abroad has indeed continued at the highest levels. His lobbying in Washington and attempts on behalf of China to trade cash and hostages for the extradition of the wanted billionaire Miles Guo has already landed the rap star Pras Michel in jail with 14 year sentence earlier this year, likewise the republican lobbyist Nancy Lum Davis has been sentenced to two years.

Sarawak Report has also exposed the involvement of Obama’s former fundraiser Frank White in the China/Jho Low network and the former Republican chief fundraiser, Elliot Broidy, who himself escaped jail through a Presidential pardon from Trump in 2020 for advocating the Guo/Najib agenda.

Despite such exposure, Jho Low has continued to find protection at the highest levels in China, and according to our information even attended secret talks in Kuala Lumpur as part of a Chinese delegation at the end of last year to draw a line under the remaining issues with China relating to 1MDB and, more particularly, the Chinese state’s scandalous role in assisting the imprisoned former PM Najib Razak in the cover-up.

Jho Low himself was pivotal to that cover-up, whereby the embattled Najib, having been exposed by Sarawak Report and then the US Department of Justice for stealing billions of dollars from the bogus sovereign fund, raised further billions in loans from China to cover the resulting debts.

The loans, negotiated primarily by Jho Low on behalf of Najib, were on the pretext of funding Belt & Road projects that were either fraudulently inflated (the East Coast Rail Line) or never materialised (the Sabah Pipeline Project). As documents published by Sarawak Report (now confirmed by numerous court cases) have shown, the Chinese negotiators were fully aware of the fraudulent purpose and facilitated the laundering of the borrowed money through Chinese state banks and companies, primarily through Kuwait.

At the time it was widely noted that Najib concurrently signed up to key economic and defence deals that brought Malaysia more closely under the influence of China.  It also left Malaysia with enormous debts and interest payments, totalling some $3 billion for the pipeline deal alone, which have continued to hang over the heads of successive Malaysian governments tasked with repaying the enormous 1MDB debts and cover-up costs.

According to Sarawak Report’s exclusive information, Jho Low’s intricate knowledge of the situation and contacts in Malaysia played into his involvement in a key resolution of this situation by the present government which, we understand, has achieved a settlement whereby China will write off the debt in return for drawing a line under the matter and Beijing’s own sordid involvement. Conditions have included no future claims against the construction companies CCCC and China Pipeline Bureau or the two banks, Exim Bank and ICBC, who raised and laundered the money.

Far more controversial will have been the demand also that Malaysia’s Red Notice should continue to be suspended against Jho Low and future extradition efforts set aside. This appears to be a continuation of the negotiations that were initiated by Jho’s US lawyers with the Ismail Sabri government in 2022, since when the INTERPOL notice by Malaysia has been noticeably absent.

Sarawak Report has been unable to confirm the extent to which Malaysia may have pledged to withhold its prosecution of the fraudster as part of these negotiations. Today the minister in charge of the 1MDB Asset Recovery Task Force, Johari Abdul Ghani, went on record to denounce and deny knowledge of any such decision.

However, a perceived progress in the direction of settling Malaysia’s issues with China over 1MDB at the end of 2025 may well have spurred Jho Low’s US lawyers into seeking to clear his copybook in the United States by offering to pay back further 1MDB related debts (he was touting RM1.5 billion / $380 million in 2022) in return for a radically diminished sentence in that country or a free pass altogether.

It was on similar terms that both Elliot Broidy and Frank White were able to cut deals and escape jail time themselves, by surrendering up their 1MDB-related earnings to the Department of Justice. Likewise, the Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner, who drastically diminished his jail time by handing over at least some of the money stolen from Malaysia.

Sarawak Report is awaiting official comment on the news of the partial settlement from government sources in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, publishers have launched pre-sales for the upcoming book on China’s Belt & Road entanglement in Malaysia’s 1MDB cover up phase.  The China Contract, written by Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown and due for publication in October can be accessed from The Westbourne Press and will be available through Amazon.

It has taken 8 long years of legal pushback by Goldman Sachs for the bank to finally settle with shareholders for the damage done to them by its crooked dealings over 1MDB.  Late April it was reported an accommodation has been reached which will be submitted on 20th of this month.

There is no detail being given as to the size of the compensation to the plaintiffs who were led in the action by a Swedish pension fund, Sjunde AP-Fonden, (many of whose investors will not have lived to see this tardy acknowledgement of responsibility).

What is clear is that the top tier of the bank, who all received record bonuses from the outrageously overpriced 1MDB bond offerings (which acted as a front for the theft of billions), will have remained financially untouched. Many of those executives had been criminally indicted by Malaysia before the charges were bought off by a relatively meagre $2.5 billion snap settlement with the Muhyiddin government, over which many questions still linger.

Sarawak Report first reported exclusive details of the shareholder complaint in 2019, which gave an extraordinary insight into how those at the top, in the Management Committee of the bank, brushed aside compliance concerns and ignored not only the glaring red flags around Jho Low and the ‘guarantors’ at Abu Dhabi’s IPIC/Aabar fund, but the trenchant warnings of their more honest leading figures in Asia.

In particular, David Ryan, President of Goldman Asia, had warned in advance against the second bond issue crafted by the ambitious new Head of Southeast Asia for the bank, Tim Leissner, that there was no commercial justification put forward for the borrowing and that the power purchase plans being touted could easily have been funded by the proceeds of the earlier bond issue, which did not appear to have been spent.

He was not to know, unlike Leissener who was directly involved in the conspiracy, that this money had long since been stolen, but plainly he suspected it and cautioned those at the top of the bank against the lucrative proposals.  However, it was Leissner who was lionised by his bosses for the record profits being made out of their brand new stamping ground of Malaysia and Ryan, his senior, who was forced out of the bank.

Alex Turnbull, son of the previous Australian prime minister who also spoke out about the dodgy set up, was likewise squeezed out of Goldman Sachs. This was all during the period post-2008 and the global financial crash for which Goldman was largely responsible, after which it was supposed to have implemented far reaching compliance reforms.

The lawyers for the shareholders laid out a devastating litany of irresponsible tactics in Goldman’s new stamping ground, namely ’emerging markets’.  By the time the bank got stuck into its new Malaysia initiative (gaining its license from a grateful Najib in November 2009 after the bank had advised Jho Low behind the scenes on setting up 1MDB and its initial bonds) Goldman had already created outrage and provoked an angry lawsuit over its deception of the Libyan Investment Authority from which the bank had also walked away with a fortune.

It was the same Andrea Vella responsible for that scandal who then acted as Leissner’s line manager, protector and confidant over 1MDB.  He and expensive lawyers would succeed in persuading a London judge (but few others) of his innocence in the Libyan affair and was only finally ‘let go’ by Goldman Sachs in 2020 having been banned from banking by the Federal Reserve in the light of his 1MDB record.

The shareholder plaintiffs rightly pointed to this toxic cocktail of a red flagged non-transparent bond issue, guided through by a banker whose record was being challenged by another emerging country’s sovereign fund on behalf of a second such fund plainly advised by a known fraudster. Yet Goldman had stayed in the deal and taken the record cut of 11% for underwriting those bonds.

The penalties eventually heaped on the bank were foreseeable owing to such negligence, fraud and greed, said the shareholders. New post-transaction monitoring rules which the President of the bank, Gary Cohn had assured them were being implemented, should have alerted the bank exactly where the bond money had gone, namely into a set of fraudulent off-shore mirror companies set up by the conspirators at 1MDB and Aabar.

The bankers at Goldman’s New York HQ, including then CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who met with Najib and then Jho Low at least three times, clearly decided to engage in this lucrative purloining of Malaysia’s public money on a crooked calculation that the Malaysian prime minister had such a grip on his country that the billions stolen could be massaged away through a planned ‘floatation’ of 1MDB’s valueless shares which Najib would ensure would be bought up by pension funds and other public savings bodies.

His successor David Soloman partied at the Hamptons on the proceeds of the money stolen from the pensions of humble Malaysian public servants and others after fixing the cheap settlement with the Muhyiddin government.

The only reason Goldman have now finally settled with shareholders also, having tried every legal manoeuvre to deter the plaintiffs, is because they could not afford to have the appalling allegations laid out in this indictment aired in court in a case they would likely lose.

Read about the contents of the case the bank had to run away from in the original Sarawak Report articles based on the case filed in 2019.

https://sarawakreport.org/2019/11/goldman-sachs-lied-and-denied-over-1mdbs-billion-dollar-thefts/

https://www.sarawakreport.org/2019/11/devastating-indictment-by-goldman-shareholders-raises-pressure-on-top-dogs-at-worlds-most-powerful-bank-exclusive-report/

Update: May 21st it was announced Goldman Sachs had agreed to pay $500 million to settle the class action lawsuit

Late on Wednesday night KL time the Editor of Sarawak Report received a series of peculiar WhatsApp text messages on her personal phone.

They purported to be from Bukit Aman Police Station requiring her attendance at the Terengganu Magistrates Court in five days time, Monday 27th April, as the defendant in trial against her.  Had her lawyer informed her the police officer asked?

The answer was that the lawyer had themselves not been informed, therefore no.

Just last December the Malaysian High Court set aside a bizarre two year jail sentence issued out of the same Magistrate’s Court for what it judged was criminal defamation of the local Sultanah. This appears to be related to the same matter.

The ‘crime’ was to have in 2018 referred to the wife of the Sultan, as opposed to the sister of the Sultan, as having provided an introduction for the financial advisor Jho Low to the newly formed Terengganu Investment Authority.

Sarawak Report issued an apology and immediate correction, but was not able to fulfil a demand to pay RM300 million in compensation or purchase front page apologies in every publication in Malaysia.

The original criminal complaint had been set aside by prosecutors in 2018 but was revived behind the scenes (and without informing the defendant) in 2022/23, resulting in an unannounced trial in late December 2023 where the two year sentence was issued.

This process took place alongside aggressive civil litigation, whereby an initial High Court decision that Sarawak Report was innocent of defamation was appealed by the Sultanah’s lawyers and  overturned by the Appeal Court, citing some ground breaking theories in the realm of defamation law.

Sarawak Report financed the costs of that decision, thereby protecting local businesses who had been caught up in the suit under Malaysia’s draconian and outdated printing and publication laws.

It seems the Sultanah wants the editor of Sarawak Report behind bars in her local jailhouse as well, no matter the evident embarrassment this case represents to her relative who performed the introduction.

Sarawak Report had taken care in its publication at the time not to enter further into the business relationships between members of the Terengganu household and Jho Low nor to suggest any complicity in the financier’s later fraudulent dealings.

Indeed, the book praised the royal family for promptly stepping back when Jho Low’s ulterior motives and self-dealing became evident. Other publications have since cited the business ties in greater detail but were not pursued.

In its December ruling the High Court pointed to the fundamental abuses of due process under Malaysian law, resulting in what it judged to be a mistrial by the Terengganu Magistrate’s Court. This included the failure to press charges in person, the holding of a trial in absentia and indeed the total failure to notify Sarawak Report‘s editor and her lawyers that the trial was taking place.

The judge ruled that the prosecution should either be conducted again in the proper manner or the case should be dropped entirely.  Given the highly untoward manner in which a case that had been filed for No Action by prosecutors in 2018 was revived four years later, Sarawak Report was led to understand by the AGC that this should be the end of the affair.  Apparently this logic has been overruled.

The ‘notification’ by text appears to be an attempt to nod in the direction of the correct due processes demanded by the judge.  Perhaps the prosecution will argue to the Magistrate that on this occasion the defendant has at least been given 5 days notice of the trial and presumably the opportunity to hop on an expensive flight to Kl at short notice (warfare permitting) in order to be arrested, charged and prosecuted, albeit without time for a defence to be devised.

Sarawak Report would be surprised to find a single KL lawyer who would acknowledge this to be a fulfilment of the legal and diplomatic processes required to try the author of a foreign publication in a local Malaysian magistrate’s court. The rules are there in the penal code and the High Court spelt them out in December.

Sarawak Report therefore texted back to the Bukit Aman police officer:

“My lawyer has not been informed of any of this. You ought to have gone through the proper channels but seem to be repeating the same behaviour as before in a manner that was set aside by the court owing to the violations of due process. Please could you approach me through the correct diplomatic and legal channels and stop sending me these strange last minute personal texts. I am on the other side of the world, I have engagements all next week (including a talk I will be delivering at the UK Foreign Office where I will most certainly raise this latest extraordinary development) and I have no plans to visit Malaysia where I have no business or any other ties. What you accuse me of is not a crime in either my country or very many others. My book was published in the UK and I have never set foot in Terengganu. My lawyer is [NAME], as you should know since he got the last Magistrate ruling thrown out for being conducted on these exact same lines.”

The (senior) police officer responded “Ok Madam. Understood. Thanks.”  

Sarawak Report‘s lawyer has yet to receive any information or validation that this proposed if highly untoward trial will be going ahead as indicated by the series of personal texts, which the editor can confirm comes from a genuine number.

It is notable that whilst the authorities in Malaysia continue to successfully retrieve billions of stolen dollars as a result of Sarawak Report‘s exposure of Jho Low and the former prime minister Najib Razak, the sole acknowledgement or reward received for that dangerous service from successive governments has been a series of INTERPOL Red Notices, prosecutions, fines and now this second attempt at issuing a jail sentence.

Mysteriously, on the other hand, Malaysia has dropped its Red Notice against the perpetrator of those actual grand crimes and thefts, Jho Low himself who now resides in China.