Billion Dollar Whale

by Tom Wright

  Soon after, Low became nonexecutive chairman, Asia, for EMI Music Publishing and joined the firm’s advisory board. In an instant, the position at EMI gave him serious credentials in the music industry, elevating him from the status of a simple rich party boy and gambler. This was his big play. A media empire would generate profits to pay money back to 1MDB. In the first two stages of the heist, Low had simply taken about $3 billion—and spent wildly.

  Now, he was aiming to build a real business, with actual profits. Low had started Red Granite in 2010, but The Wolf of Wall Street would put the production company on the map. The film, coupled with the EMI deal, would, Low hoped, put to rest some of the questions that dogged him regarding his business interests and the source of his wealth.

  As Low arrived back on the boat with his shopping bags, the atmosphere was buzzing. Low was worried the gossip columnists, out in force around Saint-Tropez in the summer, would catch wind of what was going on.

  “Noah—need to manage press carefully,” he wrote to Tepperberg. “Sony boss sent me an email and know abt all the performances! Haha. I hope press doesn’t know yet.”

  The stars began to arrive on the Serene. Kate Upton, the American model, made a dramatic entrance on a helicopter. Amid a shower of sparklers, Low presented her with Hermès Birkin bags worth tens of thousands of dollars. Low told friends he craved the company of beautiful women, especially models, as if they validated his importance. In an intimate setting, he remained a reserved character, often at a loss for what to say—he was not even especially charming—but he reveled in being the center of female attention.

  There was a more practical element to the showmanship. As well as the stars, a number of Middle Eastern royals, including a Dubai prince, had come on board for the party. These royals had all the money in the world, but even they could not access the kind of crowd Low was able to muster—and the Malaysian understood that this was his edge. By delivering Hollywood to them, he was gaining prestige for himself with these powerful Middle Eastern figures—and, he hoped, opening the door to future deals.

  Punctuated by Kanye West’s performance, the party raged until deep into the morning. The rap star was there with Kim Kardashian, his girlfriend, whose every move was noted by the press corps. Some gossip columnists did get wind of the party, focusing on the presence of West and Kardashian, as well as that of Chris Brown and Rihanna, who spent hours in conversation that evening despite his physical abuse of her three years earlier. Some newspapers even wrongly reported that Brown had rented the Serene. Low stayed out of the press. He could no longer afford the scrutiny of his dealings that press coverage would entail. No matter: Everything about the party was meant to indicate that Low had arrived. He could be content with the secret life of a powerful billionaire.

  As the party ratcheted down, most of the revelers left the boat, but a couple of dozen, including Low, his brother, Szen, DiCaprio, the nightclub owners, and the “bottle girls,” stayed on. At 6 a.m., as the party finally fizzled, the superyacht pulled anchor and began to sail toward Portofino, the holiday destination on the Italian Riviera.

  While he was paying for their services, Low had always been polite with movie and music stars, but now the power balance began to shift. In April 2013, less than a year after the EMI deal, Low was hanging out in Jungle City Studios, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, a place where Jay-Z, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and countless other stars had cut tracks. Low was there to record his own song for fun, his version of the soulful ballad “Void of a Legend.”

  The song had been written by Antoniette Costa, a singer who recently had begun to date Joey McFarland. Low loved singing but had a tuneless, high-pitched voice, and it took eight hours, and judicious use of Auto-Tune, for Costa, working with a studio producer, to get an acceptable version in the can.

  As Low sang, friends, including McFarland and Swizz Beatz, came in and out of the recording booth. It was well into the evening when Busta Rhymes and Pharrell Williams, longtime clients of Jungle City, dropped by the studio where Low was now relaxing, a little inebriated.

  “Yo!” Low called out to Busta Rhymes, ecstatic to see him. “I own you. You’re my bitch!”

  The comment, meant to be taken lightly—a playful reference to Low’s EMI purchase—went over like a lead balloon. Busta Rhymes, a thickset rapper, actor, and record producer, looked put out but stifled any remark, while Pharrell tried to cover up the embarrassment with small talk. Low was trying to act like a mogul, but he was awkward, an imposter who for all his money didn’t quite fit the bill.

  Chapter 28

  All the Wealth in the World

  New York, August 2012

  On a Saturday in late August, Joey McFarland was sitting in his producer’s chair in Manhattan’s financial district. The neighborhood, quiet on a Saturday, had been taken over by the production of The Wolf of Wall Street. Martin Scorsese was directing a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio, as Jordan Belfort, and Cristin Milioti, playing the role of Belfort’s first wife. Sitting a block from the actual Wall Street, it was hard for McFarland to fathom how he got there. Less than three years after meeting Low in Whistler, and with basically zero film experience, here he was producing a movie with the biggest director and actor on the planet.

  Of all the people swept into his orbit, Jho Low helped change McFarland’s situation more than anyone’s. At forty years old, McFarland had gone from a minor talent booker to a top-flight film producer. McFarland and his Red Granite partner Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, had not undertaken any apprenticeship in filmmaking—and had released only one film, Friends with Kids—but they were now rubbing shoulders with professionals who had served for decades in the industry. For Scorsese and DiCaprio, these interlopers were a godsend; not only did they control seemingly limitless cash, but they also permitted the pair boundless artistic freedom. When Scorsese wanted to crash a real white Lamborghini in the opening scenes of the movie—an event from Jordan Belfort’s life—he was able to get Red Granite to foot the bill, even though most producers would have insisted on a replica for such purposes. As the money men, McFarland and Aziz’s presence on set was tolerated.

  Back in Los Angeles, McFarland lived in a one-bedroom place in West Hollywood. Embarrassed by such a modest abode, he avoided inviting his movie star friends over. Now McFarland was residing in the Time Warner penthouse in New York with Jho Low. Moreover, McFarland had established himself as one of the Malaysian’s closest friends. The pair became inseparable, traveling to the spa together, to Las Vegas to gamble, and on ski trips in the United States and Europe.

  McFarland began to rewrite his life story, airbrushing out his talent-booking past. Hung up about his lack of experience, McFarland told interviewers that he’d been in and out of the film world for years and, prior to that, had worked in private equity. He made no mention of the gyros restaurant in Cincinnati. Film-industry professionals, including those working for Red Granite, considered him a parvenu.

  Despite his humble origins, McFarland had become the face of Red Granite. Riza was shy, and was not in the office much, preferring to play or watch tennis, while the American enjoyed the limelight. Low stayed off the set, worried about attracting press coverage. After earlier telling Red Granite employees that Low was the financier, McFarland now took to saying the money came from the Middle East.

  Low had taken pains to ensure this fiction might stand up to some scrutiny. Red Granite Capital, a company owned by Riza Aziz, had received more than $200 million from the bonds arranged by Goldman. This money had initially moved into a shell company controlled by Al Qubaisi of IPIC and his employee, Mohamed Al Husseiny. As filming began, Al Husseiny began to hang around the Red Granite offices and attend screenings, as if he represented the money behind the production. The cash received by Red Granite Capital went to finance The Wolf of Wall Street, as well as to pay for Riza’s acquisition of properties in Los Angeles, New York, and London from Low—the bulk of the homes Low had acqu
ired two years earlier. In public, the Red Granite executives were coy about financing. McFarland refused to tell a reporter from the Hollywood Reporter about funding, while Riza vaguely explained that money came from investors in the Middle East and Asia.

  Although he kept his name out of the press and avoided the set, Low continued to deepen his relationship with DiCaprio as filming progressed. At one point during production, the Malaysian spent more than a week at the Venetian in Las Vegas, accompanied at times by DiCaprio, Riza, and McFarland. He told friends he liked the quietness of the gambling floor, where cell phones are prohibited, as it allowed him to escape. The paid-for gambling excursions also helped reel in the actor.

  The Red Granite executives were hoping for a long-running collaboration. In the fall of 2012, McFarland had dinner at Le Bernardin, a top French restaurant in Manhattan, with DiCaprio and South Korean director Park Chan-wook to discuss another possible film project. Low, Riza, and McFarland also began to mimic aspects of DiCaprio’s lifestyle. An avid collector of movie posters, the actor introduced Riza to Ralph DeLuca, a New Jersey–based dealer in film memorabilia, and the Red Granite principals began to use money taken from the 1MDB funds to acquire millions of dollars in collectibles from him. In October 2012, Riza paid DeLuca the huge sum of $1.2 million for an original film poster for Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis, which he hung in his private office at Red Granite.

  McFarland wanted to go one better. “What is the greatest poster in [the] world that is obtainable?” McFarland asked DeLuca in an email. Over the next eighteen months, McFarland and Aziz would arrange to buy more than seventy items from DeLuca at a cost of over $4 million, plastering the walls of the Red Granite offices and Riza’s Park Laurel condominium in New York with posters. McFarland sent DeLuca and Riza lists of posters he wanted to collect.

  “I have decided—I have to own these. Its [sic] a must. Not to mention a 1000 others… Can’t sleep—obsessing,” he wrote.

  “Hahaha now you feel my pain!! Mwahahahaha—$$$$,” Riza replied.

  “I’m obsessing over posters… we are such neurotic obsessive creatures… WE HAVE TO OWN THEM ALL,” McFarland retorted.

  As DiCaprio got closer to Low and McFarland, the friends even went to view mansions together. On September 20, 2012, the actor forwarded a confidentiality agreement from his broker at Sotheby’s to McFarland. The agreement gave the signer the right to view a property situated on 658 Nimes Road in Bel-Air that was on the market for a staggering $150 million. The owner was a Saudi sheikh. Not wanting the publicity, Low used McFarland as a front, and the American signed as the prospective buyer.

  Low and McFarland toured the property, one of the most expensive in the United States, comprising multiple houses clustered around a central driveway on 40,000 square feet of land, with more than twenty-eight bedrooms and more than thirty bathrooms, in addition to an infinity pool with views over Los Angeles, a gym, a spa, and a cinema.

  Despite almost three years of incessant acquisitions, Low was not sated. He’d offloaded his Hollywood mansion to Riza Aziz and now was looking for a palace fit for a billionaire. Like William Randolph Hearst, whose castle at San Simeon in California remains a symbol of the excess of the early twentieth century, Low yearned for the most opulent property conceivable.

  In the end, Low did not make the acquisition. He bid $80 million for the property, but the Saudi sheikh rejected the offer. There were some things—although not many—that even Low could not afford.

  On November 17, 2012, Low and Riza entered the Monkey Bar in the Hotel Elysée in Midtown Manhattan, an establishment with red-leather sofas and booths that created an old-vibe Hollywood feel. The place, owned by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, was popular with Midtown lawyers and bankers, as well as movie and media types. As glasses of champagne were handed around, the Red Granite principals mingled with Hollywood A-listers, from DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis to Harvey Keitel and Steven Spielberg.

  The guests had assembled for Martin Scorsese, who was turning seventy. He was deep in the filming of The Wolf of Wall Street, which had been pushed off schedule by Hurricane Sandy in late October. He’d been told only a few close friends were attending his birthday celebration, but there were some 120 people in the bar, which had been rented out for the evening. The celebration included a montage of blooper clips from Scorsese movies, a four-course meal, and a champagne toast to the director.

  As a birthday gift, Low had sent Scorsese a Polish-language version of the movie poster for Cabaret. In an old-fashioned typewritten note, Scorsese later thanked Low “for the amazing gifts!” The “very rare” Polish-language poster “made my 70th all the more special.”

  This period was the high-water mark of Low’s influence in Hollywood. Only two weeks earlier, Low had hosted his own birthday party, the circus-themed extravaganza that would go down in Las Vegas lore as the most expensive private party ever held (the details of which opened this book). The evening featured an indoor Ferris wheel, circus performers, and a who’s who of Hollywood—not to mention Britney Spears emerging from a fake birthday cake. All of Low’s contacts attended, not just the stars like DiCaprio, but also Tim Leissner, Al Husseiny, and other Low business associates. Almost everyone who had played a role in facilitating Low’s triumph was on hand to celebrate with him. Low arranged for every aspect of the event to be paid from the 1MDB bonds, and the amounts were staggering. For an evening’s work, Swizz Beatz, Low’s producer friend and husband of Alicia Keys, received $800,000 from a shell company funded from the stolen money.

  This was peak Jho Low. The filming of The Wolf of Wall Street was nearly over, he was at the height of his powers, and the celebrations were so frequent they practically blurred together. A few days after the Vegas party, Low, Aziz, and McFarland presented DiCaprio with an unforgettable present for his thirty-eighth birthday on November 11. There was buzz around The Wolf of Wall Street—DiCaprio had been delivering some electrifying scenes, and photos were leaking online. The producers talked about the possibility of him finally winning an Oscar.

  As a gift, they managed to secure Marlon Brando’s best actor statuette from the 1954 film On the Waterfront—a nod to DiCaprio that he was overdue for one himself. Years earlier, the statuette had gone missing from Brando’s Hollywood home, and despite an Academy bylaw that prohibits the sale of Oscars, it had ended up with DeLuca, who charged $600,000 for it. DiCaprio was intrigued by Brando, whose progressive politics led him to reject another Oscar in 1973 in protest at the depiction of Native Americans in film. DiCaprio, too, had become politically outspoken, campaigning for the land rights of indigenous people in North America over corporate interests, and drawing attention to how climate change was endangering their way of life.

  Over Christmas that year, McFarland had a hamper of caviar from Petrossian, a favorite of Scorsese’s, sent to the director and his wife’s town house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and he spent $2,245 of company money on a bottle of Cristal Rose champagne for Scorsese at the Wolf of Wall Street wrap party held at Marquee, the New York nightclub owned by Tepperberg and Strauss of the Strategic Group. Despite the producer’s lavish gift, when Scorcese passed McFarland in the lobby of the Time Warner building, the director didn’t seem to recognize him. As he did for all his films, Scorsese sent key chains to everyone as his wrap gift.

  Whatever the men’s personal dynamic, even before filming was finished, Riza and McFarland were attending readings with Scorsese for The Irishman, a film project involving Robert De Niro that was next on the director’s slate, and Red Granite was attempting to line up DiCaprio to headline a remake of Papillon, the 1970s Steve McQueen hit movie.

  Still, after this season of celebration, as filming wrapped up toward the end of December, Low and DiCaprio hadn’t had their fill of partying. The Malaysian had one more treat for the cast and other friends.

  A Boeing 747-400 can hold around six hundred passengers, but the VIP-configured model Low had chartered, with plush reclin
ing seats, was a more spacious alternative for the forty or so people who boarded in Los Angeles at the end of December. Atlas Air rented these kinds of planes to professional sports teams or Saudi princes. The cost of chartering such an aircraft was in the tens of thousands of dollars—per hour. The guests included Jamie Foxx, Kevin Connolly, Jonah Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a handful of models. On the plane, Low and McFarland were as inseparable as ever.

  The group was heading to Sydney, Australia, where they spent a couple of days partying on yachts, gambling, and eating. On one yacht, DiCaprio, a black baseball cap turned backward, took a shot at DJing, while Foxx, dressed in a buttoned-up white shirt and black jacket, danced. Beautiful women in short black dresses milled around the dance floor. One rich Thai friend of Low’s, Chavayos Rattakul, posted a picture on his Instagram of gambling chips on the floor of the Star, a casino overlooking Sydney’s Darling harbor. “A good way to waste a million dollar,” he wrote in the caption. In the casino complex a Marquee nightclub recently had opened, owned by Tepperberg and Strauss. For the group’s New Year’s Eve celebration in the club, Low had ordered ice baths to be filled with scores of bottles of Cristal champagne. “Showtime!!!!!!!!!!!!” Swizz Beatz wrote on Instagram.

  After the stroke of midnight, the group got back on the Boeing 747-400 for a fifteen-hour flight to Las Vegas. After crossing the international dateline and being picked up by stretch limousines, the partygoers made for LAVO, a nightclub also co-owned by Tepperberg and Strauss—ready for yet another New Year’s countdown. Perhaps in an effort to sustain the group for a few more hours of partying, Low ordered buckets of KFC chicken. Dressed in a red shirt with black pants and sports sneakers, Low at one point took a swig of champagne directly from the bottle. Someone put on a fake panda head. As midnight approached for the second time that day, models danced on the bar, holding champagne bottles lit with sparklers.