Jho Low and the Architecture of Disappearance

The Man Who Spent a Country, Then Vanished

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about Najib Razak and his indictment. One name that featured along the way was Jho Low. The more research I did for yesterday’s story, the more fascinated I became about Low. And I made a mental note to write a followup article about him.

Low Taek Jho did not rise through elections, nor did he inherit formal authority. He entered history sideways, through access and a talent for operating just ahead of scrutiny. When the Malaysian courts sentenced Najib Razak again in December 2025, Low’s name surfaced repeatedly, not as a footnote but as an absence, a figure whose influence was everywhere in the record yet nowhere in the dock.

By then, Low had been a fugitive for nearly a decade.

Born in 1981 in Penang to a moderately wealthy Malaysian Chinese family, Low grew up with comfort but not prominence. His father traded commodities and cultivated relationships across Southeast Asia, instilling early the idea that proximity mattered more than position. By his teenage years, Low was already moving between cities and social circles with ease, absorbing a lesson that would later define his method, that power often resides in corridors rather than offices.

Low’s formal education began at Harrow and culminated at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he enrolled in the early 2000s. He did not distinguish himself academically in ways that would later matter to prosecutors or historians. What he did instead was build a network that spanned heirs and future policymakers, binding them together through generosity that bordered on spectacle. For his twentieth birthday in 2001, he rented Shampoo, then one of Philadelphia’s most prominent nightclubs, at a reported cost of $40,000. It was not the scale of the spending that stood out, but the intent, a young man rehearsing a version of himself that would later be deployed globally.

By his own retelling, Low imagined returning to Asia as a connector, someone who could help Western capital find opportunities in emerging markets. The reality proved messier. Early efforts to place himself within established investment firms faltered. What succeeded instead was his ability to position himself between institutions that did not fully understand one another.

Around 2005, Low introduced Malaysian political figures to Middle Eastern capital, most notably linking Najib Razak, then deputy prime minister, to Mubadala Development Company in Abu Dhabi. These introductions did not immediately yield transformative deals, but they conferred something more durable, credibility by association. Banks that might otherwise have hesitated began extending credit. Doors opened.

When Najib became prime minister in 2009, Low’s role evolved. He did not take an official position within the Malaysian government, a fact his defenders would later emphasize. Yet prosecutors across multiple jurisdictions would argue that this lack of title was precisely what enabled him to operate with such freedom. He became a shadow architect, advising, arranging, and directing without leaving fingerprints on formal documents.

The creation of 1Malaysia Development Berhad in 2009 offered Low his largest canvas. Publicly framed as a sovereign wealth fund intended to catalyze development, 1MDB quickly became a vehicle for borrowing on an extraordinary scale. Within months of its first joint venture with PetroSaudi International, hundreds of millions of dollars were moving through offshore entities later linked to Low.

Court records, bank transfers, phone logs, and internal emails revealed a pattern that repeated itself over several years. Funds raised ostensibly for infrastructure and energy projects were routed through shell companies in jurisdictions known for opacity, including the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. From there, the money moved onward to accounts controlled by intermediaries or by Low himself. By 2013, prosecutors estimated that more than $4.5 billion had been misappropriated from the fund.

As we have observed with criminals like Ramoni Abass aka Hushpuppi, Low’s personal spending during this period became legendary, not merely for its extravagance but for its visibility. He did not hide his wealth. He displayed it as if documentation were unnecessary. Between late 2009 and mid-2010 alone, authors Tom Wright and Bradley Hope would later estimate that he spent roughly $85 million on parties. Nightclubs in New York, Las Vegas, and the French Riviera became recurring venues. Champagne was ordered by the case. Private jets were chartered for guests whose presence was itself part of the transaction.

Celebrities became fixtures in this world, as accessories to its theater, not necessarily as beneficiaries of the fraud. Paris Hilton was reportedly paid six figures per appearance. Megan Fox, Kim Kardashian, and others attended events under similar arrangements. Leonardo DiCaprio emerged as one of Low’s closest companions during this period, receiving gifts that included art later valued in the millions. In 2013, Low helped finance Red Granite Pictures, the production company behind The Wolf of Wall Street, a film whose subject matter would later invite uncomfortable parallels.

These expenditures were not incidental. Prosecutors argued that they served both to launder money and to normalize its scale. When tens of thousands of dollars are spent on a single evening, the abnormal begins to feel routine.

Behind the scenes, Low worked closely with bankers who understood the mechanics required to sustain such flows. Goldman Sachs bankers Roger Ng and Tim Leissner played central roles in structuring the bond deals that raised billions for 1MDB. Leissner would later plead guilty in the United States, admitting to bribery and money laundering. Ng was convicted after a jury trial. Both testified to Low’s influence, describing him as the driving force behind the scheme.

By 2014, scrutiny was intensifying. Journalists began asking questions. Internal audits raised concerns. Low responded by accelerating, acquiring high-value assets that could serve as both status symbols and stores of value. He purchased luxury real estate in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and London. He amassed art, spending more than $300 million, including $48.8 million for a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, then the highest price ever paid for the artist’s work. Jewelry purchases between 2013 and 2014 alone exceeded $200 million. Miranda Kerr, whom Low dated briefly, received gifts later valued at $8 million, all of which she would eventually surrender to US authorities.

The unraveling began in earnest in 2015, when leaked documents published by Sarawak Report suggested that vast sums linked to 1MDB had entered Najib Razak’s personal accounts. The US Department of Justice opened a sweeping investigation, describing the case as the largest kleptocracy action in its history. Asset seizures followed. Low’s jet was impounded. Properties were taken. Artworks were recovered.

In the midst of this, Low disappeared.

Malaysian authorities issued arrest warrants while the United States charged him with money laundering and conspiracy. Interpol issued a red notice. Yet Low remained beyond reach. Reports placed him alternately in China and Macau. Malaysian officials claimed he was living in a residence linked to a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing denied harboring him.

In 2017, according to court testimony, Low suggested to associates that he was exploring political channels in Washington to defuse the investigation. Claims surfaced of contacts with figures connected to the Trump administration, including Jared Kushner. These allegations were denied. What is established is that Elliot Broidy, a Republican fundraiser, later pleaded guilty to lobbying US officials illegally on Low’s behalf.

By the time Najib Razak was ousted from office in 2018, Low had become the most visible absence in Malaysian public life. Trials proceeded without him. Sentences were handed down. Billions were recovered. Goldman Sachs paid nearly $5 billion in penalties and settlements. JPMorgan followed with its own settlement in 2025. Yet the central figure remained out of reach.

Today, 1MDB exists largely on paper. Its remaining assets and liabilities have been absorbed by Malaysia’s finance ministry. Some projects it initiated continue, stripped of the ambitions that once justified their creation. The scandal has reshaped diplomatic conversations about financial secrecy.

Low Taek Jho, now in his forties, remains officially a fugitive. He has issued occasional statements through lawyers denying wrongdoing. He has not appeared in court. His voice, once omnipresent in transaction records and testimonies, has faded from the public record.

He is unlikely to be remembered as a visionary or a financier in the conventional sense. His significance lies elsewhere, in what he revealed about the permeability of modern institutions, and about how wealth, when unmoored from accountability, can travel faster than the systems designed to contain it.

Unlike Najib Razak, Low has not faced judgment. His story has no courtroom ending, no sentence to mark a turning point. It continues instead as a question suspended between jurisdictions, an illustration of how global finance can produce figures who are indispensable to an event yet absent from its resolution.

For now, Jho Low exists primarily in recovered assets and in the institutional reforms prompted by his actions.

The man himself remains unseen.