A ‘90s Rapper. A Fugitive. And the FBI

as a real life international tale of intrigue. It involves a long cast of characters, including a list Hollywood celebrities, a fugitive Malaysian businessman, the Chinese government, and both the Obama and Trump White Houses. My Bloomberg colleagues Anthony Cormier, Jason Leopold and Matthew can Well have captured this whole saga in a brilliant story for Business Week, and they're here with me now to tell us what they found. Matt at the center of this story is a Malaysian businessman.

His name is Joe Lowe. Can you tell us about him? So, Joel. His full name is low Take Joe, but everyone knows him as Joe loo. He is a Malaysian financier. He is from Penang on the West coast of Malaysia. He was the central figure in what is known as the one MDB scandal, which is one of the biggest alleged frauds of certainly the last twenty or thirty years. The central event here was the creation of a sovereign wealth

fund in Malaysia called one MDB. US prosecutors and others alleged that Joe essentially looted billions of dollars out of this fund, which he diverted to a yacht, art real estate in New York, in Los Ange Angelists, a Bombardier corporate jet. He was very well known in certainly in Hollywood entertainment circles, particularly notably he financed The Wolf of Wall Street, very good Martin Scorsese film. He was throwing parties in places like Centrope. He owned a boutique hotel

in Los Angeles. He had a penthouse in the Mandarin Oriental in New York, very closely associated over the years of Leonardo DiCaprio, who of course was the star of The Wolf of Wall Street. So yeah, if you were among a sort of a list social set between about two thousand and nine and twenty fifteen, you would very likely run into Joe Low and you might get gifts worth a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars

if he took a shine to you. For a period of about five years, he was one of the most prominent people on basically the global party circuit, and US prosecutors, among others, believe that this was all financed with stolen funds. Joe's thing was he was known to throw off cash. There's a story that we found in some of these FBI files in which Kim Kardashian was at a gambling sort of event with him in Las Vegas, and they

were playing baccarat in one of the private rooms. And as the men are gathered around the table, including Joe and some of his associates, Miss Kardashian is there and she's going to leave very early, but a friend sells her no, no, hang out for a little bit. Joe is known for throwing off chips at the end of the night, and so she continued to play baccarat with the men, and at the end of the night she

had some chips. She went to return them to Joe and he said, no, no, they're for you, and she goes to the cashier at the casino and learns that she has three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in winnings. This was one of the many times that Joe gave celebrities very extraordinary and extravagant gifts. One of the things that Joe quite often bought. In addition to artwork and real estate, he bought quite a lot of jewelry. But he was extraordinarily giving to a model called Miranda Kerr.

She's given back about eight million dollars in gems, earrings, pendants, things of that nature. He was, for all intents and purposes, a guy who celebrities were drawn to because of his fabulous wealth. Anthony, what do these celebrities say about Joe Lowe and his gift giving? We reached out to Miranda Kerr,

Kim Kardashian, and Leonardo DiCaprio for comment. Representatives for Kerr and DiCaprio declined to comment, and a representative for Kim Kardashian didn't respond to a detailed list of questions we sent Jason. One of the celebrities that Joe wanted to get close to was Raz Michelle. How did the two of them meet? Praz Michelle is one of founding members of the legendary hip hop group the Fujis group that sold millions of copies of their second album, The Score

back in the nineties. And Pros was a person who we learned from reporting this story, somebody that really wanted to be involved in politics. He was someone that spent a considerable amount of time raising money for President Obama's reelection campaign back in two and twelve. He had aspirations to work as an ambassador. And it's those connections that he had in some of the political circles that surrounded a former President Obama that Joe wanted to tap into.

Like most celebrities, they met at a nightclub. Pros is invited to a place in the meatpacking district in New York City, and all he knows is that the person he's with is from Malaysia and has loads of money. Gets to the nightclub and there's some sort of brassy folks in the crowd who grab the microphone and they're trying to show off their wealth, and they tell the

crowd that they're going to buy everybody a drink. Then this really unassuming, portly, baby faced Malaysian man pays twenty thousand dollars to grab the microphone, and he decides to sell the crowd that he's not just buying everyone a drink, but then he's going to buy every single bottle in the club, and that the staff members go across the

street to another nightclub and buy their liquor. Two. That gives you a sense of not only Joe those extravagant wealth, but how willing he was to share it not only with celebrities, but on these really lavish, extravagant parties. So this party took place in two thousand and six and they didn't reconnect for another five years. When Joe wanted to tap into process connections with President Obama and his administration. How did politics kind of form the basis of that

relationship almost from the start. So in twenty twelve, Barack Obama is running for reelection. Like a lot of celebrities prose, Michelle is a very passionate Obama supporter. He donated a fair bit of money. He wanted to raise money, and US prosecutors alleged that one of the ways he raised money was by getting it from Joelo. This was kind of a situation where the stars aligned. Joe wanted to build his influence in the US. He wanted to be

a bigger player. And of course, you know, being a donor to someone like Barack Obama helps make you a player, and so did Proz. So what is alleged by US prosecutors is Joel, who, of course, as a non US citizen, is not permitted to be donating to American political campaigns, sent about twenty one million dollars to Prize, who then turned around and took a portion of that money, about two million, and filtered it out to support Obama's reelection effort.

And this forms the basis of some of the criminal case against Pros. Michelle, what do you mean when you say filtered it out? Of course, if you are Joel Malaysian citizen, you can't just write a check to the Obama campaign. They won't take it. They have to be convinced that you're not someone who's prohibited from donating, ie, only an American or a permanent resident can donate to

a US political campaign. So what Pros is accused of is taking this money from Joelo, using that money to make some donations in his own name and in the

name of one of his companies. Thus making it look like this money was coming from him, a US citizen, and also filtering out a bunch of this cash to what are called straw donors, who are essentially middlemen who you know, if I write a check to someone and they then turn around and write a check to a political campaign, that person is functioning as a straw donor.

For me, I am the real donor, although on anyone's disclosure as far as a campaign is concerned, that middleman will be the donor, so it conceals the origins of the donation, so you can't see that it came from a foreign donor exactly, Jason, What does praz Michelle say

about all this? So, proz Michelle's lawyer, David Kenner has said that proz Michelle he relied on advisors to manage his financial activities, essentially saying that he didn't do anything wrong and that he related on experts to advise him on how he should proceed. And Joe's desire to get close to the top of the US government kind of paid off that he actually was able to meet President Obama.

Joe had this desire to be seen and photographed with, certainly with celebrities and and Obama was, you know, the political figure that he really wanted to be seen with. In two thousand and twelve, there are campaign events being planned and Praz is urging to allow Joe to attend some of these fundraising events, which he's not allowed to first of all because he's being told he's a he's

a foreigner, and just that's something they can't do. And finally gets to the end in two thousand and twelve, in around November twenty and twelve, where there's a holiday party at the White House and Prose again asks can Joe go? Can he attend this? And while he's there,

he's photographed with President Obama. And so that's sort of like this big trophy for Joe to have this photograph, and that you know, made him feel good just having that, and it also put Prase into a position where he could actually helped sell the fact that he had these connections. And that was certainly one of those instances where optics were very important, Joe being seen with Obama, Prose being in his own right planning a campaign event as well

where he too is seated with President Obama. The relationship between PRIs and Joe seems to be going pretty well until the one MDB scandal just explodes. What happens then Anthony, The FBI begins an investigation of how the money was

looted from one MDB and where it went. And what Joe does is he as this investigation heats up around him, he turns first to Prose, figuring the Prose has a rolodex of friends and politics, particularly in the Obama administration, and then he turns to the Chinese which is one of the few places on the globe that might be able to protect him from the long arm of American

law enforcement. What he asks of Prose is to assemble a team of influential political figures to begin to knock back the forfeiture complaints and the investigations of his business dealings. So Jolo turns to Praz, who has these connections to the Obama administration. But it's now twenty seventeen, the obamaministration is out, this is the Trump administration, and he doesn't have the same kind of rolodex or connections that he

would have in the past. So what Praz does is he begins to reach out to individuals who are close to the Republican administration. Our story continues after the break, Anthony, as you report, the FEDS are circling around Jolo looking for the billion stolen in the one MDB scandal, and Joe s his friend, the rapper Pras Michelle for help finding a sympathetic year in a new Trump White House. What does Pras do? First? He turns to businesswoman and

TV producer based in Hawaii called Nicki lum Davis. She had long supported Republican causes, She had connections in Republican circles, and Niki lum Davis suggests that Pras reach out to a Republican fundraiser based in California called Elliott Broidy. So what they wanted Broidy to do was essentially use his connections,

his connections to the Trump administration. He had been a well known fundraiser, He had connections to new individuals who were being appointed within the Trump administration, notably Jeff Sessions who was tapped to be Trump's Attorney General, and use those connections to help get this one MDB case dropped and essentially get the heat off the show. You know.

In order to secure Brody's help, Lowe had to first pay a retainer to him of eight million dollars if he was successful in getting the Justice Department to drop you any forfeiture actions related to one MDB in a certain timeframe six months was initially discussed. It would cost Joe seventy five million dollars, and it took longer than that, it would be fifty million. So right out of the gate, Broidy sees dollar signs and they're off to the races.

Broidy did go to the administration and plead Joe's case. How did that go? Broidy and lum Davis did try to get the Trump administration to back off its pursuit of Jolo and of assets believed to be improperly accumulated through the looting of one MDB. They didn't really get anywhere. They did certainly try at the top levels of the US government. But this was a really big DOJ prosecution. It had already attained a sort of momentum that would

have made it very difficult to stop at this point. So, despite the best efforts of Broidy and lum Davis, the Trump administration did continue going after Joe Lowe and all the assets that he and his allies had accumulated around the world. Anthony, what do Elliot Broidy and Nicky lum Davis say about their alleged role in this We reached out to Elliot Broidy and Nicky lum Davis for comment.

A representative for mister Broidy declined to comment, and representatives for missus Davis didn't respond to a detailed list of questions we sent mad. In the story, you write that Joe is getting concerned that he's not going to be able to make these charges go away, and he's looking for a different way out. So in the spring of twenty seventeen, this very flamboyant I think is the word

Chinese billionaire named Guongue starts getting into the news. He is a real estate developer from Beijing who moves to New York, takes up a massive apartment in the Cherry Netherland on Fifth Avenue with this amazing view of Central Park, and he sort of wears kind of funny outfits and gives a lot of media interviews, and he's kind of a curiosity to start, except then he starts making really amazing claims about corruption and the top leadership of the

Communist Party, and very specific claims about, for example, the families of certain leaders owning major assets. A lot of this was never proven. In fact, I think all of it was never proven. Most of it was denied over the years. But he certainly had people's attention, and Guo definitely had the attention of the Chinese government because one of the red lines in China is talking about the wealth of the leadership. That is a subject that is

the most sensitive imaginable. So at this time, China is, as we reported, looking for ways to silence Guo, And the position of the Chinese government in this period is Guo as a criminal. He's implicated in all kinds of white collar crime. We need to get him back, and we need to get him back by extraditing him on these non political offenses bribery, embezzlement, that kind of thing. They clearly want him quiet and silenced and back in

China where he can disappear. So at this point, with the government in Beijing very upset about Quo, very eager to silence him, Joe Lowe turns to prose Michel, his friend the Fuji's Rapper, to put together an effort to convince the US government to essentially kick Guoengue out of

New York. This is the chaotic early days of the Trump administration when kind of anything's possible, so it wasn't totally crazy for Joel and the Americans he ended up working with to think that they could press the Trump administration to allow or indeed to actually send Guo Ho Jolo was working on two priorities simultaneously, One to get the US to drop its pursuit of one MDB it drop its investigation of this huge alleged financial fraud, and

two to curry favor with China, basically as a plan B, so that Joelo would have a place to go if the worst happened and he ended up getting indicted, as indeed he was in late twenty eighteen. It's important to note that Guo has always denied wrongdoing in relation to these offenses of which he's been accused by China, and has said the Chinese government is pursuing a political vendetta

against him. Anthony report that despite all this plotting to influence the White House, none of this was actually working, and the advert to a curry favor with China wasn't working either. What happened the matter isn't being taken very seriously by the top levels of the Trump administration, at least in the beginning, and clearly as our documents and our reporting show that the FBI's International Corruption Unit is

marching right along investigating witnesses, scoping out bank accounts. They are really forging ahead with a criminal inquiry of Low and others. And so the Chinese learned that the Glow matter hasn't really proceeded. One way that they come up with to get this idea a hearing at the highest level is to call Steve Win. A lot of people know the Win casinos in Las Vegas. Steve Win is the founder of Win Resorts. Like a lot of casino companies, the big money at Win comes from not Vegas, but Macau,

which is the largest gambling hub in the world. So Wins someone who had done a lot of business in China, dealt with Chinese officials over the years, and crucially had access to President Trump. So Broidie asks when to put in a word with President Trump about Guoangue, this exiled billionaire living in New York who China wanted back. When does so? He brings up this matter with President Trump at a dinner in the White House in late June

twenty seventeen. He drops off a copy of Guo's passport with Trump's secretary in the course of attending this dinner, so that everyone knows who they're talking about. He then, through that summer July and August of seventeen, has a number of conversations with White House officials where he emphasizes that China really wants Guo sent home and would be willing to do various things for the US in exchange

for that happening. Now, Win has maintained, and his lawyers have maintained repeatedly that his role here was just a messenger, was just taking information from China to the White House, nothing more, not a lobbyist, you know, certainly not acting on behalf of the Chinese. The doj disagreed and actually sued to force Win to register as what's called a foreign agent for the Chinese government. Win ended up winning that case and convincing a judge that he did not

need to register. The US has a very unusual piece of legislations called the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Yeah Farah, And essentially what Farah means is, if you are working on behalf of a so called foreign principle meeting a foreign government or even a foreign company doing lobbying work in the United States, you have to register with the Justice Department, and you have to file these very detailed disclosures that say what you were paid, what you were doing,

who worked on it, that sort of thing. These registrations are, as you can imagine, a gold mine for journalists. They're absolutely incredible. If you do not regis and you lobby on behalf of a foreign principle, you can get into very deep trouble. And indeed that's part of what our characters here were accused of. In the end, Jason, all three of you are telling this story with a lot of insider detail. How did you find all of this out? How do you know all the details in your story?

We used quite a bit of public records, court documents. We also spoke to people close to the case. In addition to that, we were able to review FBI and Department of Justice records, and these records provided extraordinary insight. So let me set the scene for you a bit.

You know, the FBI is reaching out to representatives or attorneys for these celebrities or other individuals that are sort of caught up in this investigation, and they're trying to arrange interviews with Leonardo DiCaprio, with Kim Kardashian, and in some instances they're just sending a list of questions and their lawyers respond But in the case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kim Kardashian, who also did sit for interviews with the FBI, you know, the FBI asked them very pointed questions,

and those questions were, how do you know Jolo, when did you meet, what did he give you? And they're explaining that in great detail, But it goes even further because the FBI has asked for evidence. So in many instances, the government has obtained emails, photographs, of various types of records from these folks that really does lay bare exactly what they received from Jolo, and they were able to kind of follow the money and trace it to one MDP.

We'll be right back in the end. Despite all of this effort, the US didn't drop its investigation of one MDB. Guo was never extradited back to China, and all of these efforts were sort of fruitless. So where do things stand now with all the people who were involved in this story. Nicky lum Davis pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting violation of Farah, which is that legislation which requires anyone lobbying for a foreign client to

register with the Justice Department. Broidy pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate Farah. That was in October of twenty twenty, but he was then pardoned by President Trump in his final hours in office, so he didn't end up doing any time. Nicki lum Davis was recently sentenced to two years in prison for her own guilty plea and Anthony What happened to pras Michelle So Proz

faces the trial of his life. He's been charged with ten very serious crimes, ranging from witness tampering to conspiracy. He goes on trial in late March, and he has got really this very unusual witness list that promises to make the trial very interesting publicly. Among the potential witnesses are Presidents Obama and Trump, as well as the world's most famous movie star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Why didn't he take a plea like the others? Proz maintains that he is innocent.

His attorney will tell you that Praz was just acting as a connector. He didn't in fact mean to lobby on behalf of a foreign official government, and that he believes the US government the FBI has long been trying to flip him to get him to cooperate, and when he did not, they decided to charge him with these very serious offenses. If he's convicted, p stand to serve the most time as anyone convicted in the US on

these very serious charges. What's really fascinating about the records that we've been able to review that have not been disclosed before is how important the FBI and prosecutors saw prose as being a potential witness in their investigation into one MDB, and they note that they want to essentially try to leverage him to become a cooperating witness and try to get him to cop to a plea as

it related to these other crimes when he refused. One of the reasons that he refused, and his lawyer would say this is that they wanted him to plead guilty to a fair violation. It would require him to serve more than a year in prison and essentially give up the bulk of his wealth, and they felt that that was unfair in addition to the fact that he thought he had not committed any crimes. But you get to see really behind the scenes when the FBI is communicating

with the Justice Department. What they're saying is is if Proz does not cooperate, he knows what's coming right, And what ultimately came was this superseding indictment which listed or identified even more serious crimes that he's going on trial for now. At the end of March, Matt China didn't manage to have going way extradited. Where is he now? So Guo, despite the very energetic efforts of the Chinese government to get him sent home, did not end up

being deported or extradited. It's not totally clear why that happened. How he was able to keep his perch in the US may have something to do with his friendship with Steve Bannon, who kind of glommed on to Guo around mid to late twenty seventeen and became one of his close allies. He remains in the US. He's been trying to sell his apartment in the Sherry, Netherland. I believe the price has been cut a couple of times, and it's still in the market. At last check, he was

living in Connecticut, involved in various business ventures. He's had a very eventful, a very eventful life. But from his perspective, what's important is he remains safely in America and not back in China. And Anthony, where is Joelo? I think that's the four billion dollar question, right, I mean, the US government has been trying to find him. I can't count how many journalists have been trying to find him.

By all appearances, the last public appearance that has been reported was at the Shanghai Disneyland where he was spotted with his family. He has not been brought back to the US and remains a fugitive, even though the US government would like to charge him with you very very serious offenses, Matt, At the end of this incredible saga, what do you take away from this? Where I see the takeaway here have to do with the US China

relationship and Chinese foreign policy. We see in this story a really vivid example of how determined the Chinese government was to neutralize what it saw as a threat. Guoangue and his claims about corruption at the highest levels of the Communist Party. They were incredibly determined, and while Guo managed to stay in the US, it certainly wasn't for lack of trying by the Chinese government and with various

people contracted to help. And I think that's interesting in light of some of what we've seen in the news lately about Chinese efforts to sort of extend the reach

of law enforcement around the world. There's been a number of stories recently about Chinese police stations popping up, notably in Europe and in Canada, which a lot of governments are concerned are kind of beachheads for China to harass dissidents, to push for the repatriation of people who, for whatever reason it wants back, and essentially operate kind of outside any of the formal legal and diplomatic strictures that typically

regulate kind of law enforcement relations between countries. So I think we saw in this story a really remarkable tale of just how far this broader phenomenon went in one instance and might go again in the future. For me, it's another example of how money acts as a lubricant to both parties, celebrities and films, but also the very tippy top of the American political structure, and Joe had money which gave him access to not only a list stars,

literally the White House itself. We see how the allure of that money attracted people who felt like they could further his own twists as well as sort of their personal ones. Anthony Jason Matt thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you us, thank you, thanks for having us, Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to

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