Kebetulan, these guys punya recap newsletter is in my inbox:

We’ve been a bit slow to respond to some of the interesting 1MDB news trickling out in recent months, but things are getting interesting.

To recap:

One of Jho Low’s key deputies, Kee Kok Thiam, was booted out of Macau and sent back to Malaysia after his visa expired. The Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission was waiting and started the process of interrogating him. Then a few weeks later, he suddenly died of a heart attack, spurring a lot of conspiracy theories that he’d been “offed” by someone trying to stop him from testifying. (Our sources believe his death was genuine natural causes, but the stress of the experience and likely imprisonment could have precipitated the stroke.)

Today, we learned that Jasmine Loo, a lawyer at 1MDB who was instrumental in big aspects of the fraud was arrested by Malaysian authorities.

A Kuwait appeal court ruled to uphold convictions of a member of the royal family and a former Jho associate for money laundering and other financial crimes.

We previously reported in April that Jho Low is under house arrest near Shanghai and that Malaysian officials are negotiating with China for him to be handed over.

The thread that links all of this together is one country, China. For years, especially since Najib was ousted by a democratic election in 2018, Jho and his entourage have received safe haven from China. The reason for this is he, working with Chinese spymaster Sun Lijun and others, was in the midst of turning Malaysia into a puppet state of China. They were doing this by striking corrupt Belt and Road Initiative deals and funneling part of the over-priced contract revenue back to Malaysia through a convoluted series of transactions (many of them involving the Kuwait royal family member).

It was also from his base in China that Jho Low was attempting to use Donald Trump associates, including Elliot Broidy and Steve Wynn, to get the Department of Justice to drop their case against him as well as to turn over Guo Wengui (a key request of his boss, Sun Lijun).

Fast forward to 2023 and China is desperate to put a lid on the truth about the Belt and Road deals they did in Malaysia, which according to one former US government official I talked to were the single-most corrupt and conniving deals ever wrought under the program. In thanks for all the secret cash flows to cover up the 1MDB fraud, Najib was giving up key aspects of sovereignty and tiptoeing under the Chinese umbrella. Most Malaysians I’ve talked to aren’t really aware of this. (In my opinion, those are grounds for charges of treason. It’s proof that criminals do their worst crimes when covering up other crimes.)

Of course, the truth of the Malaysian Belt and Road deals are potentially disastrous for China if widely understood and communicated. They threaten Chinese efforts to both 1). Make money on huge infrastructure contracts around the world and 2. wield long-lasting, far-reaching influence in the developing world in particular. What country would sign up for a Belt and Road deal knowing this hidden dimension?

The government of Anwar Ibrahim is keen to deal. If China wants to clean up the Belt and Road deals and show the world there’s nothing to see in those Belt and Road deals, Malaysia will accept on a few conditions:

Actually clean up the deals and get rid of the corrupt, over-priced aspects of them. Cut any that don’t make strategic sense. Give up Jho and all his money. (This one isn’t that critical for Malaysia on a geostrategic level, but it may be necessary to clean up Malaysian politics and keep Najib in a prison cell for a long time). Now, as we laid out previously, it’s complicated because it would be a tricky dance. How does Malaysia get Jho without it being clear he was hiding in China, with Chinese protection? How does China ensure Jho doesn’t run his mouth about all his work as an agent of Chinese intelligence? Add to all of that the complexities of Malaysian politics and it’s clear why it’s not an open-and-shut case.

The story of Kee Kok Thiam and Jasmine Loo are interesting because of the details. We don’t yet know where Jasmine was before she was in Malaysia, but the reason Kee ended up in Kuala Lumpur is Macau deported him because of overstaying his visa. That shows that China is no longer supporting Jho’s entourage the way they once were. One by one, we might see all of those key people in China sent back:

Eric Tan, a.k.a. Fat Eric, Jho’s bag man and proxy.

Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil, the calm-and-cool money man Jho kept around for years.

Casey Tang, another key associate: Seet Li Lin, Singaporean friend and collaborator; and others.

Jasmine is certainly an interesting person for the MACC. She was close with Jho and a key part of the 1MDB fraud. The DOJ even seized her luxury apartment in New York City. But we heard that at some point in the last few years, she broke from the larger group of Jho lackeys and was considered by them persona non grata before coming back into the fold. She was supposedly in Cambodia at some point.