Book Review: Billion Dollar Whale

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World

** spoiler alert ** Wow. My brain is fried from reading this.

I’ve been following the 1MDB scandal closely ever since it was raised by Sarawak Report. And I have talked to innocent acquaintances who had worked there as well. But nothing could have prepared me for the scale and scope of the 1MDB scandal that has been vividly retold in this grippingly well researched book.

Told in a linear timeline, Hope and Wright brought clarity on how Jho Low built a progressively complicated house of cards using corrupt officials, greedy corporations, opaque jurisdictions and naive celebrities to pull off the world’s biggest heist. There are genuinely surprising revelations here that is new even for me.

And I have been following this subject keenly and closely for a long time. I never knew that people associated with Mahathir introduced Xavier Justo to Clare Rewcastle Brown. I also didn’t know that the WSJ leaks about Najib’s account originated directly from members of the original 1MDB taskforce. The chapters in the book end just before the historical election that saw Najib’s defeat. The events that transpired after that (the seizure of Najib’s assets and The Equaminty, the arrest and subsequent charging of Najib) was briefly mentioned in the epilogue.

I do hope that the authors continue to cover this in an update for the paperback version of this book. Almost every WhatsApp chat discussion group that I am a part of have been ciculating an advance copy of this book as a pdf. In spite of this, this book has been sold out in all bookshops in Malaysia. If you had enjoyed this book, do support the authors by buying a copy when stocks are replenished

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.