NEW 1MDB BOMBSHELL - Second Jho Low Company Paid Hundreds of Millions To Both Najib Razak AND Khadem Al Qubaisi - EXCLUSIVE!
21 Jan 2016
Reproduced with permission
Khadem signs the deal while Najib looks on – but where did all the money go from the 1MDB/Aabar “strategic partnership”?
Sarawak Report can reveal that a second Jho Low company, Blackstone
Asia Real Estate Partners Limited, has paid hundreds of millions of
dollars into the personal accounts of both the Malaysian Prime Minister,
Najib Razak and also the ex-Chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Aabar fund, Khadem
al Qubaisi.
Aabar, a subsidiary of the IPIC sovereign wealth fund, has been
enmeshed in a series of highly questionable and loss making deals with
the scandal-torn Malaysian development fund 1MDB, which is directly
controlled by Razak, using Jho Low as his proxy.
A Sarawak Report investigation has established that Blackstone, a BVI
registered company which gives an address in Singapore, has been cited
as the sender of a series of enormous dollar currency payments to both
men between 2011 and 2012. Our information includes telegraphic
transfer documents passed through the American banking system.
The off-shore company uses a tactic familiar to watchers of Jho Low,
in that it apparently seeks to give the impression that it is associated
with the US global investment giant, the Blackstone Group. However,
there is no link whatsoever between the legitimate multi-national and
this secretive shell company.
Jho Low and Li Lin enjoying the high life
In fact documents obtained by international investigators have
ascertained that the signatory for the company is none other that Jho
Low’s deputy, Seet Li Lin.
Seet also acted in the same capacity for the
notorious company Good Star Limited, which lies at the heart of the 1MDB scandal and of which Low was the sole shareholder.
The records show that before it was liquidated in early 2013, just
three years after starting operations, Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners Limited transferred well over half a billion dollars into
accounts belonging to the two men. This was exactly the period when two
major loss-making power purchase deals were funded through billion
dollar bond issues raised under a joint guarantee by the two funds. Much
of that money appears to be unaccounted for, forming a large part of
1MDB’s current debt problems.
Khadem scooped nearly half a billion dollars (RM2 bn)
Documents obtained by Sarawak Report show that four separate payments
were made to Khadem Al Qubaisi’s Luxembourg account at Banque Privee
Edmond de Rothschilde Europe (headquartered in Switzerland) in 2012.
The sums were enormous.
Firstly, on 29th May 2012 Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners
transfered US$158,000,000 million into Al Qubaisi’s account, held under
the name of the The Vasco Trust, of which he was the sole beneficial
owner.
Blackstone
BVI is registered under an address in an office rental block in
Singapore – 36 Robinson Road. Documents in the possession of SR confirm
Al Qubaisi is the shareholder of Vasco Trust
Three further payments on August 3rd, October 31st and December 4th
comprised US$100,750,000, US$129,000,000 and US$85,000,000 respectively.
It makes for a total of just under half a billion dollars – over two
billion ringgit at current exchange rates, paid from a shady BVI company
into the hands of the salaried Abu Dhabi fund manager over just six
months.
How did this ex-fund manager legitimately earn this sum – or was it a kickback?
Insiders have confirmed to Sarawak Report that these payments were
regarded as kickbacks linked to Al Qubaisi’s involvement in 1MDB.
Tell tale connections with Good Star, Jho Low and Najib Razak
There was just one other major external transaction paid into Al
Qubaisi’s Vasco account during the same financial year – US$20,750,000
was transferred from the other secret Jho Low owned company Good Star
Limited on 20th February 2013.
Transfer from Good Star into the same beneficiary account belonging to Vasco
at BPERE – acc no 390 610
Had there been a shortfall on the agreed Blackstone transfers, which was made up by Jho Low’s other company Good Star?
Otherwise, can the now sacked Mr Al Qubaisi explain these
extraordinary secret payments into his accounts, just in the very period
when Aabar and 1MDB were entering into a series of ‘joint investment’
deals from which billions have gone missing?
Payment to the Prime Minister!
There is an even more serious angle to this explosive set of
discoveries.
Sarawak Report has learnt that the on-going 1MDB
investigation into Najib Razak’s AmPrivate Bank accounts in KL has also
established that enormous payments came in from the very same source a
few months earlier.
In 2011 Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Limited paid a total of
US$170 million into the same private account belonging to Najib Razak
which later received US$680 million in 2013, as reported by Sarawak
Report, along with the Wall Street Journal.
Sarawak Report has already reported there had been earlier payments,
which had brought the final sum in the account to well over a billion
dollars. After the election over US$600 million was in fact sent exported back into personal accounts belonging to the Prime Minister in Singapore (now frozen) and the AmBank account closed.
Party mode – Al Qubaisi has poured hundreds of millions into buying up nightclubs in Vegas
We are now able to disclose that the first of those series of
payments, totalling US$170 million came from Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners Limited (BVI) and it was supported by the very same identical
letter of guarantee provided by the bogus sheikh ‘Saud Abdulaziz Majid al-Saud’, which also backed the later US$680 million ‘donation’ in 2013.
As we have detailed, Saud Abdulaziz Majid al-Saud has turned out not
to exist and the series of identical letters provide no details of his
address or credentials.
No wonder the task force investigations into 1MDB ended up querying
these enormous payments as part of their remit into Malaysia’s missing
development funds.
The official investigators had clearly concluded (before they were rudely shut down, arrested, sacked and in one case murdered)
that these transfers into Najib’s accounts were directly linked to the
disappearances of vast sums of money from the company’s accounts.
History of an impersonator company
So what of this BVI based company, which suddenly transferred so much
money into the accounts of the bosses behind Aabar and 1MDB?
Blackstone Group does indeed have a subsidiary called Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia.
However, the major global player has responded to enquiries to
confirm that the almost identically named Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners (BVI) has nothing to do with their business.
Research into the shadowy world of BVI corporations has revealed that
this particular shell company was incorporated on November 1st 2010
under the name of Foreign FX Trading Limited and changed its name to
Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners on 26th May 2011:
Short lived history of a shell company used to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars
Having transferred the hundreds of millions of dollars into both
Najib and Khadem Al Qubaisi’s accounts the company was put into
liquidation on 30th April 2013, just before the Malaysian general
election.
Time to close down this short-lived multi-million dollar operation?
Sarawak Report contends that the explanation for this series of
events is that Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Limited (BVI) was
merely another of Jho Low’s secretive vehicles for transferring money,
which he habitually named to sound as if they belonged to more credible working concerns.
Other such companies which we have identified as being linked to Jho
Low’s laundering activities are PetroSaudi International Limited
(Seychelles); SRG (Strategic Resouces Global); Aabar Investments PJS Ltd and Merryl Capital.
Najib must explain why his anonymous donor appears to be Jho Low
The same London based company, Offshore Incorporations Centre, was
employed to incorporate both Good Star Limited in the Seychelles and the
Blackstone bogus company in BVI. Sarawak Report has already confirmed that international investigators have now established that the sole shareholder of Good Star is indeed none other than Jho Low.
Prime Minister Najib must surely now address what has now become
increasingly plain and obvious, which is that much of the money recorded
as having gone missing from the 1MDB/Aabar joint ventures, appears to
now have been traced into bank accounts belonging to the two main
players in these transactions – himself and Khadem Al Qubaisi.
The facilitator in the Blackstone BVI transactions was plainly once
more Jho Low, using yet another of his web of off-shore vehicles to
shift the cash, before he liquidated it (like Good Star) in an attempt
to obliterate the evidence.
SARAWAK REPORT
No comments:
Post a Comment