WSJ writer hopes Jho Low will be brought to justice

The 400-page Billion Dollar Whale – The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World, written by the two journalists from the Wall Street Journal, was launched officially in Manhattan, New York, today.

Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, the two authors of Billion Dollar Whale, took three years from 2015 to complete the book, which covers the stories related to state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).

During the global launch of the book in New York, Wright said he believes that Low Taek Jho, or popularly known as Jho Low, is still hiding in China, and he claimed that there were 'powerful Chinese people' there who could be protecting him.

"The story hasn't been out yet and Jho Low is still in China, protected by Beijing. Knowing something about powerful Chinese people ... but eventually, hopefully, he will go to jail.

"Obviously, it has been a really rough ride and it seems that we've received hundreds or thousands of legal letters. For first-time writers, we know that it costs a lot of money," Wright said.

Wright (left, in photo) also mentioned that the US is a great place to publish the book since the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and press freedom.

"The UK doesn't have that and Jho Low knows that and he's using that to prevent this book from going out," Wright said in relation to the legal letters sent by Jho Low to the bookshops around the world in an attempt to block its distribution.

He then jokingly said that he had a "fight" with Hope (right, in photo) in the process of writing the book. He admitted that he did not like Jho Low, contrary to Hope, who had said that Jho Low "is pretty cool".

"I was trying to portray Jho Low as this guy who is 'fat', too much. I didn't like him and Bradley said, 'This guy is pretty cool'," Wright said, to the amusement of the audience.

Hope said that they should be "thanking" Jho Low for trying to cover up the massive scandal, which he likened it to the Streisand effect.

The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicising the information more widely, usually facilitated by the internet.

"We should be thanking Jho Low, for this is definitely a Streisand effect on a massive scandal. No one would ever write a book about 1MDB and Jho Low. Now they want to read it," Hope said.

Tom Wright will be travelling to Kuala Lumpur on Sept 25 on his second leg of the book launch. The launch will be held at the Kinokuniya bookstore in KLCC at 5.30pm that day.

Wright told Malaysiakini that they are currently working on translating the book into Bahasa Malaysia. - Mkini