1MDB whistleblower Xavier Justo has suggested that China is unlikely to release fugitive financier Low Taek Jho (Jho Low) to face charges in Malaysia.
When met at a forum organised by independent publisher Gerakbudaya, Justo said he does not know Low’s latest whereabouts beyond media reports claiming that the latter was living under house arrest in Shanghai, China.
However, he believes Low (above) would have been arrested already if he was not in China.
“He’s probably in China. I think there is no other place where he can stay. If he leaves China, he’d be arrested pretty much in all the countries of the world,” he told reporters in Petaling Jaya, Selangor yesterday.
He also raised doubts that China would allow Low to leave the country.
“The thing about him (Low) being brought back to Malaysia, I have some doubts.
“He deserves to be here in Malaysia, to be sentenced in Malaysia. But I don’t see why China would allow him to leave the country. To make (Prime Minister) Anwar (Ibrahim) happy or for the good sake of Malaysia?
“I don’t think they will allow a businessperson, who has been doing major deals in China with high-level executives there, to come back to Malaysia to tell about his doings there. There are no reasons to justify that. But I hope to be wrong,” he said.
Justo, who blew the lid off the global 1MDB scandal, left PetroSaudi International in 2011, two years after the company received US$1 billion from its now infamous joint venture with 1MDB.
When he left, he did so with a cache of emails that he said he took along as “insurance”.
He eventually passed the information in the emails to Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown and a Malaysian media mogul after Petrosaudi failed to pay US$2 million (RM9 million) in arrears that Justo said he was owed.
He was jailed in Thailand in August 2015 after he reportedly confessed to blackmail charges Petrosaudi brought against him. The alleged crime was supposed to have taken place in 2013.
Macau or Shanghai
On Tuesday (May 30), MACC reportedly said it “believes” Low is hiding in Macau.
According to an Al Jazeera report, MACC said individuals who have seen Low in Macau confirmed this.
The report added that the revelation comes just weeks after the arrest of a relatively unknown 1MDB suspect Kee Kok Thiam.
Kee, understood to have been Low’s alleged aide, died in a hospital on Wednesday (May 31) after suffering a stroke.
However, the co-author of a best-selling book on the 1MDB scandal, Bradley Hope, dismissed the idea that Low is in Macau.
Instead, Hope said Low is believed to be under house arrest in Shanghai.
“He was in Macau a lot from 2015-2018, as well as Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Thailand but after (former prime minister) Najib’s (Abdul Razak) electoral defeat his movements were more restricted to the mainland,” he tweeted.
He also alleged that China is holding Low on a tight leash because of negotiations with Malaysia. - Mkini
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