Casts of hustlers funded the investment vehicle

This is the story of 1MDB, the Malaysian State investment fund unravelled earlier this year under the scrutiny of several international probes. Whose repercussions travelled from Asia to Hollywood and toppled a government.

Founded by Najib Razak, the former Malaysian prime minister who was voted out of office after an election dominated by scandal and that ended six decades of his party’s rule – 1MDB was masterminded by Jho Low, a Harrow alumnus conceived one of the greatest financial heists in history.

The fund’s money, mainly debt cycled through several offshore vehicles, was supposedly to fund domestic infrastructure. Instead, it was blown on champagne, casinos and the production of the film The Wolf of Wall Street and acquiring artworks such as Jean-Michael Basquiat’s Dustheads.

Tom Wright who reported on 1MDB for the Wall Street Journal, included a cast of characters spanning Saudi Royal family, rappers, Ex-Victoria Secret model Miranda Kerr and former US president Barack Obama made several appearances.

Revenge cam in gigabytes of half a million emails which augmented dogged reporting and rich Instagram trail documenting a world of topless girls prancing in oversized cocktail glasses.

Low’s first office restrooms had automatically adjusting toilet seat t the height of the occupant. Khadem al-Qubaisi, managing director of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund IPIC, has a weakness for lewd T-shirts, monogrammed cigars and pumping iron.

The authors describe the last journey of Kevin Morais, an anti-corruption investigator who, getting too close to the truth, was run off the road, and bundled into an oil drum and set in cement, as Morais tried to focus on the Malaysian army pathologist charged with running a medical procurement scam.

Billion Dollar Whale is a story of emerging markets cripple by corruption and cronyism and come from the new era of punishment-free banking. Their profits form a 1MDB deal made it one of Goldman’s biggest paydays of the year according to the authors.

Malaysian deals fitted with wall street’s new initiative facing fines and increasing restrictions at home in the wake of financial crisis bankers were seeking new markets in which to practise their wizardry.

No public charges of wrongdoing have been filed against most of the major characters, with the exception of Razak all have denied committing crimes and maintained the transactions were legal.

Low who denied any wrongdoing has since been charged in Malaysia with money laundering but disappeared. His $250m superyacht is now a wasting asset that the government is seeking to sell.

 Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood and the World by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Hachette $28, 400 pages.