@@CHAP@@ Prologue
Las Vegas, November 3–4, 2012
Around 6 p.m. on a warm, cloudless November night, Pras Michél, a former member of the nineties hip-hop trio the Fugees, approached one of the Chairman Suites on the fifth floor of the Palazzo hotel. Pras knocked and the door opened, revealing a rotund man, dressed in a black tuxedo, who flashed a warm smile. The man, glowing slightly with perspiration, was known to his friends as Jho Low, and he spoke in the soft-voiced lilt common to Malaysians. “Here’s my boy,” Low said, embracing the rapper.
The Chairman Suites, at $25,000 per night, were the most opulent the Palazzo had to offer, with a pool terrace overlooking the Strip, and a modern white interior, including a karaoke room with wraparound sofas and padded walls. But the host didn’t plan to spend much time in the room tonight; Low had a much grander celebration in store for his thirty-first birthday. This was just the preparty for his inner circle, who had jetted in from across the globe. Guzzling champagne, the guests, an eclectic mix of celebrities and hangers-on, buzzed around Low, as more people arrived. Swizz Beatz, the hip-hop producer and husband of Alicia Keys, conversed animatedly with Low. At one point, Leonardo DiCaprio arrived alongside Benicio Del Toro to talk to Low about some film ideas.
What did the guests make of their host? To many at the gathering, Low cut a mysterious figure. Hailing from Malaysia, a small Southeast Asian country that many Westerners would struggle to pinpoint on a map, Low’s round face was still boyish, with glasses, red cheeks, and barely a hint of facial hair. His unremarkable appearance was matched by an awkwardness and lack of ease in conversation, which the beautiful women around Low took to be shyness. Polite and courteous, he never seemed fully in the moment, often cutting short a conversation to take a call on one of his half a dozen cell phones.
But despite Low’s unassuming appearance, word was that he was loaded—maybe a billionaire. Guests murmured to each other that just months earlier, Low’s company had acquired a stake in EMI Music Publishing, and there was speculation that he was the money behind DiCaprio’s latest movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, which was still filming. Low’s bashful manners belied a hard core of ambition the like of which the world rarely sees. Look more closely, and Low was not so much timid as quietly calculating, as if computing every human interaction, sizing up what he could provide for someone and what they, in turn, could do for him. Despite his age, Low had a weird gravitas, allowing him to hold his own in a room of grizzled Wall Street bankers or pampered Hollywood types. For years, he’d methodically cultivated the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. The bold strategy had placed him in their orbit and landed him a seat here in the Palazzo. Now, he was the one doling out favors.
The night at the Palazzo marked the apex of Low’s ascendancy. The guest list for his birthday included Hollywood stars, top bankers from Goldman Sachs, and powerful figures from the Middle East. In the aftermath of the U.S. financial crisis, they all wanted a piece of Low. Pras Michél had lost his place in the limelight since the Fugees disbanded, but was hoping to reinvent himself as a private-equity investor, and Low held out the promise of funding. Some celebrities had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in appearance fees from Low just to turn up at his events, and they were keen to keep him happy.
Swizz Beatz called for quiet in the hotel suite, before presenting expensive DJ equipment, emblazoned with images of a panda, to Low as a gift. The group burst into laughter. That was what Low’s closest friends called him—“Panda”—a nod to his plump frame and cuddly demeanor. He’d loved Kung Fu Panda, and when gambling with his close friends from back home they’d each pretend to be a character from the film. But even those stars like Pras and Swizz Beatz, who had received multiple millions of dollars in appearance fees and other business deals from Low, could not really claim to know his story. If you entered “Jho Low” into Google, very little came up. Some people said he was an Asian arms dealer. Others claimed he was close to the prime minister of Malaysia. Or maybe he inherited billions from his Chinese grandfather. Casino operators and nightclubs refer to their highest rollers as “whales,” and one thing was certain about Low: He was the most extravagant whale that Vegas, New York, and St. Tropez had seen in a long time—maybe ever.