DICAPRIO’S ODD TIE TO FEDERAL PROBE
FILM FINANCIER ALLEGEDLY DIVERTED FUNDS FOR GIFTS
It was a tale with a cast of characters more farfetched than any of Leonardo DiCaprio’s movies. The unlikely plot included Marlon Brando’s lost Oscar, the beleaguered Malaysian prime minister, a Harrow-educated financier and playboy, US$30-million mansions, private jets, yachts, a model-studded gala in Saint-Tropez, the U.S. Department of Justice and a US$57-million Monet painting.
There were even cameos for Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
Throughout it all, DiCaprio was an innocent, unfortunate bit player.
It all began with the star’s long-held passion to make The Wolf of Wall Street, a movie about the drug-fuelled swindler Jordan Belfort. For years no one would touch the script. But then a new Hollywood studio called Red Granite Pictures — co-founded by a relation of Malaysian leader Najib Razak — appeared and put up the US$100-million budget. While DiCaprio was filming in 2012, he celebrated his 38th birthday.
Widely regarded as the leading actor of his generation, he had at that time been nominated for three Oscars but never won, so executives gave him a present — Marlon Brando’s golden statuette from 1955 for On the Waterfront, reportedly bought for US$600,000 from a memorabilia dealer in New Jersey.
Unfortunately Oscars are not to be bought and sold. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a rule that winners, or their heirs, can only sell the statuettes back to the Academy itself for US$10, to avoid them becoming “items of commerce.”
The re-emergence of the Brando Oscar ended a long mystery as to its whereabouts. It had reputedly been used by the late star as a doorstop. According to one story it went missing after he defenestrated it in a rage. However the statuette wound its way to DiCaprio, an executor of Brando’s estate quickly suggested it should be returned. “He was trying to track it down and kept hitting dead ends,” Avra Douglas told the Hollywood Reporter.
The gifting of the Oscar was a mere subplot to the real storm that engulfed The Wolf of Wall Street. In July, DiCaprio, a committed environmentalist, was in SaintTropez for the annual gala of his charitable foundation, which has raised US$45-million for good causes.
The same day, at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced an international civil corruption investigation that would put the film back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
It centred on 1MDB, a fund set up by Razak to promote development projects in Malaysia. According to the 136-page U.S. complaint, officials diverted more than US$3.5-billion to splurge on Manhattan penthouses, Beverly Hills mansions, a US$35-million Bombardier private jet, Monet and Van Gogh paintings and a townhouse in London’s Belgravia.
Named in the U.S. complaint was Jho Low, a flamboyant 34-year-old Malaysian financier. At the end of The Wolf of Wall Street Low received a screen credit saying “special thanks.” When DiCaprio won a Golden Globe for his performance, in his speech he thanked “Jho” as a “collaborator.”
But, unbeknownst to DiCaprio or the rest of Hollywood, Low had allegedly funnelled millions from 1MDB through a Swiss bank account which was “ultimately used to fund the production of The Wolf of Wall Street,” the U.S. complaint stated. He also bought Monet’s Nympheas avec reflets de hautes herbes for US$57.5-million at Sotheby’s, a US$39-million mansion in the Hollywood Hills close to DiCaprio’s, and gave money to the actor’s environmental foundation.
Low once put US$11-million into an account at the Venetian casino in Las Vegas for a week’s gambling, the U.S. complaint said. Listed as a fellow gambler was “Hollywood actor 1,” otherwise known as DiCaprio. On Lindsay Lohan’s 23rd birthday Low reputedly bought her 23 bottles of Cristal Champagne. He was photographed partying with Paris Hilton at nightclubs, on a yacht, and at the World Cup.
No one has been charged with any crime in relation to 1MDB and all the players have denied wrongdoing. Low has said he never held a formal position at 1MDB. Red Granite has said it had no reason to believe financing of the film was irregular, has been co-operating fully, and continues to make movies.