Low believed to be using multiple passports to criss-cross globe
PETALING JAYA: Fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, or better known as Jho Low, is believed to be using multiple Mediterranean and Caribbean island nations passports to criss-cross the globe.
A source said Low continues to make Macau his base but travelled to the middle east and other European countries using these different passports.
“Jho Low has secured a few different types of passports in the last eight years, mainly through the investment-based citizenship schemes as part of a grand scheme when he was involved in Malaysia’s state-owned investment fund 1MDB, scandal.”
His first known investment-based citizenship passport was from St Kitts and Nevis, a tiny Caribbean island nation in the West Indies.
Although the passport was issued in 2011, the country revoked his citizenship in 2018 following full-scale international investigations into the 1MDB scandal in at least six countries. In 2015, Jho Low also obtained a Cypriot passport besides a Maltese passport.
“These passports allowed him visa-free travel to European countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy and over 170 countries globally.”
The source also said Jho Low is believed to have obtained the Maltese passport through an investment-based citizenship scheme.
Henley & Partners, a global passport and citizenship broker which Low engaged to secure his Cypriot passport, said the source, was also the sole agent for the sale of Maltese passport.
The source said Jho Low had no problem making multi-million dollar investments in properties in exchange for these passports, adding that Low could fly in private jets and evade detection by going through temporary Immigration posts at private VIP lounges where he could easily get his traveling document endorsed.
“In some places, like in the Middle East and several European countries, where these posts are handled by immigrant agents, Jho Low was not required to be present with his passport.”
The source said the posts at these private VIP lounges were not equipped with a sophisticated biometric scanner or linked to the main servers to conduct thorough checks.
“With his rich lifestyle, visa-free passports and connections with wealthy and influential personalities and royalty in Middle Eastern and European countries he was able to move freely, evading arrest and surveillance,” said the source.
NICOSIA: Fugitive financier Jho Low obtained a Cypriot passport in 2015 following intervention on his behalf by Archbishop Chrysostomos II (pic), head of the Orthodox Church on the eastern Mediterranean island, Politis reported.
Jho Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, obtained Cyprus nationality under the country’s investment for passport scheme after buying a mansion for five million euros (RM23.3mil) in the resort town of Agia Napa, according to the newspaper.
He immediately left the island after purchasing the property and getting the passport, the report said.
A senior Cypriot government official confirmed that Jho Low had
Cypriot nationality.
The Archbishop wasn’t available for comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
Chrysostomos sent at least two letters to the country’s then-interior minister asking for Low’s naturalisation as the two were in talks for investment on church property, Politis reported.
Jho Low has been painted by prosecutors as the mastermind behind the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal, which saw more than US$4.5bil (RM18.7bil) allegedly misappropriated from the Malaysian investment fund.
Jho Low recently struck a deal with the US Justice Department to return almost US$1bil (RM4.1bil) of assets to resolve forfeiture cases linked to him.
He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Jho Low’s whereabouts are still unknown despite the Interpol issuing a red notice against him last year.
Malaysian police said they know his location but that he is being protected by a certain party, with whom they are conducting talks to bring him back.
Jho Low was offered asylum in August by a country that acts in line with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights, his spokesman said last week through his lawyers, without naming the country.
Meanwhile, Cyprus’ president has pledged to revoke any passports that were “mistakenly” granted to wealthy investors who were found to have committed wrongdoing.
President Nicos Anastasiades admitted that “errors” may have been made in granting such “golden passports” under an earlier and less-strict version of a lucrative investment programme.
He said yesterday that there could be “perhaps 10 to 15” such instances of investors whom vetting had vailed to identify as ineligible.
Cypriot government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou said nearly 4,000 passports had been issued to investors since the programme began after a 2013 financial crisis.
Anastasiades said passport revocations would happen once an ongoing investigation confirmed that specific investors had breached eligibility rules.
His pledge came following media reports suggesting some investors may have been implicated in money-laundering or linked to authoritarian governments.