by JayasankaranKK
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School teaches its alumni to prosper. They mostly have. Elon Musk and Warren Buffett come to mind. One Donald Trump is also an old boy.
But it never specified how.
That was the rub, thought Chubby Felonious cheerfully. The ample architect of the world’s biggest fraud – 1MDB – that was he.
He was awash in reminiscent memory as he’d just read that TL, the ex-chief for investment bank GS’s Southeast Asian operations, had been jailed for two years in the US for his role in the scam.
Timmy had been key to the whole scheme, mused the plump pilferer appreciatively. Chubby Felonious had figured out the entire scheme and he knew it would fly because money trumped scruples every time.
With the blessing of someone at the top of the government, investment bank GS would raise money for Malaysia through US$6.5 billion of IMDB bonds. That was all it needed to do. Chubby Felonious would take it from there.
And how he had! Chubby Felonious remembered the excitement of it all, the sheer rush.
And everyone had benefitted. Even the FBI agreed with him. It stated that NR collected US$756 million (RM3.2 billion), TL received US$73.4 million, while R or GS’s Malaysia head, took US$35.1 million. Meanwhile, Chubby Felonious raked in a whopping US$1.42 billion. (RM5.97 billion).
He was the mastermind after all. Even so, he noted the press rarely mentioned the money he’d given RA, or NR’s stepson, for his Hollywood ventures, like US$60 million for a wolf in an urban setting movie.
14 years later, how’s everyone doing?
With Timmy’s cooperation, GS was criminally indicted for the first time in its 150-year history and settled for a US$2.9 billion fine.
RN, sunk by Timmy’s testimony, got a 10-year US jail term.
Timmy himself only got a couple of years but appeared the most shaken.
He told the court that, since the scandal broke, he’d lost his “freedom, family and financial independence” and that he was now on “pills” and had “lost the will to live.”
NR was sentenced to 12 years in jail and, although the sentence has since been halved, he still faces other trials that could potentially see him remaining in prison.
Even so, he looks cheerful, has not lost any weight and is pursuing a doctorate behind bars, I’m told. If his sentences continue, who knows, it might lead to something. Hmmm…interesting.
Pity the poor Malaysian taxpayer. He or she may be paying off the interest on 1MDB’s bonds into the foreseeable future.
And Fatboy?
He’d gotten off Scot-free and he truly loved his Scotch. But there was a price for notoriety and being on Interpol’s Most Wanted List: he couldn’t travel freely and so Scotland was out.
Nor could he return to Hollywood where he had once wined and dined with the best of them, thanks to Other People’s Money. No, the US wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Over a moody cigarette, a thoughtful Burgundy and a fragrant Camembert, Chubby Felonious was taking stock of his life. It was ironic, he reflected, that his father had always advised him never to do anything he wouldn’t get caught dead doing.
But he wasn’t caught so it didn’t apply. He cheered up instantly and thought maybe he could teach: and impart some of his knowledge to the next generation.
But he would be honest and, if so, this is what he might say…
“I would hate to advocate booze, birds, money laundering or grand theft to anyone but they’ve always worked for me. “
The views of the writer are entirely his own