KUALA LUMPUR: Lawyers representing fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, are reportedly trying to prevent bookshops worldwide from carrying the book ‘Billion Dollar Whale’, which chronicles the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.
The book, penned by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), is set for release worldwide on Sept 18.
UK news website The Guardian reported that Billion Dollar Whale has been blocked from distribution in the UK after a sustained legal campaign by London-based law firm Schillings.
According to the report, although Low has not commenced legal action against the book’s publisher Hachette, or its authors, the Guardian said it has viewed letters on Schillings-headed paper sent to independent bookstores in Britain and worldwide in a bid to stop it being available for public purchase.
The Guardian said the letters sent to bookstores state that the decision by some to publish a synopsis of the book constituted an actionable libel of Low.
Schillings, it was reported, wrote to one bookseller to say it was “astonishing” that the shop had published a description of Billion Dollar Whale on its website, and warned the individual bookseller that it is “now on notice that serious defamatory material is likely to be contained in the subject book”.
A spokesman for the book’s US publishers Hachette said: “It is troubling to us to hear reports of booksellers being threatened or attempts to keep the public from reading a book.
“Hope and Wright are journalists of the highest calibre and we stand by the book. It will be available in bookstores – in many countries – on Tuesday.”
Hope and Wright have claimed that Low and his law firm did not cooperate with the book and instead were “threatening small bookshops and distributors, which is an affront to freedom of speech”.
Wright will be promoting the book in Kuala Lumpur on September 25.
New Straits Times, in a Sept 1 reported that the lawyers are also attempting to block the publication of another 1MDB-related book, titled The Sarawak Report.
The book is authored by Clare Rewcastle-Brown, who runs the Sarawak Report blog.
The blog had claimed that the UK publisher of Rewcastle-Brown’s book had received a letter from Schillings.
“The letter threatened the publisher with “substantial damages” on the basis that the law firm assumed the book would repeat what it called defamatory accusations about Jho Low made on Sarawak Report (the law firm admitted it has not yet viewed a copy),” said Sarawak Report.
According to the blog, Schillings further claimed that no comment should be published about Low’s involvement in 1MDB prior to the completion of the civil proceedings concerning 1MDB asset seizures in the United States.