JUST days ago, this sudden, shocking and deflating revelation surfaced: the fugitive Jho Low — wanted in 195 countries — is not, NOT, on Interpol's Red Notice to be arrested on sight.
Vent your anger here: Low Taek Jho, 41, is practically a free man, roaming the Far and Middle East, fixing deals with impunity under shadowy protection.
Efforts had floundered over the years to arrest and extradite the notorious Svengali, who once reigned as 1MDB's defacto supremo and plundered it of billions. It was a news report recently that revealed the stunner: they had inspected the Interpol database, perhaps in an inspired fit, and discovered that both Low's family name and country did not yield results.
In a simple search for "Malaysia", they found four names: Koh Ing Kueh, Umar Sirul Azhar, Tan Lok Seng and Loo Soon Aik. Sirul is the familiar fella now languishing Down Under.
What gives? How does a fugitive, who siphoned into his personal offshore accounts anything between US$1.5 billion and US$8 billion and leaving digital footprints spread across 10 countries, be able to get off the radar?
This begs the obvious: Is the Interpol list accurate but Low's name strategically "hidden"? Or did it plainly vanish? The international anti-crime outfit has to unload some explanation.
In the years Low fled Malaysia after the 1MDB scandal hogged headlines worldwide, authorities laboured to explain why he can't be sighted, arrested or extradited, despite the "outstanding" Red Notice and a United States bounty on his head.
Adding to our "haplessness" to apprehend Low, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin's latest elucidation is, to be mild, frustratingly incredulous.
In his ponderous situation report, Hamzah could only quote standard protocols, even imploring that tips on Low's whereabouts be relayed to the CCID Infoline. But, with this new revelation, has Malaysia been deceived? Which leads us to assertions by Wall Street Journal reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, who are actively gathering intelligence on Low's whereabouts.
After years of reporting on the 1MDB scandal, Wright and Hope published the Billion Dollar Whale, their sensational book detailing Low's fraud. But this is implicating: "No one in the Malaysian government is trying to find him," Wright claimed.
Glaringly, how and why the long arm of the law is horribly twisted is now understood: the law was emasculated by exposes of international conspiracy.
Low allegedly gallivants publicly under the protection of several Southeast Asian governments and a domineering superpower. This is the obvious conspiracy in play here.
Has Low actually been gifted free movement after striking an undisclosed sweetheart deal with the superpower? His appearance is forbidding in a European nation or the US, but he might still find the US irresistible: it's his obscene stomping ground to gambol with hired Hollywood A-Listers.
Don't expect Low to face justice anytime soon as he rambles around in t-shirt and shorts. Unless there is a Hollywood-styled black op to "snatch" him as a form of "gangster extradition", preferably to Washington for indictment and, perhaps, a Congressional hearing.