By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Jho Low, the fugitive Malaysian financier, will lose more than $100 million, including a luxury Paris apartment and works by Claude Monet and Andy Warhol to settle civil forfeiture cases over his role in the bribery scandal and embezzlement of funds from 1MDB.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the forfeiture on Wednesday, after District Judge Dale Fischer in Los Angeles approved a consent agreement with Low and his family on Monday.
The seized assets total nearly $1 billion, including a $120 million “superyacht,” which Low and his family had previously seized.
Low still faces criminal charges of money laundering and bribery conspiracy in Brooklyn, New York, for 1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund also known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
US and Malaysian authorities say more than $4.5 billion was looted from 1MDB between 2009 and 2015, with some of the money sent to offshore bank accounts and shell companies linked to Low.
The financier had helped former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak create 1MDB to promote economic development.
Goldman Sachs, which helped 1MDB sell bonds, reached a $2.9 billion settlement in 2020 in a US criminal case related to 1MDB. The bank is not a party to the civil forfeiture.
Low's attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department said Low paid about $35 million for Monet's “Vetheuil au Soleil,” Warhol's “Colored Campbell's Soup Can (Emerald Green), 1965” and the Paris apartment.
Low and his family will also give up $67 million in real estate and bank accounts in Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland.
The Justice Department said it has helped return more than $1.5 billion associated with 1MDB to Malaysia, in the largest civil forfeiture case in the department's history.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
