New details have emerged of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s ties to Jho Low, the Malaysian financier turned fugitive currently wanted by international authorities over his links to one of the world’s largest corruption scandals.
On Thursday, Bloomberg revealed previously undisclosed details from FBI documents in which authorities interviewed DiCaprio in 2018 about his relationship with Low, who is accused of involvement in a money-laundering scheme of over $4.5bn being siphoned from the Malaysian state investment fund, also known as 1MDB.
DiCaprio met Low at a nightclub in 2010 and went on to establish a close relationship, according to the report.
“I was working for him … and that business also translates into being social. And so we saw each other more, and there was more interaction,” DiCaprio told a grand jury, according to the report.
The two had at one point discussed ideas for a $1bn mega-fund for more film-making, as well as a Warner Bros theme park in Asia with rides based on DiCaprio’s movies. DiCaprio and Low also discussed the development of an eco-friendly resort in Belize.
According to the report, DiCaprio introduced Low as “my man” while Low called DiCaprio “L-Dogg”. The two have also met each other’s mothers, the report said.
In addition to Low financing the 2013 Oscar-nominated movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which DiCaprio starred in, Low also showered DiCaprio with various luxury gifts. Among those were Marlon Brandon’s $600,000 Oscar statue, as well as a $9m Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, according to the report.
According to a 2018 New York Times report, DiCaprio returned those gifts to authorities following investigations into Low’s alleged siphoning of billions of dollars from the Malaysian fund.
In his interviews with the FBI, DiCaprio said that he had been told that Low’s wealth hailed from an unknown “whale of whales” in Abu Dhabi, and that Low was the “Mozart of the business world”.
The Bloomberg report also revealed details from the FBI’s interviews with Kim Kardashian over her interactions with Low. Kardashian recounted to investigators that she once stayed up till 5am in a Las Vegas casino with Low, where he refused her attempts to return $350,000 worth of winnings.
“When Kardashian went to the casino counter to cash out the chips, we learned that she had approximately $350,000 in chips. Kardashian was given a trash bag full of $100 bills estimated to be worth $250,000,” the documents said.
In 2021, the Department of Justice charged Low, who is believed to be hiding in China, with “back-channel lobbying” to influence the government into dropping its investigation into him and others involved in the 1MDB scandal.
