Friday, July 29, 2016

1MDB: The inside story of the world’s biggest financial scandal...

On 22 June 2015, Xavier Justo, a 48-year-old retired Swiss banker, walked towards the front door of his brand new boutique hotel on Koh Samui, a tropical Thai island. He had spent the past three years building the luxurious white-stone complex of chalets and apartments overlooking the shimmering sea and was almost ready to open for business. All he needed was a licence.

Justo had arrived in Thailand four years earlier, having fled the drab world of finance in London. In 2011, he and his girlfriend Laura toured the country on a motorbike and, two years later, they got married on a secluded beach. The couple eventually settled down in Koh Samui, a tourist hotspot, just an hour’s flight south of Bangkok. After trying out a couple of entrepreneurial ventures, Justo eventually decided that he would go into the hotel business. He bought a plot with an imposing house and began building: adding a gym, villas and a tennis court.

That June afternoon, he was expecting a visit from the tourism authorities to sign off on the paperwork. Instead, a squad of armed Thai police burst through the unlocked door, bundling Justo to the ground. The officers tied their plastic cuffs so tightly around Justo’s wrists that he bled on the dark tiled floor. The police quickly moved into his office, ripping out the computers and emptying the filing cabinets.

After two days in a ramshackle local jail, Justo was flown to Bangkok and paraded before the media, in a press conference befitting a mafia kingpin. Still wearing shorts and flip-flops, he was flanked by four commandos holding machine guns, while a quartet of senior Royal Thai Police officers briefed the assembled reporters on the charges against him. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Najib’s spectacular carnival of thievery...
  2. Malaysia’s prime minister Najib finally in danger?
  3. Malaysia disaster: 1MDB: The United States v The Wolf of Wall Street...
  4. Singapore shocks its neighbor to the north...
  5. Lots of Malaysians in Panama Papers...
  6. Goldman Sachs banker embroiled in massive overseas money scandal...
  7. Swiss freeze assets of Malaysian state fund...
  8. Malaysia fund at centre of scandal engulfing PM Najib Razak made...
  9. Malaysia’s prime minister Najib has allegedly spent ‘millions’ on luxury goods...

No comments:

Post a Comment