Strongly agree! Book is a great primer on how / why crooks drive up the price of high end real estate, art and film financing. You will never wonder how these businesses can charge so much again.

At one point (when the 1MDB company is financing the Wolf of Wall Street) the original true life "Wolf of Wall Street" person says: I don't want to have anything to do with these people, they must be crooked. The only reason why you spend money like this is if it is stolen.

Exactly!

Not sure if the book covered it, but WSJ had a piece that told the story of some of that money being used to pay for some of the most expensive birthday parties ever in Vegas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-billion-dollar-mystery-man-...

Financial crime investigator here - also recommend "Sarawak Report" book by Clare Brown. She was originally researching deforestation and local corruption in Malaysian Borneo and kept running into Jho Low adjacent figures and eventually helped to source the key documents tying the whole scheme together. Had to order it from the UK and it's even longer than the Whale book, but full of crazy stories.

I would recommend the book, but would skim the first 300 or so pages and only read deeply the parts that catch your eye. I think the author was on a mission to get the book to 400 pages and there is a LOT of filler on every detail of every Jho Low party and the types of gems the wife of the PM of malaysia bought.

I found this summary of the book pretty good if you don't have time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9w1b19/the_...