KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 3 — A China envoy asserted that fugitive financier Low Taek Jho is not hiding out on the mainland, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng told the press today.
Lim broached the subject when fielding questions about 1MDB’s settlement with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC) and its subsidiary company Aabar.
“I’ve spoken to the Chinese ambassador, and he said that Jho Low is not in China.
“Unless he (Low) is using a different name or a different passport,” Lim said during a press conference in Parliament today.
Low is known to have at least one other passport aside from the one obtained from Malaysia, although both bear his legal name.
Today, Lim said the envoy told him China’s immigration records do not contain an entry record for Low.
After years at the heart of the 1MDB scandal, Low was finally indicted on criminal charges in the US this week along with two former Goldman Sachs bankers, Roger Ng and Tim Leissner.
The Penang-born financier also has outstanding warrants for his arrest here and is wanted in Singapore for its investigations related to 1MDB.
He is thought to be in Thailand, Macau, Taiwan or China, but his exact current location is not publicly known.
The last the public heard of Low was a statement from a publicist purporting to represent him, in which he insisted that he was innocent until proven guilty.
