By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN- Review
EDNY COURTHOUSE, Feb 24 -- Amid the Ukraine war and escalating sanctions, the Jho Low trial churned on in the EDNY courthouse. Still on direct examination, Tim Leissner described stealing $200 million, and passing perhaps $35 million of it on to Roger Ng, whom he was testifying against.
The prosecutor asked, What did you do with the money? Leissner said he bought a yacht.
"How big a yacht?"
150 feet long, $50 million dollars. Later Leissner tried to get a loan against it, since nothing else he had was liquid. He bought a London apartment for a girl friend Rohana Rozan; he bought himself an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 68th Street and Madison Avenue.
It made Kurt think of the way real estate in New York was money laundering, a playground for the rich. Before he was thrown out of the UN, and even for a time afterward when he worked trying to cover the UN from the library on 45th Street, he'd walk or bike up Third Avenue looking at all the condo buildings with few lights on. It was Goldman Sachs money laundering, he now saw.
Leissner said that no bank would do business with Jho Low - this is what they were trying to do with Putin now, too late - so Jho Low wanted to buy his own bank. Leissner tried to help him but it didn't work; he tried to hook Jho up with Banque Havilland.
Eventually Leissner was arrested and turned into a rat. Jho Low made it on the lam, only to be recording bragging on the phone about seeking a deal with the US. He still hadn't gotten it.
At 3 pm Kurt left the overflow courtroom and rushed down to the Media Room, to call into the Bitfinex hackers' hearing in DDC. It started late but Kurt caught and live tweeted the gist. Back up in the overflow the day and week were ending, with a few final inquiries from the judge about spousal privilege - Leissner's, apparently - and Ng's wife trying to travel from Malaysia to testify.
They would deal with that on Friday, by phone, when the jury didn't come in. It would be at 3 pm, the same time as a Security Council meeting on Ukraine. Kurt could live tweet both. The worlds were colliding. #TheWeaselOfWallStreet
Kurt had first heard of Jho Low while still in the UN, before he was thrown out. Jho Low appeared at a UN press conference in front of the ubiquitous and now defiled logo. #TheWeaselOfWallStreet, 1st in a new series
Inner City Press is also covering US v. Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, the self-rapped Crocodile of Wall Street, a story here, song here
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