Hello and welcome. I'm Rob McLeod, Emilex's editor-in-chief. I'm here to present another podcast in the Emlex series of editors' picks.

As you can probably imagine, my work takes me all over the world, and this week I'm in Asia, where a trial is set to take place involving the biggest money laundering scandal the world has ever seen.

It's a huge case, sent in a relatively small country. That country is Malaysia, but the ramifications of the

case are being far beyond Malaysia's borders. The institution at the centre of action is a state

fund called One Malaysia Development Burhad, better known as One MDB. And the trial that's coming up

will see a former wealth planner at a Swiss bank in the dock in Singapore. Today I'm here at our

Hong Kong bureau with one of our MLEX corruption specialist,

Tohanshee.

And she has been covering the tale of one MDB for more than a year and a half.

Welcome to this podcast, Hanjun.

Thank you, Rob.

Ancia, you've written extensively about the one MDB scandal.

Tell us how a sovereign wealth fund in Malaysia, a country whose economy ranks only 38th in the

world, ended up at the centre of the largest money laundering investigation ever. And how did

Singapore get dragged into a trial related to it? Well, I think the international connections

of 100mdb began right at its inception in 2009. In 2009, 1MDB was created first as a local sovereign wealth

fund, not even of Malaysia itself, but of a state within Malaysia, Trengano. But even at that stage,

Goldman Sachs was closely involved with his establishment, and Goldman Sachs worked very closely with

this Malaysian

businessman called Lodak Joe, popularly known as Joe Lowe.

US court documents reveal emails by senior but are named Goldman Sachs executives saying

that Joe Lowe was an important intermediary of 1MDB even though he held no official position in this

...