神祕馬來西亞人 紐約豪宅交易的幕後操盤手(1)

In early 2010, a young Malaysian financier named Jho Low began making some very expensive real estate deals in the United States.

2010年初，一位名叫劉特佐(Jho Low)的馬來西亞年輕金融家開始在美國做起非常昂貴的房地產交易。

First, a shell company connected to Mr. Low, famous back home for partying with the likes of Paris Hilton, purchased a $23.98 million apartment in the Park Laurel condominiums in Manhattan. Three years later, that shell company sold the condo to another shell company, this one controlled by someone even more prominent in Malaysia: the film-producing stepson of the prime minister.

劉特佐在當地以與帕麗斯·希爾頓(Paris Hilton)這樣的人出入派對而聞名，一個與他有關的空殼公司買下了位於曼哈頓的公園桂冠(Park Laurel)共管公寓的一套售價2398萬美元的套房。三年後，那個空殼公司把套房出售給另一個空殼公司，而這家公司則是在馬來西亞地位更高的人控制之下：馬拉西亞總理的身爲電影製片人的繼子。

A similar transaction was playing out on the other side of the country. Mr. Low bought a contemporary mansion in Beverly Hills for $17.5 million, then turned around and sold it, once again to the prime minister’s stepson. (Read a summary of this article in Malay.)

一筆類似的交易也在美國的另一邊進行着。劉特佐在比佛利山(Beverly Hills)買下了一座1750萬美元的現代豪宅，然後轉手把它賣掉，還是賣給了總理的繼子。（閱讀馬來語版文章摘要）

Mr. Low also went shopping at the Time Warner Center condominiums overlooking Central Park. He toured a 76th-floor penthouse, once home to the celebrity couple Jay Z and Beyoncé, then in early 2011 used yet another shell company to buy it for $30.55 million, one of the highest prices ever in the building.

劉特佐也去了俯瞰中央公園的時代華納中心共管公寓採購。他參觀了位於76層的一套頂層套房，那曾是一對明星夫婦Jay Z和碧昂絲的家，之後於2011年初通過另外一個空殼公司花3055萬美元將其買下，這是該豪華公寓樓售價最高的公寓之一。

At the time, Mr. Low said he represented a group of investors, according to two people with direct knowledge of the transaction. Mr. Low recently told The New York Times that he had not purchased the penthouse for investors, and that it was owned by his family’s trust.

據兩位對交易有直接瞭解的人說，當時，劉特佐說，他代表了一羣投資者。劉特佐最近告訴《紐約時報》說，那套頂層公寓不是爲投資者買的，而是由他的家族的一個信託基金擁有。

One thing is clear: As with nearly two-thirds of the apartments at the Time Warner Center, a dark-glass symbol of New York’s luxury condominium boom, the people behind Penthouse 76B cannot be found in any public real estate records. The trail ends with Jho Low.

有一點是明確的：在時代華納中心，這座象徵着紐約豪華公寓熱潮的深色玻璃建築中，與近三分之二的公寓一樣，頂層公寓76B的實際擁有者不能在任何公開的房地產記錄中找到。線索以劉特佐爲止。

Mr. Low, 33, is a skillful, and more than occasionally flamboyant, iteration of the sort of operative essential to the economy of the global superrich. Just as many of the wealthy use shell companies to keep the movement of money opaque, they also use people like Mr. Low. Whether shopping for new business opportunities or real estate, he has often done so on behalf of investors or, as he likes to say, friends. Whether the money belongs to others or is his own, the lines are frequently blurry, the identity of the buyer elusive.

現年33歲的劉特佐是全球超級富豪經濟不可缺少的那種熟練的、慣於炫耀的操作手。正如許多富人用空殼公司來保持資金流動的不透明那樣，他們也使用像劉特佐這樣的人。無論是投資新的商業機會、還是採購房地產，他經常代表投資者（或者用他喜歡的說法“朋友”）出面。所用的錢是屬於別人還是屬於他自己常常沒有清楚的界線，而買家的身份則更難以捉摸。

Mr. Low’s lavish spending has raised eyebrows and questions from Kuala Lumpur to New York, where he has made a boldface name for himself as a “whale” at clubs like the Pink Elephant and 1Oak. The New York Post once called him “the mystery man of city club scene,” adding, “Speculation is brewing over where Low is getting his money from.”

劉特佐的出手闊綽從吉隆坡到紐約都令人驚訝和不解，在紐約的像Pink Elephant和1Oak這樣的俱樂部裏，他以“鯨魚”的綽號大名鼎鼎。《紐約郵報》(New York Post)曾稱他爲“紐約俱樂部圈子裏的神祕人物”，還說，“人們對劉特佐的錢是從哪來的有各種推測。”

One answer resides at least indirectly in his relationship, going back to his school days in London, with the family of Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak. Mr. Low has played an important role in bringing Middle Eastern money into numerous deals involving the Malaysian government, and he helped set up, and has continued to advise, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that the prime minister oversees.

一個答案是至少間接地來自他與馬來西亞總理納吉布·拉扎克(Najib Razak)家族的關係，這要追溯到他在倫敦度過的學生時代。劉特佐在將中東資金吸引到與馬來西亞政府有關的多筆交易中起過重要作用，他幫助建立了一個由總理負責的馬來西亞主權財富基金，並繼續爲基金擔任顧問。

Now, that relationship has become part of an uproar gathering around Mr. Najib and threatening his already shaky hold on power. In Parliament, in political cartoons and in social media, Mr. Najib’s critics tend to argue that he is too close to Mr. Low.

現在，這種關係已成爲圍繞着納吉布的軒然大波的一部分，並威脅到他對權力的已經搖搖欲墜的控制。在國會裏、在政治漫畫中，以及在社交媒體上，納吉布的批評者常常會認爲他與劉特佐的關係過於密切。

Much of the concern, even in Mr. Najib’s own long-ruling party, involves questions about the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. More broadly, though, the prime minister’s trappings of wealth and the widely broadcast tales of his wife’s outsize spending — the diamond jewelry, the collection of extravagantly costly Hermès Birkin bags — have become a focus of Malaysians’ rising unease with their government’s institutionalized culture of patronage and graft.

甚至包括納吉布所在的長期執政的政黨在內的各方都很關注有關馬來西亞主權財富基金的問題。不過，更廣泛地說，總理的所有財富象徵、以及流傳甚廣的總理夫人大手筆消費的故事——她的鑽石首飾、極爲昂貴的愛馬仕柏金(Birkin)包的收藏——已成爲馬來西亞人對政府中存在的、制度化的權錢交易和腐敗文化不斷增長的不滿的焦點。

“We are very concerned,” Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a member of Malaysian royalty and an independent-minded elder statesman of Mr. Najib’s party, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur last summer. “We want people of integrity to be up there.”

“我們非常擔心，”馬來西亞王室成員、納吉布所在黨的一位思想獨立的元老東古·拉扎雷·哈姆扎(Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah)去年夏天在吉隆坡接受採訪時說。“我們希望誠實正直的人來當領導。”

Increasingly, the glare turns to Mr. Najib’s stepson, Riza Aziz, and so to Mr. Aziz’s friendship with Mr. Low. With Mr. Low’s help, Mr. Aziz runs a Hollywood company that produced the films “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Dumb and Dumber To.” He has spent tens of millions more on the homes in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, transactions that involved Mr. Low, The Times found.

越來越多的關注正轉向納吉布的繼子勒扎·阿齊茲(Riza Aziz)以及阿齊茲與劉特佐的友誼上。在劉特佐的幫助下，阿齊茲成爲一家好萊塢公司的共同創始人，該公司是電影《華爾街之狼》(The Wolf of Wall Street)和《阿呆與阿瓜2》(Dumb and Dumber To)的製作商。時報發現，阿齊茲又花了數千萬美元購置曼哈頓和比佛利山的房子，這些交易都涉及劉特佐。

“That’s a lot of money,” Sivarasa Rasiah, an opposition lawmaker, said of Mr. Aziz’s spending. He added, “Every U.S. report on him talks about family wealth. Family who?”

“那是很大的一筆錢，”國會中的反對黨派議員西華拉沙·拉西亞(Sivarasa Rasiah)在提到阿齊茲的花銷時說。他還說，“美國關於他的每篇報道都提家族財富。誰的家族？”

While Mr. Aziz has previously said he is personally wealthy, he declined to explain how he had acquired his money. Mr. Najib’s office, in a statement, said, “The prime minister does not track how much Mr. Aziz earns or how such earnings are reinvested.” As for the prime minister himself, the statement said he had “received inheritance.”

雖然阿齊茲此前曾表示，他本人很富有，但他拒絕解釋他是如何獲得自己的財富的。納吉布的辦公室在一份聲明中說：“總理不追蹤阿齊茲掙多少錢、或他如何利用這些錢進行再投資。”至於總理本人，聲明說他“繼承了財產”。

In a statement provided by a spokesman, Mr. Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, said he “is a friend of Mr. Riza Aziz and his family.” His real estate transactions with Mr. Aziz were made “on an arm’s-length basis,” he said, adding that he had never purchased real estate in the United States for the prime minister’s family or “engaged in any wrongful conduct regarding any financial matters for the prime minister and his family.”

在由發言人提供的一份聲明中，劉特佐（他全名的英譯是Low Taek Jho）說，自己“是勒扎·阿齊茲及其家人的朋友”。他與阿齊茲的房地產交易是“在與委託人保持距離的基礎上”進行的，他還說，他從未在美國爲總理的家人購置過房地產，或“爲總理及其家人在任何有關金融的事務上從事過任何不法行爲”。

At the Time Warner Center, The Times found, the 76th-floor penthouse, purchased through a shell company called 80 Columbus Circle (NYC) L.L.C., is one of at least a dozen that can be traced to people with close ties to current or former high-ranking foreign officials, or to the officials themselves.

時報在時代華納中心發現，位於76層的那套頂層豪華公寓是通過名爲80 Columbus Circle (NYC)有限責任公司的空殼公司購買的。包括該公司在內的至少12家空殼公司可以追溯到與現任或前任外國高級官員有密切聯繫的人，或官員本人。

According to one member of the condominium board there, while the board understood that the penthouse had been bought for investors, it did not ascertain their identities. At the Park Laurel, where Mr. Najib’s stepson owns, the board did not respond to questions about whether it had examined the financing of the purchase.

據時代華納共管公寓的一名董事會成員說，雖然董事會知道那套頂層套房是爲投資者購買的，但董事會未曾確認過投資者的身份。在納吉布的繼子擁有房產的公園桂冠，董事會沒有回覆有關其是否審查過購房資金的問題。

In fact, in-depth scrutiny of real estate deals is not required. International anticorruption organizations have criticized this lack of inquiry — not just by real estate brokers and condo boards, but by banks, lawyers and the federal government.

實際上，沒有對房地產交易進行深入審查的要求。國際反腐敗組織批評過這種不審查的做法，不只是房地產經紀人和共管公寓董事會不審查，而且銀行、律師，以及聯邦政府都不審查。

“People should ask the questions, ‘Why is it that this individual is bringing in millions of dollars into America, and how was it acquired?’” said Charmian Gooch, co-founder of Global Witness, a nongovernmental organization that works against corruption around the world.

“人們應該問些問題，‘爲什麼這個人把成百上千萬美元帶到美國來，這些錢是怎麼來的？’”在全球各地努力反腐的非政府組織“全球見證”(Global Witness)的聯合創始人夏米安·古奇(Charmian Gooch)這樣說。