Meet 1MDB’s accidental whistle-blower – his journey from banker to Bangkok prison inmate
- When Xavier Andre Justo released a hard disk containing 230,000 explosive emails to the media little did he realise that his ordeal was only just beginning
- The 90 gigabytes of data contained details leading to the unearthing of the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scam
If Xavier Andre Justo’s life were an international version of the Monopoly board game, he would have passed Go several times in the past 10 years. The 52-year-old has found himself in the financial hubs of Geneva, London and New York; has had dealings in the oilfields of Argentina, Turkmenistan and Venezuela; and has landed often in Malaysia and Thailand, where he has stayed both at his would-be holiday resort, on Koh Samui, and in a Bangkok jail.
When we meet in Kuala Lumpur, at the end of January, the nightmare of his 18 months in Klong Prem prison is beginning to fade, although the Swiss banker-turned-accidental-whistle-blower’s next legal battle is going to be claiming justice for that wrong.
Justo, a former employee of PetroSaudi International, has temporarily taken up residence with his wife, Laura, and four-year-old son, Xander, at the five-star Shangri-La. The management gives him a special rate because “the end of the months are complicated”.
On the streets of Kuala Lumpur, as on Malaysia’s tourist beaches, Justo is often stopped by people asking for a selfie. They believe that it was thanks to him, and the data he leaked to the press in January 2015, that the house of cards that was investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) began to shake, and then collapse. The scandal contributed to the downfall of prime minister Najib Razak in the May 2018 election, along with the party that had been in power in Malaysia since independence, in 1957, the United Malays National Organisation.
“Let’s say it’s been a series of events. But, yes, it is unlikely that all this would have happened had I not released the PetroSaudi data,” says Justo. “This ignited the fire. The recognition that I am shown here is mostly for this gesture.
“Thanks to the change of government in Malaysia, people are able to hope again. At the rate the plunder was going, it would have been Venezuela in five or 10 years. They were emptying the coffers of the country as if they were theirs.”