Cypriot bishop denies pushing for Jho Low to get EU passport

The head of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus has denied reports that his intervention helped Malaysian financier Jho Low obtain a Cypriot passport in 2015, saying he was merely responding to a property developer’s request for help.

The developer had asked the church to promote Low’s citizenship bid, Archbishop Chrysostomos II said.

Jho Low has a home in Cyprus, an EU passport and a face like a bear’s?

“He told us he was building mansions on the land he bought from [the church],” he was quoted as saying by daily newspaper the Cyprus Mail.

The archbishop reportedly told Cypriot public broadcaster CyBC that Low had donated money to a theological school, with the broadcaster pegging the amount at 300,000 euros (US$333,878).

He said the church could support citizenship bids as “it was done for the good of Cyprus … it is not up to us if the citizenship is given, we are just asking”.

Low, whose full name is Low Taek Jho, obtained Cyprus nationality under the country’s investment for passport scheme after buying a mansion for 5 million euros (US$5.57 million) in the resort town of Ayia Napa, according to Greek-language daily Politis. He immediately left the eastern Mediterranean island after purchasing the property and getting the passport, the report said.

Chrysostomos sent at least two letters to the country’s then-interior minister Socratis Hasikos in September 2015 asking for Low’s naturalisation as the two were in talks for investment on church property, according to Politis.

The paper said one letter was sent on September 10 and Low’s application for citizenship was submitted to the cabinet the next day, where it was approved unanimously.

A senior Cypriot government official confirmed that Low has Cypriot nationality.

Hasikos took to social media to rubbish the Politis report, saying that it would have been a “monstrous scandal” if a passport was issued within two days upon the request of the archbishop. “However it is a monstrous lie,” he said on Facebook.

He said Low had filed his citizenship application two and a half months before he obtained his passport and the relevant agency had conducted an investigation into his background with Interpol, the Cyprus police and the bank through which he made his investment. No red flags were raised.

The bank is thought to be the Bank of Cyprus and Hasikos said the bank “confirmed the money was clean”.

Low has been painted by prosecutors as the mastermind behind the 1MDB scandal, which saw more than US$4.5 billion – Malaysian authorities believe up to US$10 billion – allegedly misappropriated from the investment fund. The fugitive financier recently struck a deal with the US Justice Department to return almost US$1 billion of assets to resolve forfeiture cases linked to him. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

On Monday, Cyprus’ President Nicos Anastasiades reportedly pledged to revoke any passports that were “mistakenly” granted to wealthy investors who were found to have committed wrongdoing.

He said “errors” may have been made in granting such “golden passports” under an earlier, less-strict version of the country’s lucrative investment programme.

There could be “perhaps 10-15” such instances of investors whom vetting had failed to identify as ineligible, he said. Cypriot government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou said nearly 4,000 passports have been issued to investors since the programme began following a 2013 financial crisis.

Low’s whereabouts remain unknown despite Interpol issuing a red notice against him last year. Malaysian police said they know his location but that he is being protected by a certain party, with whom they are conducting talks to bring him back.

Low was offered asylum in August by a country that acts in line with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights, his spokesman said last week through his lawyers, without naming the country.

On Monday, it was reported that authorities in the country harbouring Low had told Malaysian police that he had undergone radical plastic surgery to make himself look like a bear and had changed the way he walks so that “he resembled a wild ox”.

Veteran newsman Kadir Jasin, now a media adviser to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, rejected these assertions, however, writing on his personal blog on Tuesday that Low could not have had such surgeries “as this would deny him the right to hold a passport”.

“He is more likely to go under the knife to look like the devastatingly handsome Leonardo DiCaprio,” he wrote, adding that now Low is known to own a Cypriot passport “it would logically be easier for us to track him down”.

“So let’s do a Mossad and get our hands on him,” Kadir said, in a reference to the Israeli intelligence arm.

“Just dig him out of the worm hole, as promised, and bring him back to Malaysia kicking and screaming.”

Additional reporting by Bloomberg and Associated Press