神秘马来西亚人 纽约豪宅交易的幕后操盘手(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，一位名叫刘特佐(Jho Low)的马来西亚年轻金融家开始在美国做起非常昂贵的房地产交易。

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.

刘特佐在当地以与帕丽斯·希尔顿(Paris Hilton)这样的人出入派对而闻名，一个与他有关的空壳公司买下了位于曼哈顿的公园桂冠(Park Laurel)共管公寓的一套售价2398万美元的套房。三年后，那个空壳公司把套房出售给另一个空壳公司，而这家公司则是在马来西亚地位更高的人控制之下：马拉西亚总理的身为电影制片人的继子。

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.)

一笔类似的交易也在美国的另一边进行着。刘特佐在比佛利山(Beverly Hills)买下了一座1750万美元的现代豪宅，然后转手把它卖掉，还是卖给了总理的继子。（阅读马来语版文章摘要）

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.

刘特佐也去了俯瞰中央公园的时代华纳中心共管公寓采购。他参观了位于76层的一套顶层套房，那曾是一对明星夫妇Jay Z和碧昂丝的家，之后于2011年初通过另外一个空壳公司花3055万美元将其买下，这是该豪华公寓楼售价最高的公寓之一。

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.

据两位对交易有直接了解的人说，当时，刘特佐说，他代表了一群投资者。刘特佐最近告诉《纽约时报》说，那套顶层公寓不是为投资者买的，而是由他的家族的一个信托基金拥有。

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.

有一点是明确的：在时代华纳中心，这座象征着纽约豪华公寓热潮的深色玻璃建筑中，与近三分之二的公寓一样，顶层公寓76B的实际拥有者不能在任何公开的房地产记录中找到。线索以刘特佐为止。

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.

现年33岁的刘特佐是全球超级富豪经济不可缺少的那种熟练的、惯于炫耀的操作手。正如许多富人用空壳公司来保持资金流动的不透明那样，他们也使用像刘特佐这样的人。无论是投资新的商业机会、还是采购房地产，他经常代表投资者（或者用他喜欢的说法“朋友”）出面。所用的钱是属于别人还是属于他自己常常没有清楚的界线，而买家的身份则更难以捉摸。

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.”

刘特佐的出手阔绰从吉隆坡到纽约都令人惊讶和不解，在纽约的像Pink Elephant和1Oak这样的俱乐部里，他以“鲸鱼”的绰号大名鼎鼎。《纽约邮报》(New York Post)曾称他为“纽约俱乐部圈子里的神秘人物”，还说，“人们对刘特佐的钱是从哪来的有各种推测。”

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.

一个答案是至少间接地来自他与马来西亚总理纳吉布·拉扎克(Najib Razak)家族的关系，这要追溯到他在伦敦度过的学生时代。刘特佐在将中东资金吸引到与马来西亚政府有关的多笔交易中起过重要作用，他帮助建立了一个由总理负责的马来西亚主权财富基金，并继续为基金担任顾问。

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.

现在，这种关系已成为围绕着纳吉布的轩然大波的一部分，并威胁到他对权力的已经摇摇欲坠的控制。在国会里、在政治漫画中，以及在社交媒体上，纳吉布的批评者常常会认为他与刘特佐的关系过于密切。

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.

甚至包括纳吉布所在的长期执政的政党在内的各方都很关注有关马来西亚主权财富基金的问题。不过，更广泛地说，总理的所有财富象征、以及流传甚广的总理夫人大手笔消费的故事——她的钻石首饰、极为昂贵的爱马仕柏金(Birkin)包的收藏——已成为马来西亚人对政府中存在的、制度化的权钱交易和腐败文化不断增长的不满的焦点。

“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.”

“我们非常担心，”马来西亚王室成员、纳吉布所在党的一位思想独立的元老东古·拉扎雷·哈姆扎(Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah)去年夏天在吉隆坡接受采访时说。“我们希望诚实正直的人来当领导。”

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.

越来越多的关注正转向纳吉布的继子勒扎·阿齐兹(Riza Aziz)以及阿齐兹与刘特佐的友谊上。在刘特佐的帮助下，阿齐兹成为一家好莱坞公司的共同创始人，该公司是电影《华尔街之狼》(The Wolf of Wall Street)和《阿呆与阿瓜2》(Dumb and Dumber To)的制作商。时报发现，阿齐兹又花了数千万美元购置曼哈顿和比佛利山的房子，这些交易都涉及刘特佐。

“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?”

“那是很大的一笔钱，”国会中的反对党派议员西华拉沙·拉西亚(Sivarasa Rasiah)在提到阿齐兹的花销时说。他还说，“美国关于他的每篇报道都提家族财富。谁的家族？”

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.”

虽然阿齐兹此前曾表示，他本人很富有，但他拒绝解释他是如何获得自己的财富的。纳吉布的办公室在一份声明中说：“总理不追踪阿齐兹挣多少钱、或他如何利用这些钱进行再投资。”至于总理本人，声明说他“继承了财产”。

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.”

在由发言人提供的一份声明中，刘特佐（他全名的英译是Low Taek Jho）说，自己“是勒扎·阿齐兹及其家人的朋友”。他与阿齐兹的房地产交易是“在与委托人保持距离的基础上”进行的，他还说，他从未在美国为总理的家人购置过房地产，或“为总理及其家人在任何有关金融的事务上从事过任何不法行为”。

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.

时报在时代华纳中心发现，位于76层的那套顶层豪华公寓是通过名为80 Columbus Circle (NYC)有限责任公司的空壳公司购买的。包括该公司在内的至少12家空壳公司可以追溯到与现任或前任外国高级官员有密切联系的人，或官员本人。

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.

据时代华纳共管公寓的一名董事会成员说，虽然董事会知道那套顶层套房是为投资者购买的，但董事会未曾确认过投资者的身份。在纳吉布的继子拥有房产的公园桂冠，董事会没有回复有关其是否审查过购房资金的问题。

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.

实际上，没有对房地产交易进行深入审查的要求。国际反腐败组织批评过这种不审查的做法，不只是房地产经纪人和共管公寓董事会不审查，而且银行、律师，以及联邦政府都不审查。

“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.

“人们应该问些问题，‘为什么这个人把成百上千万美元带到美国来，这些钱是怎么来的？’”在全球各地努力反腐的非政府组织“全球见证”(Global Witness)的联合创始人夏米安·古奇(Charmian Gooch)这样说。