Our profile of Rosmah Mansor, the 21st century’s Imelda Marcos, is the most extensive yet. Malaysian prosecutors are looking at her alleged role in one of the world’s largest ever financial scandals. Read this thread on our exclusive story. wsj.com/articles/malay…
/2 Rosmah’s parents were middle class school teachers, but the family was adopted by a Malay sultan and she lived for a while on the grounds of a palace. This gave her a taste for luxury. She told school mates she wanted to marry the Sultan of Brunei.
/3 Instead she married Najib Razak, heir to a political dynasty. She became the center of a graft network. One businessman described how he would buy state property and flip it, sharing profits with Rosmah. Another said he would buy her handbags in return for state contracts.
/4 Her extravagance made some members of Najib’s family uneasy. When Najib and Rosmah moved into a sprawling family home in Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, some thought it extravagant. Known for a fiery temper, Rosmah reacted angrily to the criticism.
/5 Rosmah forged an alliance with Jho Low, a Malaysian financier who knew her son from a former marriage. Low arranged for investors from Abu Dhabi to put money into a Malaysian project. When Najib became prime minister in 2009, he alllowed Low to run a new fund called 1MDB.
/6 Low used some of the $4.5 billion allegedly stolen from 1MDB to buy jewels for Rosmah. Her jewelry collection is worth $350 million, says one person who knows her. She has one of the largest collections of pink diamonds in the world, says another.
/7 Low introduced Rosmah to Hollywood. Some 1MDB money allegedly financed a Hollywood production company run by her son. In 2010, Low organized a party in NYC, where Rosmah danced with Jamie Foxx and Robert De Niro. Low arranged for an ad in the NYT welcoming her to the US.
/8 But Low tired of Rosmah’s demands. He told friends that Blackrock, a shell company he set up to procure jewelry, was named because “rock” stood for diamonds and “black” for Rosmah’s heart. As the 1MDB scheme imploded in 2015, he blamed her desire for diamonds.
/9 Rosmah played a role in trying to hire lobbyists to stop US investigations into 1MDB, says a person familiar with the matter. One person who the US Justice Department believes is central to the 1MDB fraud said this: “The wife had more of a picture than the husband.”
/10 The story contains photos such as this 
/11 We’ll detail this and much more in our upcoming book #billiondollarwhale available September 18. amazon.com/Billion-Dollar…
/12 And here’s a fantastic graphic from WSJ art department on Rosmah:
/13 Oh, and almost forgot: Rosmah’s karaoke perfomance.
