Tags
1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), asset forfeiture, Clinton fundraiser, DOJ, embezzlement, Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, Leonardo DiCaprio, Malaysia
Hollywood elitist, one percenter Leonardo DiCaprio scheduled to host a Hillary Clinton fundraiser today at his home in Hollywood backed out at the last moment.
The talking points are that the scheduled plans surrounding DiCaprio’s movie production, ‘Before the Flood,’ another climate change movie has changed preventing the climate change Nazi’s return to Los Angeles until Wednesday.
No problem, fellow elitists Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel are more than happy to do the honors.
Moving on. No one is buying the talking points especially since this past weekend, news surfaced about some shady dealings in which DiCaprio and/or his foundation may be linked.
The perfect image of Marxist elitist hypocrisy are one percenter climate change Nazis helicoptering in to an event in St. Tropez sponsored by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (“LDF”) “to dine on whole sea bass after watching a short film about the dangers of overfishing.”
Unfortunately for Hollywood’s numero uno, Leonardo DiCaprio, known for his Progressive hypocrisy, excesses and whose events are tapered with “booze, billionaires and babes,” key players connected to LDF and the Foundation itself has caught the attention of the United States Department of Justice.
The DOJ under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative has filed a complaint alleging that LDF (for starters) through DiCaprio’s associations although DiCaprio is not the target has been linked and may have benefited from a scandal that reaches across the globe in which $3 billion plus was siphoned off from 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund
1Malaysia Development Bhd was set up in Malaysia in 2009 shortly before Dato’ Sri Haji Mohammad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak became its Malaysia’s prime minister.
The stated purpose for 1MDB was to boost the economy through strategic investments and the fundamental transformation of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital into a major financial hub. Instead 1MDB which is $11 billion plus in debt became a slush fund for Prime Minister Najib Razak and his ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional and National Front coalition.
Besides chairing 1MDB’s advisory board, Najib Razak is also Malaysia’s finance minister and the fundamental economic transformation of Kuala Lumpur is now nothing more than a pipedream.
As reported by Bloomberg News:
From the moment in 2009 when Najib took over a sovereign wealth fund set up by the Malaysian state of oil-rich Terengganu and turned it into a development fund owned by the federal government, 1MDB has been controversial. Since the beginning of this year—with coverage driven by the Sarawak Report, a blog, and The Edge, a local business weekly—the scandal has moved closer and closer to the heart of government, sparking calls for Najib’s ouster and recalling Malaysia’s long struggle with corruption and economic disappointment….
On July 3, the Wall Street Journal, citing documents from government probes, reported that investigators believe almost $700 million in cash moved through state agencies, banks, and companies linked to 1MDB before eventually finding its way into Najib’s personal accounts. The money reportedly included two transactions—one worth $620 million; another, $61 million—made in March 2013, two months before a general election returned Najib to power as part of the Barisan Nasional, or National Front, coalition….
1MDB, individuals and corporations linked to 1MDB in more than 10 countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Switzerland, United States, Thailand, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates and Australia) are under investigation for possible money laundering and financial irregularities.
Through its anti-corruption unit, the USDOJ who never met an asset forfeiture it didn’t like will begin seizing assets here in the USA from those individuals connected to the scandal and Malaysia’s prime minister.
As with most forfeiture cases, one need not be charged with a crime for the government on all levels to seize one’s assets.
Under the guise of doing it for the greater good, the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative was launched back in 2010 by Barack Obama and Eric Holder but not to take on corrupt corporations in the United States but corrupt leaders and their alliances who fleece their government’s coffers for their own nefarious gains. (Enter Barack Obama who is the ultimate kleptocrat.)
According to the forfeiture complaint filed in California, Razak’s stepson, Riza Aziz, close friends and associates diverted more than from an international oil deal, bond deals from Goldman Sachs (yeah, we know they had to be in here somewhere) and 1MBD along with “$1 billion of the embezzled funds into the United States using shell companies and the client bank accounts at the white-shoe law firm Shearman & Sterling….”
Back to DiCaprio’s LDF which is not known for its transparency, while not a non-profit entity was set up as a “donor-advised fund (DAF) attached to the California Community Foundation,” which happens to be a non-profit entity meaning that:
“LDF therefore is not required to file itemized public disclosures about its own revenue, expenditures and disbursements. ‘It’s difficult to characterize the giving of the DiCaprio Foundation because its status as part of the CCF makes it impossible to look at its finances,’ industry trade journal Inside Philanthropy noted in 2015….” Source: Hollywood Reporter.
Will assets donated to LDF in addition to whoever else amongst the Hollywood’s elites received gifts, donations, financial backing, etc. acquired through assets embezzled from 1Malaysia Development Bhd find themselves under the glaring lights of Barack Obama’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative?
Will the federal government use this moment as an opportunity to dig its appendages much deeper into Hollywood who has for the past eight years endlessly splattered Barack Obama’s propaganda across movie and television screens (but that’s another post)?
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According to the complaint, Aziz, chairman of Red Granite Pictures who landed the rights to DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” financed the film from $238 million in funds embezzled from 1Malaysia Development Bhd[i].
The CEO for LDF claims that DiCaprio’s foundation has distributed more than $30 million this year in grants “through its relationship with the California Community Foundation, is supporting credible organizations that are carrying out some of the most important work on the planet” with one caveat, i.e., their anonymity and privacy “in their giving choices.”
We shall see how long the latter remains in play.
In the meantime, DiCaprio has good reason to ditch Clinton’s fundraiser. He wouldn’t want his fundraising problem to become intertwined with that of the Clinton’s, provided it is not already.
Just saying.
[i] In addition to The Wolf of Wall Street, Red Granite Pictures now has a half-dozen movies under its belt.
