Party With Stolen Money

0:00 Speaker 1: Today's true crime episode. Picture a birthday party in Las Vegas.

0:04 Speaker 1: The year is twenty twelve. A man not yet thirty

0:07 Speaker 1: years old has rented out an entire nightclub, and the

0:10 Speaker 1: champagne alone for the evening will cost more than most

0:13 Speaker 1: people make in a decade. Britney Spears is about to

0:16 Speaker 1: pop out of a giant cake. Paris Hilton is somewhere

0:20 Speaker 1: near the bar. Leonardo DiCaprio is laughing at a private table,

0:24 Speaker 1: and within a year his name will be attached to

0:26 Speaker 1: one of the most celebrated films in Hollywood, a movie

0:29 Speaker 1: about greed, excess and the seductive, hollow thrill of stolen money.

0:35 Speaker 1: The irony of that is almost too perfect. Because the

0:37 Speaker 1: man throwing this party, the man footing this bill, the

0:40 Speaker 1: man whose signature appears on wire transfers moving hundreds of

0:43 Speaker 1: millions of dollars across a web of shell companies stretching

0:46 Speaker 1: from Kuala Lumpur to Zurich to the Cayman Islands. That

0:49 Speaker 1: man is, at this very moment stealing from his own country.

0:52 Speaker 1: His name is low Take Joe. The world would come

0:55 Speaker 1: to know him as Joe lo and by the time investigators,

0:58 Speaker 1: journalists and prosecut on three continents finished untangling what he did.

1:03 Speaker 1: They would call it one of the largest financial crimes

1:06 Speaker 1: in human history, a theft of more than four and

1:09 Speaker 1: a half billion dollars, a theft so audacious, so wrapped

1:12 Speaker 1: up in glamour and celebrity and political power, that it

1:15 Speaker 1: would topple a government, implicate one of the most prestigious

1:18 Speaker 1: banks on Wall Street, and leave its architect to this

1:21 Speaker 1: day a fugitive that no government on earth has managed

1:24 Speaker 1: to catch. This is the story of one MDB. This

1:28 Speaker 1: is the story of how a sovereign wealth fund created

1:31 Speaker 1: with the stated mission of building a better Malaysia became

1:34 Speaker 1: instead the private piggybank of a prime minister and the

1:36 Speaker 1: playground of a warton educated con artist with a genius

1:39 Speaker 1: for making powerful people believe exactly what he wanted them

1:42 Speaker 1: to believe. To understand how this happened, you have to

1:45 Speaker 1: start with the man who was, on paper the architect

1:48 Speaker 1: of Malaysia's future. Najib Brazak became Prime Minister of Malaysia

1:52 Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine inheriting the leadership of UMNO,

1:55 Speaker 1: the United Malay's National Organization, a party that had ruled

1:59 Speaker 1: the country in one form or another without interruption since

2:02 Speaker 1: independence from Britain in nineteen fifty seven. Najib was a

2:06 Speaker 1: child of the Malaysian establishment. His father had been the

2:10 Speaker 1: country's second prime minister. He had been groomed for power

2:14 Speaker 1: his entire life, and in two thousand and nine, not

2:17 Speaker 1: long after taking office, Najib announced the creation of a

2:21 Speaker 1: new state investment vehicle. It would be called One Malaysia

2:24 Speaker 1: Development Barehood one MDB for short, and its purpose, according

2:28 Speaker 1: to the official language, was development, infrastructure, energy projects, job creation.

2:35 Speaker 1: A modern prosperous Malaysia funded by a sovereign wealth fund

2:39 Speaker 1: that would attract foreign investment and recycle it into the

2:42 Speaker 1: nation's future. It sounded on paper like exactly the kind

2:46 Speaker 1: of ambitious nation building project that a young, reform minded

2:49 Speaker 1: prime minister might champion. The man who helped Najib design it,

2:53 Speaker 1: who whispered the architecture of one MDB into existence, was

2:57 Speaker 1: barely out of university. Joe Lowe had grown up in Penang,

3:01 Speaker 1: the son of a businessman of middling wealth, comfortable but

3:05 Speaker 1: nowhere near the financial stratosphere he would eventually claim to inhabit.

3:09 Speaker 1: He'd been educated at Harrow, the elite British boarding school

3:13 Speaker 1: and then at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, one

3:16 Speaker 1: of the most prestigious business programs in the world. And

3:20 Speaker 1: somewhere in those years Low developed two extraordinary talents that

3:23 Speaker 1: would define the rest of his life. An instinct for

3:26 Speaker 1: making himself indispensable to powerful people and an utter, breathtaking

3:31 Speaker 1: shamelessness about lying to get what he wanted. Low had

3:34 Speaker 1: no official position at one MDB. He held no title,

3:38 Speaker 1: no formal seat on its board, but almost from the

3:41 Speaker 1: beginning he was the man pulling the strings behind the curtain,

3:45 Speaker 1: consulted on every major decision, present in every important meeting,

3:49 Speaker 1: the human conduit through which money allegedly flowed from the

3:52 Speaker 1: Gulf into Malaysia, and then investigators would later show into

3:55 Speaker 1: his own pockets. His pitch to Najib, according to later

3:59 Speaker 1: reporting and trial testimony, was elegant in its cynicism. One

4:04 Speaker 1: MDB wouldn't just fund infrastructure. It could also become something else,

4:08 Speaker 1: a war chest, a source of money that Najib could

4:12 Speaker 1: quietly direct toward political patronage, toward keeping UMNO's machine well oiled,

4:17 Speaker 1: toward buying the kind of loyalty that wins elections. On

4:20 Speaker 1: the surface, this spending could be dressed up as corporate

4:23 Speaker 1: social responsibility. Underneath it would be exactly what it sounds like,

4:28 Speaker 1: a slush fund. The mechanics of the theft, once you

4:31 Speaker 1: see them laid out, have a kind of dark elegance

4:33 Speaker 1: to them, the way a magic trick looks impossible until

4:36 Speaker 1: someone shows you the hidden compartment. The first major scheme

4:40 Speaker 1: involved a joint venture with PetroSaudi International, a Saudi Arabian

4:44 Speaker 1: oil company. In two thousand and nine, one MDB announced

4:48 Speaker 1: a billion dollar investment into this joint venture, supposedly to

4:52 Speaker 1: fund oil and gas projects in the region. But of

4:55 Speaker 1: that billion dollars, investigators would later determine the vast majority

4:59 Speaker 1: never went anywhere near an actual oil field. Instead, it

5:03 Speaker 1: was diverted routed through a Saciales registered company with a

5:06 Speaker 1: name almost comically generic, good Star Limited and Good Star,

5:09 Speaker 1: it turned out, was controlled not by PetroSaudi, not by

5:12 Speaker 1: any legitimate joint venture partner, but by Joe Lowe himself.

5:15 Speaker 1: A billion dollars meant to develop a nation vanished into

5:19 Speaker 1: an account that one twenty something financier could access at will.

5:23 Speaker 1: The second and third schemes were if anything, even more

5:26 Speaker 1: brazen because this time they didn't just involve a sketchy

5:29 Speaker 1: joint venture partner in the Gulf. This time they involved

5:32 Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs, one of the most respected investment banks on

5:36 Speaker 1: the planet. Between twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, Goldman Sachs

5:41 Speaker 1: helped one MDB raise more than six billion dollars through

5:44 Speaker 1: a series of bond offerings, ostensibly to fund infrastructure projects

5:48 Speaker 1: and to support what was described as new strategic economic

5:51 Speaker 1: initiatives between Malaysia and Abu Dhabi. Goldman's fees for this

5:55 Speaker 1: work were, by any normal standard, obscene, reportedly around six

5:59 Speaker 1: hundred millillion dollars, multiples of what such bond sales would

6:03 Speaker 1: typically cost a bank to underwrite. But Goldman prosecutors would

6:07 Speaker 1: later allege wasn't just collecting an outsized fee for ordinary work.

6:12 Speaker 1: The bank's own bankers, specifically a star deal maker named

6:14 Speaker 1: Tim Leisner, who ran Goldman's Southeast Asia operations, were prosecutors said,

6:20 Speaker 1: directly involved in helping move the stolen money and in

6:22 Speaker 1: paying roughly two billion dollars in bribes to government officials

6:25 Speaker 1: across Malaysia and Abu Dhabi, including prosecutors alleged to Najeeb himself.

6:30 Speaker 1: Picture the scale for a moment. A billion dollars routed

6:33 Speaker 1: through a shell company, then another billion, then another raised

6:38 Speaker 1: through bonds with the implicit credibility of one of the

6:40 Speaker 1: most trusted names in global finance attached to them, then

6:43 Speaker 1: siphoned into an elaborate network of offshore entities with names

6:46 Speaker 1: designed to mean nothing to anyone, companies that existed for

6:50 Speaker 1: no purpose other than to make stolen money harder to trace,

6:53 Speaker 1: And all the while, the public face of one MDB

6:56 Speaker 1: remained relentlessly, almost defiantly upbeat press releases, groundbreaking ceremonies, glossy

7:03 Speaker 1: brochures about a glittering new financial district planned for Kuala Lumpur.

7:08 Speaker 1: The fund's official narrative and its actual operations existed in

7:12 Speaker 1: two entirely separate universes, and for years almost no one

7:16 Speaker 1: outside a tiny circle of people knew it. Where did

7:19 Speaker 1: the money go? This is the part of the story

7:21 Speaker 1: that made one MDB more than just a financial crime.

7:25 Speaker 1: It's the part that made it a global spectacle. Joe

7:27 Speaker 1: Lowe used the stolen billions to construct, almost overnight, the

7:31 Speaker 1: persona of a billionaire playboy financier, the kind of fabulously

7:34 Speaker 1: wealthy young man who seemed to exist simply to be

7:37 Speaker 1: photographed at the right parties with the right people. He

7:40 Speaker 1: bought luxury real estate across three continents, penthouses in New York,

7:45 Speaker 1: mansions in Beverly Hills, properties in London. He purchased a

7:49 Speaker 1: super yacht called the Equanimity, valued at around two hundred

7:53 Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars, complete with a helipad and an

7:56 Speaker 1: infinity pool. He spent over three hundred million dollars on

7:59 Speaker 1: fine art, including works by Monette, Bosciot and Van Go,

8:04 Speaker 1: at one point paying nearly forty nine million dollars for

8:07 Speaker 1: a single Boskiocht painting, a record setting sum for the

8:11 Speaker 1: artist's work. He spent eighty five million dollars on parties

8:14 Speaker 1: in a single nine month stretch. He once ran up

8:17 Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty thousand dollars tab at a single

8:20 Speaker 1: New York City club in one night. He sent two

8:23 Speaker 1: dozen bottles of Christal Champaigne to a celebrity's table simply

8:26 Speaker 1: to be noticed. He paid celebrities reel a List celebrities

8:32 Speaker 1: appearance fees just to show up at his events, so

8:34 Speaker 1: that the parties would feel less like a young financier's

8:37 Speaker 1: birthday celebration and more like a scene out of a

8:40 Speaker 1: film about a young financier's birthday celebration. And then there's

8:43 Speaker 1: the detail that makes the story genuinely surreal. Low actually

8:47 Speaker 1: helped finance one of those films. Together with Najeeb's own

8:51 Speaker 1: step son, Reza Aziz, Low co founded a production company

8:56 Speaker 1: called Red Granite Pictures, and in twenty thirteen, Had Granite

9:00 Speaker 1: released a movie that would go on to earn five

9:02 Speaker 1: Academy Award nominations. Martin scorsesees The Wolf of Wall Street,

9:07 Speaker 1: starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a stockbroker whose entire life is

9:11 Speaker 1: a monument to fraud, excess, and the corrupting power of

9:15 Speaker 1: stolen money. Prosecutors would later allege that Red Granite financed

9:19 Speaker 1: the film, along with several others, using money embezzled from

9:22 Speaker 1: one MDB. Low himself was thanked by name in the

9:26 Speaker 1: film's closing credits. A man was stealing billions of dollars

9:30 Speaker 1: from a developing nation's sovereign wealth fund, and he used

9:33 Speaker 1: part of that stolen fortune to bankroll a movie celebrating

9:36 Speaker 1: the glamour of financial fraud. DiCaprio would later return artwork

9:41 Speaker 1: a Picasso a Bosciot that had been gifted to him

9:44 Speaker 1: using one MDB money. Once the scandal broke and the

9:47 Speaker 1: US Department of Justice came calling, the supermodel Miranda Kerr,

9:51 Speaker 1: who dated Low for a time, returned eight million dollars

9:54 Speaker 1: in diamond jewelry. Low had reportedly purchased a quarter million

9:58 Speaker 1: dollar white ferrari as a wedding gift for a famous

10:01 Speaker 1: reality star. This wasn't subtle theft. This was theft conducted

10:06 Speaker 1: in plain sight, dressed up as the natural extravagance of

10:09 Speaker 1: new money, hiding behind the simple fact that nobody wanted

10:12 Speaker 1: to ask too many questions of a man who seemed

10:14 Speaker 1: to have an endless supply of cash and an endless

10:17 Speaker 1: willingness to spend it on the people around him. For years,

10:20 Speaker 1: this worked. It worked because Lowe was extraordinarily good at

10:23 Speaker 1: his particular brand of confidence game, flattering the right officials,

10:27 Speaker 1: cultivating relationships with royal families in the Gulf, presenting himself

10:31 Speaker 1: as a man with connections so deep and so valuable

10:33 Speaker 1: that nobody wanted to be the one to scare him

10:35 Speaker 1: away by asking inconvenient questions. It worked because Goldman Sachs,

10:39 Speaker 1: for all its supposed rigor, either failed to ask the

10:42 Speaker 1: obvious questions about where six billion dollars in bond proceeds

10:45 Speaker 1: was actually going, or, as prosecutors would later allege, some

10:48 Speaker 1: of its own employees knew exactly where the money was

10:51 Speaker 1: going and helped it get there anyway. But theft on

10:53 Speaker 1: this scale, sustained over years eventually leaves footprints, and in

10:58 Speaker 1: twenty fifteen those footprints started to surface. A Surowak born

11:03 Speaker 1: British journalist named Claire Rikasel Brown, who ran a small

11:06 Speaker 1: investigative blog called The Sarawak Report, began publishing detailed reports

11:11 Speaker 1: alleging that hundreds of millions of dollars connected to one

11:14 Speaker 1: MDB had moved into accounts controlled by Joe Lowe. Around

11:18 Speaker 1: the same time, the Wall Street Journal, working in part

11:21 Speaker 1: from a massive trove of leaked documents reportedly handed over

11:24 Speaker 1: by a former PetroSaudi employee, published its own bombshell reporting,

11:29 Speaker 1: and the headline finding was the one that turned this

11:31 Speaker 1: from a story about a mismanaged sovereign wealth fund into

11:34 Speaker 1: a story about a sitting head of state. Nearly seven

11:37 Speaker 1: hundred million dollars connected to one MDB, the journal reported,

11:41 Speaker 1: had been deposited directly into the personal bank accounts of

11:43 Speaker 1: Prime Minister Nijibrazak. This is the moment the cover up

11:47 Speaker 1: began in earnest because Najib did not resign, he did

11:51 Speaker 1: not call for an independent investigation and stepped back to

11:54 Speaker 1: let it run its course. Instead, he moved to shut

11:58 Speaker 1: the inquiry down from the inside. Malaysia's Attorney general at

12:02 Speaker 1: the time had begun assembling a task force to investigate

12:05 Speaker 1: the allegations swirling around one MDB. He was removed from

12:09 Speaker 1: his position. The new Attorney general who replaced him would

12:12 Speaker 1: later clear Najib of any wrongdoing, characterizing the hundreds of

12:16 Speaker 1: millions of dollars in his personal accounts as a personal

12:19 Speaker 1: donation from a member of the Saudi royal family, a

12:22 Speaker 1: gift supposedly with no strings attached, no connection whatsoever to

12:26 Speaker 1: the sovereign wealth fund his own government had created. Journalists

12:29 Speaker 1: and politicians who pursued the story too aggressively found themselves targeted.

12:34 Speaker 1: One Malaysian politician who had submitted evidence about one MDB

12:38 Speaker 1: to the Swiss Attorney General and filed police reports against

12:41 Speaker 1: Najib and Low in Hong Kong was arrested and charged

12:45 Speaker 1: under Malaysia's Security Offenses Act, a law typically reserved for

12:49 Speaker 1: terrorism cases, on the theory that his attempts to expose

12:52 Speaker 1: the scandal amounted to an attack on Malaysia's banking system.

12:56 Speaker 1: He and his lawyer were barred from leaving the country.

12:59 Speaker 1: The Sarawak Sport's website was blocked within Malaysia. A respected

13:03 Speaker 1: Malaysian financial newspaper that had published damaging reporting on one

13:07 Speaker 1: MDB had its publishing license suspended for three months. This

13:11 Speaker 1: is what a cover up looks like when it's being

13:13 Speaker 1: run by the full machinery of a state. Not a

13:16 Speaker 1: single dramatic act of concealment, but a thousand small acts

13:19 Speaker 1: of suppression, each one designed to make the truth just

13:21 Speaker 1: a little bit harder to say out loud, and each

13:24 Speaker 1: person who said it anyway just a little more afraid.

13:26 Speaker 1: But the story had already escaped Malaysia's borders, and outside

13:30 Speaker 1: the country, no Prime Minister's office could make it disappear.

13:34 Speaker 1: The United States Department of Justice opened its own investigation,

13:38 Speaker 1: eventually describing one MDB as the largest case in the

13:42 Speaker 1: history of its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, a program specifically

13:46 Speaker 1: designed to claw back asset stolen by corrupt foreign officials.

13:50 Speaker 1: Singapore's banking regulators began investigating the flow of one MDB

13:55 Speaker 1: linked money through accounts at Singaporean banks. Switzerland's attorney general

14:00 Speaker 1: opened a money laundering probe. Investigators in Hong Kong and

14:04 Speaker 1: Luxembourg in the United Arab Emirates all began pulling their

14:07 Speaker 1: own threads, and in July of twenty sixteen, the US

14:12 Speaker 1: Department of Justice dropped what amounted to a thunderclap, a

14:15 Speaker 1: formal announcement that it believed more than four and a

14:17 Speaker 1: half billion dollars had been siphoned out of one MDB

14:20 Speaker 1: by senior Malasian officials and their associates, and that the

14:23 Speaker 1: United States would be seeking the forfeiture of more than

14:25 Speaker 1: a billion dollars in assets, yacht's real estate, artwork, the

14:29 Speaker 1: proceeds of The Wolf of Wall Street itself that had

14:32 Speaker 1: been purchased with the stolen money. The Attorney General of

14:35 Speaker 1: the United States at the time called it, in a

14:37 Speaker 1: phrase that would be quoted endlessly in the years that followed.

14:41 Speaker 1: Kleptocracy at its worst. Two years later, the dam finally

14:45 Speaker 1: broke in Malaysia itself. In May twenty eighteen, Malaysians went

14:50 Speaker 1: to the polls in a general election dominated by public

14:52 Speaker 1: fury over one MDB and a rising cost of living

14:56 Speaker 1: that many voters connected directly to the billions that had

14:58 Speaker 1: been stolen from the cun Tree's own development fund. UMNO,

15:02 Speaker 1: the party that had governed Malaysia unbroken for sixty one

15:06 Speaker 1: years since independence, lost, Najib Razak was voted out of office.

15:11 Speaker 1: What happened next had the quality of a dam breaking

15:14 Speaker 1: all at once. Within days, Najib and his wife, Rosma

15:18 Speaker 1: Manser were barred from leaving the country. Malaysian police raided

15:22 Speaker 1: properties connected to the couple and seized what they described

15:25 Speaker 1: as the largest hall in the nation's history, cash and

15:28 Speaker 1: valuables worth somewhere between two hundred and twenty and two

15:31 Speaker 1: hundred and seventy million dollars, including more than twelve thousand

15:34 Speaker 1: pieces of jewelry, four hundred and twenty three luxury watches,

15:38 Speaker 1: and five hundred and sixty seven designer handbags from thirty

15:41 Speaker 1: seven different brands. Investigators reportedly needed days just to catalog

15:46 Speaker 1: what they found. Najib was arrested. He was eventually hit

15:50 Speaker 1: with dozens of separate criminal charges abuse of power, money laundering,

15:55 Speaker 1: criminal breach of trust connected to billions of ring it

15:58 Speaker 1: in misappropriated funds, and in twenty twenty, after a trial

16:02 Speaker 1: that captivated the country, he was convicted on seven counts

16:05 Speaker 1: related to a smaller piece of the broader scheme, involving

16:08 Speaker 1: funds from a one m d B unit known as

16:11 Speaker 1: SRC International. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison,

16:14 Speaker 1: later reduced. He did not go quietly even as the

16:18 Speaker 1: verdicts mounted. Najib maintained, as he does to this day,

16:22 Speaker 1: that he was the victim of a political conspiracy, that

16:25 Speaker 1: he had been deceived by those around him, that he

16:27 Speaker 1: never knowingly took stolen money. In twenty twenty, amid the unraveling,

16:32 Speaker 1: leaked audio recordings reportedly captured Najib asking the then crowned

16:36 Speaker 1: prints of the United Arab Emirates for help fabricating a

16:38 Speaker 1: loan document, a paper trail designed to make it look

16:41 Speaker 1: as though money received by his step son had come

16:43 Speaker 1: from a legitimate Emoradi investment fund rather than from one

16:47 Speaker 1: MDB itself. It was if the recordings are what investigators

16:51 Speaker 1: say they are a cover up of the cover up,

16:53 Speaker 1: a sitting and then former head of state caught in

16:56 Speaker 1: the act of trying to manufacture a more convenient version

16:59 Speaker 1: of the truth. And what of Joe Low, the young

17:01 Speaker 1: man at the very center of it all, the architect

17:04 Speaker 1: who designed the scheme and who, by US prosecutor's own estimate,

17:08 Speaker 1: personally pocketed something in the range of one and a

17:10 Speaker 1: half billion dollars. He vanished As the scandal accelerated in

17:14 Speaker 1: twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, Low simply stopped appearing in public,

17:19 Speaker 1: the parties stopped, the yachts sailed without him in the headlines.

17:24 Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the US Department of Justice formally indicted Low,

17:28 Speaker 1: along with two former Goldman Sachs bankers, on charges connected

17:32 Speaker 1: to the bond schemes and the bribery that allegedly accompanied them.

17:36 Speaker 1: Interpol issued a red notice for his arrest. Malaysia revoked

17:40 Speaker 1: his passport multiple countries, Malaysia, Singapore eventually Kuwait would go

17:44 Speaker 1: on to charge or sentence him in absentia, racking up

17:47 Speaker 1: potential prison terms that combined would keep him behind bars

17:50 Speaker 1: for the rest of several lifetimes if he were ever caught,

17:53 Speaker 1: but he never was. For years, Lowe's whereabouts were the

17:57 Speaker 1: subject of constant rumor Taiwan, Mainland China, various uncertain sightings

18:03 Speaker 1: that never quite resolved into a confirmed location. He reportedly

18:07 Speaker 1: traveled on multiple passports obtained through citizenship by investment schemes

18:11 Speaker 1: in places like Saint Kitts and Nevs and Cyprus. Identities

18:14 Speaker 1: purchased the same way a person might buy a piece

18:16 Speaker 1: of real estate simply because he had the money to

18:19 Speaker 1: do it, and the schemes asked very few questions. It

18:21 Speaker 1: would take years of independent investigative work, much of it

18:25 Speaker 1: driven by journalists rather than governments, to get closer to

18:28 Speaker 1: an answer. Two former Wall Street journal reporters, who had

18:32 Speaker 1: broken some of the earliest stories on the scandal and

18:34 Speaker 1: later co authored a book about it called Billion Dollar Whale,

18:38 Speaker 1: continued chasing Low's trail long after most newsrooms had moved on.

18:42 Speaker 1: Their reporting eventually pointed toward an answer. Almost nobody had

18:45 Speaker 1: considered that Low wasn't hiding in some obvious tax haven

18:49 Speaker 1: or allied nation, but was instead living under a fabricated

18:52 Speaker 1: identity in Mainland China, reportedly in a high end neighborhood

18:56 Speaker 1: of Shanghai, using a fake Australian passport under a fictitious

19:00 Speaker 1: Greek name, allegedly providing quiet strategic advice to Chinese state

19:04 Speaker 1: interests navigating Western sanctions. A remarkable second act for a

19:08 Speaker 1: man who built his first fortune by stealing from his

19:11 Speaker 1: own country. He has never been arrested as recently as

19:15 Speaker 1: this year, reports Sue