KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 — Inspector General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani said efforts to arrest fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho over the 1MDB scandal remain active but have not progressed as no country has reported his whereabouts to Interpol.
He noted that the Royal Malaysia Police requested a Red Notice from Interpol in 2018, but said this must be acted upon by a member country of Interpol before his agency could file a formal extradition request.
“Red notice that was issued by Interpol to 195 countries was to share information and inform the member nations on the whereabouts of fugitives. It is the responsibility of the member nations to share any information on the fugitives’ whereabouts to the country that produced the red notice for purposes of extradition.
“Thus far, no extradition request can be made as no member nations have reported sighting Low Taek Jho in their country,” he said in a statement.
A Red Notice is a request by a member country to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition and it will only be issued if there was a valid national arrest warrant.
Attention on Low, also known as Jho Low, was reignited after former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak began serving his 12-year prison sentence for misappropriating RM42 million from SRC International, a former 1MDB subsidiary, last month.
Low has been described as the mastermind behind the 1MDB global corruption scandal and faces 13 charges in absentia here.
After Najib’s imprisonment, Billion Dollar Whale authors and former The Wall Street Journal journalists Tom Wright and Bradley Hope revealed that they have launched a project to locate Low, the subject of their book.
