Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in a scene from "The Wolf of Wall Street." Photo: AP
“The Wolf of Wall Street” didn’t just tell the story of a crooked stockbroker who scammed millions of dollars that he blew on drugs and hookers — the Leonardo DiCaprio movie was itself financed with stolen money, the feds charged Wednesday.
A civil suit filed by the US Justice Department demands all future profits, royalties and distribution proceeds from the Oscar-nominated 2013 flick on the grounds that it was part of an international money-laundering scheme involving a development firm set up by the prime minister of Malaysia.
“This is a case where life imitated art,” said US Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell.
In a series of interrelated complaints, the feds are seeking a total $1 billion in assets paid for with money allegedly stolen by corrupt Malaysian officials and their associates from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, also known as 1MDB.
The fund “was created to promote economic development . . . with the ultimate goal of improving the well-being of the Malaysian people,” but “unfortunately and tragically, a number of corrupt officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account,” US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said.
The assets include five swank Manhattan properties: penthouses in the Time Warner Center and Walker Tower, condos in the Park Laurel building and at 118 Greene St., and a stake in the Park Lane Hotel.
More than $100 million of the loot also allegedly went to produce “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which has raked in more than $392 million in ticket sales worldwide. It is director Martin Scorsese’s highest-grossing film.
Modal TriggerA Malaysian development fund set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak allegedly purchased a $30 million condo at the Time Warner Center.Photo: Dan Brinzac
“Of course, neither 1MDB or the Malaysian people saw a penny of profit from that film or the other assets purchased with funds siphoned from 1MDB,” Caldwell said.
“Instead, that money went to relatives and associates of the corrupt officials of 1MDB and others.”
Caldwell said the suit targets only the movie’s future earnings because the feds aren’t “able to seize anything retroactively.”
“The Wolf of Wall Street” spent six years in development hell due to its salacious, R-rated subject matter before it was finally green-lighted by a virtually unknown production company, Red Granite Pictures, which footed almost all the costs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The suit identifies infamous party animal Low Taek Jho — better known as “Jho Low” — as a key figure in the film’s funding, noting that he personally distributed more than $10 million for the project.
The Los Angeles federal court filing notes that Low got a full-screen “special thanks” in the closing credits and was among three people singled out as “collaborators” during DiCaprio’s acceptance speech when he won the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture.
DiCaprio also gave shoutouts to Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and a co-founder of Red Granite, and to Joey McFarland, Red Granite’s other co-founder.
The suit also alleges that DiCaprio — who is identified only as “a lead actor in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ ” but can be identified through the complaint’s description — went gambling with Low, Aziz and McFarland at The Venetian Las Vegas on July 15, 2012. The foursome had more than $1.15 million in 1MDB funds with which to gamble. It was deposited into Low’s account.
The suit says Red Granite bankrolled “The Wolf of Wall Street” with 1MDB funds funneled into a Swiss bank account held in the name of Good Star Limited.
Modal TriggerUsher and Jho Low attend a New Year’s Eve celebration.Photo: Getty Images
Cash was then transferred into various accounts at City National Bank in Los Angeles and doled out to pay the film’s production costs.
“These funds are directly traceable to the $700 million wire transfer and $330 million wire transfers unlawfully diverted from 1MDB to the Good Star account,” the suit says.
Specific payments included 17 separate transfers, totaling $3.9 million, to the Scorsese-owned Sikelia Productions company, $48 million to an unidentified film-industry management firm and at least $4.1 million to various visual-effects companies.
About $2.5 million went to the Screen Actors Guild, and another $80,000 was paid to a charter-yacht company, the suit says.
One of the most memorable scenes in “The Wolf of Wall Street” features DiCaprio — portraying real-life stock fraudster Jordan Belfort — being questioned by FBI agents aboard a yacht docked off Battery Park City.
Sources told The Post that Low “lavished money” on DiCaprio. “He would give him half a million bucks to come to a Vegas party on a private plane and all the chips on the house. They also asked Scorsese, who turned them down,” the source said.
Lynch said more than $3 billion was scammed from 1MDB, but officials have so far been able to trace only $1 billion through American financial systems.
Reps for DiCaprio and Scorsese didn’t return requests for comment, but Red Granite issued a statement saying “none of the funding it received four years ago was in any way illegitimate and there is nothing in today’s civil lawsuit claiming that Red Granite knew otherwise.”
In addition to funding “The Wolf of Wall Street,” staggering amounts of stolen cash were spent on luxuries that the feds are seeking to have forfeited, including:
A $5.5 million Vincent van Gogh drawing.
Two paintings by Claude Monet valued at $92.5 million.
A $240 million stake in the Park Lane Hotel at 36 Central Park South.
The $50.9 million penthouse at the Walker Tower in Chelsea.
A $35 million Bombardier jet.
The $44.8 million L’Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills.
A $30.5 million penthouse at the Time Warner Building at 80 Columbus Circle, which was bought sight unseen.
Starting in 2009, Low made headlines for spending millions in clubs with celebrities for whom he was footing the bill, including Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Jamie Foxx and DiCaprio, who accompanied him on yachts, jets, casinos, nightclubs and ski trips all over the world.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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