The Edge: Owner not beholden to M'sian powers that be

Within the just-published Billion Dollar Whale (available at MPH bookstores, S$29.90), which tells the incredible story of how Jho Low allegedly stole billions from 1MDB, is a chapter on the owner of The Edge. It's a nod to a media owner who had a role in exposing the scandal and to a publication that is well-known among Singapore and Malaysian investors. Here it is: 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 2009
Some among Malaysia’s elite, hearing whispers about Mohammed Bakke Salleh’s resignation, guessed something was not right at 1MDB. Yet the fund’sproblems remained unknown to the general public, in part because Najib’s government controlled the mainstream media. But there was one media tycoon the prime minister could not order around so easily: Tong Kooi Ong, owner of the Edge, an English-language weekly business newspaper. The mass-market papers, mostly progovernment, were in Malay or Chinese. The Edge catered to the country’s business elite.

For years, Tong had been the rebel of Malaysia’s business community. The fifty-year-old, with tufts of black hair on either side of his head and a bald skull, preferred open-neck shirts to suits. He once told his wife he had a premonition he would die before fifty, and he needed to live fast before then. He could be bad-tempered with people he considered dimwitted, but he was equally charming, his face often breaking out into an impish smile. It was a combination that riled up the entitled ruling-party elites in Kuala Lumpur.

When Tong heard the rumors about 1MDB, the newspaperman decided the Edge needed to investigate.

In Malaysia, most major papers were subservient to the government. The ruling UMNO party directly owned some of the largest-circulation papers, whose editors slavishly put out puff pieces on politicians and policies. Newspapers had to renew their publishing licenses every year. Given the government’s control, even editors at independent newspapers often self-censored.

The arrival of the Edge, in the mid-1990s, shook up the industry. Unlike other papers, the Edge did not shy away from writing about corruption scandals, which Tong viewed as harmful to Malaysia’s economic prospects. Tong had built his own fortune and was beholden to no one, and that made him a threat.

The sixth of nine children of a Chinese-Malaysian car mechanic, Tong had grown up in the 1960s and 1970s in the gritty Malaysian port town of Klang, not far from Kuala Lumpur. His family scrimped together enough to send him to university in Canada, where he eventually earned a master’s degree in finance and taught himself computer science. Returning to Malaysia in the 1980s, Tong became a securities analyst at a Malaysian firm before moving to British bank Morgan Grenfell, helping to value companies. But he was ambitious and restless, and by the 1990s he bought his own securities company and soon after acquired a full banking license.

Tong Kooi Ong, Owner of The Edge. Photo: CompanyIn the clubby world of Malaysian business, Tong was considered a maverick, and he quickly made enemies. By bringing online trading to Malaysia, he undercut other brokers, who came to view him as a dangerous upstart. Foreign fund managers liked Tong, however, and he quickly won a large share of their business in Malaysia. His cocksure manner, obvious intelligence, and contempt for mediocrity riled up financiers who owed their success to years of ties with the establishment.

He also was political—but bet on the wrong horse. Tong befriended Anwar Ibrahim, a charismatic deputy prime minister, sensing he would soon become the nation’s top leader. But in the late 1990s Anwar fell out with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who had ruled Malaysia since 1981. When Anwar fell, jailed on trumped-up charges of sodomizing a male aide (homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia), Tong was cast out in the wilderness. Amid rumors that Mahathir would seize his assets, the businessman returned to Canada, transforming himself into a successful property developer in Vancouver. But he could never remain in one place for long, and after Mahathir stepped down in 2003, Tong returned to Malaysia.

Mahathir had forced Tong to sell his bank, but Tong still controlled the Edge. The newspaper had built a loyal following. If the press wasn’t exactly independent, at least Malaysia wasn’t a dictatorship, and the Edge’s editors had learned to push the limits of free expression, writing stories on corruption, while maintaining their license. Some topics were off-limits, say, corruption stories about a prime minister. By focusing more on business than politics, its editors had stayed on the right side of the government.

In late 2009, Tong started to hear rumors about 1MDB. From the start, elite Malaysians gossiped about Najib’s administration. Malaysian diplomats complained about having to organize Rosmah’s shopping trips when she was abroad. More recently, Tong had started to hear more alarming complaints. Bankers told him the Terengganu fund, the predecessor of 1MDB, had sold its Islamic bonds too cheaply. That meant whoever bought the bonds could resell them in the market for a handsome profit. Rumor had it that companies connected to Low had benefited. This kind of trick was common in Asia capital markets. Now, at cocktail parties in Kuala Lumpur, the talk was of Bakke’s abrupt resignation from the fund’s board.

Tong was a visionary, not a details man. He could be disorganized, his offices a mess of papers and odd objects including, for a time, a little-used treadmill. To implement the coverage of 1MDB he leaned on Ho Kay Tat, a veteran journalist who was publisher of the Edge. Ho’s mane of gray hair, glasses, and eagerness to please in conversation made him seem grandfatherly, even though he was only in his fifties. But his avuncular appearance belied a tenacity to dig for the truth.

Ho had built his career as a well-paid senior editor at the Star, a government-aligned newspaper based in Low’s home state of Penang. But he had been unable to deal with the constant requests to kill negative stories about UMNO-linked companies, and he had jumped at the chance in the 1990s to join the Edge.

While government mouthpieces like the Star and the New Straits Times pushed out softball pieces on Najib’s administration, the Edge under Ho took a critical stance. Backed by Tong, Ho tagged a small team of reporters to start digging. In December 2009, the Edge published a story raising questions about 1MDB. Why had Bakke resigned from the board so soon after the fund’s inception? Why had the Terengganu Investment Authority sold its bonds so cheaply, despite being a risk-free, state-owned entity? What exactly was the purpose of 1MDB, and what was it doing with the money?

One name that appeared nowhere in the piece: Jho Low. He was nonetheless disturbed by it, and began talking off the record to journalists at the Edge, trying to persuade them that 1MDB was a genuine investment vehicle. It would be three years more before the Edge began to uncover the truth. For now, Low’s secret was safe. In fact, his star was on the rise.

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