NASA is advancing American leadership in space by taking the next step toward a future where commercial space stations lead the way in low Earth orbit. On Friday, the agency released its final Request for Proposals inviting industry to submit plans for the next generation of commercial space stations.
“In alignment with the President’s National Space Policy, NASA is committed to maintaining a sustained American presence in low Earth orbit long after the International Space Station retires,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We will continue to need a place to conduct research, develop technologies, train crews, and prepare for missions to the Moon and Mars. Commercial space stations may provide that capability while creating new opportunities for American industry and allowing NASA to concentrate more of our resources on the near-impossible missions ahead.”
Building on the agency’s Ignition event earlier this year, NASA regularly has engaged with private industry to shape the agency’s future direction in low Earth orbit. This included publishing two Requests for Information in March to gather industry’s perspective on low Earth orbit destinations and transportation. The agency also published a draft Request for Proposals in July, followed by an industry day and one-on-one meetings that allowed interested companies to review and comment on the planned acquisition approach.
“We’ve made it clear that NASA will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit,” said Isaacman. “Since Ignition, we have spent a lot of time listening to industry and working through what it will take to make this transition successful. The opportunity is significant, but the economics ultimately have to work. We want to see credible plans, strong technical execution, and companies prepared to invest in destinations that can serve NASA while developing additional customers and markets of their own.”
Proposals are due Tuesday, Dec. 8, with contract awards expected in spring 2027.
Under the solicitation, NASA outlines requirements for companies interested in designing, building, testing, certifying, and operating commercial low Earth orbit destinations capable of providing end-to-end destination and transportation services for human spaceflight use.
NASA intends to award firm-fixed-price, multi-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts supporting development, certification, and services for continued low Earth orbit research and exploration. This will allow NASA to select two or more contractors through early development, followed by a competitive task order for final design, test, and evaluation, as well as certification and services from one or more contractors.
Learn more about NASA’s missions on the agency’s website:
Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer
Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China.
The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy.
Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer
Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China.
The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy.
The administration will impose a minimum import price for polysilicon, a key component for semiconductors and solar panels, as well as tariffs for products made with the material.
Apple in China occupies a position unlike the company’s presence in any other country. China is simultaneously a major consumer market, a critical manufacturing center, an extensive developer economy and the home of Apple’s most determined hardware competitors.
That combination creates an opportunity few technology companies can ignore. China has hundreds of millions of affluent mobile users, a strong appetite for premium devices and a digital economy built around smartphones.
It also creates unusual complexity. Apple must compete with Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo while satisfying Chinese regulations, navigating tensions between Beijing and Washington and reducing its manufacturing dependence without damaging the supplier network that helped make the iPhone possible.
The latest market figures show why Apple cannot treat China as a business it has already lost. IDC estimated that Apple captured 18.1 percent of Chinese smartphone shipments during the second quarter of 2026, placing it second behind Huawei at 22.6 percent.
Apple’s shipments increased by 24.4 percent from the previous year even as the wider Chinese smartphone market contracted. The recovery demonstrated that Chinese demand for the iPhone remains substantial when product design, storage, performance and pricing align with consumer expectations.
The same figures also show why the position can never be considered secure. Huawei remains ahead, local brands respond quickly and a few percentage points can separate several major vendors.
Apple in China Still Has Room to Grow
China is already one of Apple’s largest markets, but its scale means that even established product categories contain room for expansion.
The country has a large premium smartphone segment, extensive 5G coverage and consumers accustomed to using mobile devices for communication, payments, shopping, entertainment, transport and work.
An iPhone purchase can also lead to AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, iCloud storage and paid applications. The commercial opportunity is therefore larger than the initial handset transaction.
Apple’s strongest advantage is its integrated ecosystem. An iPhone can share passwords, photographs, messages and files with a Mac or iPad, while AirPods and Apple Watch extend the experience without requiring separate accounts and setup systems.
That continuity becomes more valuable as households accumulate devices. Replacing one iPhone is relatively easy. Leaving an ecosystem containing several products, purchased applications, cloud storage and shared family services involves greater friction.
Apple also benefits from a premium identity that remains recognizable in China. Local manufacturers now produce sophisticated flagship phones, but the iPhone continues to operate as both a personal computer and a luxury consumer product.
The importance of that status should not be exaggerated. Chinese buyers are technically informed and increasingly willing to support domestic brands. Brand recognition can attract attention, but it does not excuse weak features or an uncompetitive product cycle.
Recent iPhone Demand Shows the Opportunity
Apple’s 2026 recovery offers a useful example of how quickly its position can improve.
China’s smartphone shipments fell 4.3 percent during the second quarter as memory and component costs pushed several manufacturers toward higher prices. Apple and Huawei held prices more stable, giving buyers a reason to purchase while competing brands became more expensive.
The iPhone 17 generation also addressed several areas where Apple’s standard models had appeared conservative beside Chinese flagships. Stronger base specifications made the regular iPhone more competitive without requiring every customer to move into the Pro tier.
This matters in a market where consumers compare display technology, camera systems, storage, battery life, charging and AI features closely. Apple cannot depend entirely on iOS loyalty when domestic companies introduce visible hardware improvements at several price levels.
The rebound does not establish a permanent trend. Smartphone demand in China remains affected by economic confidence, upgrade cycles, government incentives and the timing of major shopping festivals.
Apple’s position can also look different according to the research firm and whether a report measures shipments or consumer sales. Quarterly rankings should be treated as evidence of momentum rather than a final judgment on the market.
The important signal is that Chinese consumers have not broadly rejected the iPhone. Demand can return rapidly when the product and price create a convincing upgrade.
Huawei Makes China Apple’s Hardest Market
Huawei gives Apple a competitor with advantages unavailable to most global smartphone manufacturers.
The company combines strong national recognition with advanced cameras, communications technology, custom chips, local services and an expanding HarmonyOS ecosystem. Its return to premium smartphones removed the opening Apple had gained when U.S. restrictions disrupted Huawei’s access to important components.
Huawei can also position its products as part of China’s technological self-reliance. That message carries commercial and political weight beyond a conventional comparison between two phones.
Apple must therefore compete against product quality and national sentiment simultaneously. An iPhone can offer strong performance and still lose a purchase to a domestic flagship viewed as technically capable and strategically important.
Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo add different pressures. They move quickly across price categories, experiment with folding designs, adopt larger batteries and provide features adapted to local applications and buying habits.
Chinese phone makers also operate inside a retail and software environment they understand directly. They can build relationships with local platforms, carriers and commerce services without translating a global strategy into Chinese requirements.
Apple follows a more centralized product model. That consistency protects the identity of the iPhone, but it can make the company slower to answer features gaining popularity inside one country.
Services Depend on Local Rules
Apple in China is not only an iPhone business. The installed device base creates demand for applications, cloud storage, entertainment, subscriptions and digital purchases.
China has an enormous developer community producing games, commerce platforms, social services, education tools and productivity software. The App Store connects those developers with high-value iPhone and iPad customers.
The relationship is commercially important but politically complicated. Apple must operate the mainland App Store according to Chinese law, including rules affecting games, generative AI, communications services and content.
Applications available elsewhere may be absent from the Chinese storefront. Developers may also need licenses or regulatory approval before distributing certain categories of software.
Apple changed commission rates and related policies for the mainland China storefront in March 2026. The company described the adjustments as part of maintaining a strong business opportunity for Chinese developers.
Regulatory and developer pressure has not disappeared. Complaints involving commissions, distribution restrictions and payment policies continue to challenge Apple’s control of the platform.
The company cannot simply copy its response from another region. European rules focus heavily on alternative marketplaces and interoperability, while China combines competition concerns with content regulation, data localization and licensing requirements.
Every concession must therefore be designed for a distinct legal environment without fragmenting iOS into an unmanageable collection of regional systems.
China Is Also Part of the Product
Apple’s relationship with China extends far beyond the devices sold there.
For more than two decades, Apple and its manufacturing partners built a dense network of factories, component suppliers, engineers, logistics operators and toolmakers across the country.
That network does more than provide low-cost labor. It can place specialists from several suppliers near an assembly site, modify production lines quickly and increase output to enormous volumes during a product launch.
China’s infrastructure also supports the less visible stages of manufacturing. Components require precision tooling, testing equipment, chemicals, packaging, subassemblies and experienced quality-control teams before final assembly begins.
Apple has expanded iPhone production in India and moved parts of its Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and AirPods supply chains to countries including Vietnam. It is also increasing semiconductor and component commitments in the United States.
Those investments reduce the danger of relying on one country, but they do not recreate China’s complete manufacturing environment immediately.
A factory in another region may assemble an iPhone while still depending on Chinese machinery, materials, subcomponents or engineering support. Production diversification is therefore a gradual redistribution of individual stages rather than a clean departure.
Apple must reduce concentration risk without weakening the manufacturing system responsible for its product quality, scale and launch schedules.
Image Credit: AFP Photo
Trade Tensions Turn Efficiency Into Risk
The same China supply chain that provides Apple with extraordinary efficiency also exposes the company to political decisions outside its control.
Tariffs can raise the cost of devices exported from Chinese factories. Export restrictions can limit access to materials or production equipment, while sanctions may affect suppliers and technology partners.
Chinese government policies can influence the use of foreign devices inside state agencies and companies. U.S. rules can restrict the technologies available to Chinese firms that also participate in Apple’s supplier network.
Apple cannot solve these problems through product design alone. It must maintain relationships with two governments whose technology policies increasingly emphasize security, domestic production and strategic independence.
Moving more assembly to India gives Apple additional flexibility, particularly for iPhones destined for the United States. China nevertheless remains important as a production center and consumer market.
An aggressive withdrawal could damage supplier relationships and local sales. Moving too slowly could leave Apple vulnerable to another trade disruption.
The company is trying to preserve Chinese capabilities while creating enough capacity elsewhere to keep a political dispute from becoming a worldwide product shortage.
Retail Stores Give Apple a Direct Relationship
Apple’s physical stores remain an important advantage in China because they give the company direct contact with customers.
The stores allow buyers to compare models, receive technical support, attend educational sessions and enter the ecosystem without depending entirely on a carrier or reseller.
That experience is particularly valuable for premium products. A customer considering a Mac, Apple Vision Pro or high-end iPhone may need more explanation than someone replacing an inexpensive handset.
Retail locations also communicate long-term commitment. A prominent store represents more than a sales channel; it signals that Apple intends to remain part of the local technology market.
Online commerce is equally important. Chinese consumers are accustomed to large shopping festivals, aggressive promotions and rapid delivery through domestic platforms.
Apple must balance its controlled global pricing with a market where discounts can change quarterly rankings. Too little flexibility makes the iPhone appear expensive, while frequent reductions can train customers to delay purchases and weaken its premium image.
The strongest 2026 performance came partly from avoiding price increases while component costs were forcing rivals to reconsider their pricing. That advantage may disappear when competitors adjust their supply chains or launch another cycle of promotions.
Chinese Consumers Set a Higher Product Standard
China is often discussed as a sales problem for Apple, but it also functions as a demanding test of the iPhone.
Domestic flagship phones compete through larger batteries, rapid charging, advanced camera hardware, folding displays and deep integration with local digital services.
Features considered experimental elsewhere can become established expectations more quickly in China. Apple’s slower adoption cycle may look disciplined in one market and conservative in another.
The company must decide which expectations represent durable improvements and which are temporary specification contests. Copying every local feature would weaken Apple’s focused product strategy, but ignoring major changes creates openings for rivals.
This pressure can benefit Apple globally. Competition in China forces the company to defend the value of its standard iPhone, improve battery efficiency, strengthen cameras and make software features more useful outside English-speaking markets.
The opportunity is therefore not limited to selling more devices. China can reveal where Apple’s global assumptions no longer match the most competitive part of the smartphone industry.
More light at the day’s end comes at a price: much later winter sunrises across much of the U.S. Scientists have documented consequences for public health and the economy.
The Trump administration is undoing fuel-saving efforts even as war in Iran, data centers and heat waves are pushing up gasoline and electricity costs.
A dishwasher at a General Electric plant in Louisville, Ky. The Energy Department has moved to repeal 17 standards for dishwashers, washing machines, kitchen appliances and more.
Guardian analysis found the removals coincided with the Trump administration’s push to weaken efficiency rules
As millions of Americans prepare for another brutal heatwave, it’s now harder to find information about ways to stay cool while saving energy and keeping utility costs down.
At least 1,662 Department of Energy webpages offering guidance on protecting the electrical grid during heatwaves have gone dark as of 3 July, according to a Guardian analysis of a list of deleted URLs provided by researchers at the Internet Archive, a non-profit that hosts a repository of more than a trillion archived webpages.
They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?
The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.
You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.
Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’
Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.
Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regions of the UK and comes from a mixture of UK companies and overseas sources including the EU and Japan.
Najib Razak walked into Kajang Prison outside Kuala Lumpur on 23 August 2022, the first Malaysian prime minister ever to be jailed, after the Federal Court upheld a 12-year sentence and a 210 million ringgit fine tied to the looting of a state investment fund he himself had chaired. Investigators had traced roughly $681 million into his personal AmBank accounts, money that prosecutors said originated in 1Malaysia Development Berhad — better known as 1MDB — the sovereign wealth vehicle Najib launched in 2009 to develop the Malaysian economy.
The fund was supposed to build power plants and finance affordable housing. Instead it became the largest kleptocracy case the U.S. Department of Justice had ever pursued, with at least $4.5 billion siphoned through a daisy chain of shell companies, offshore banks, and a Hollywood film studio.
The story is partly about a politician. It is mostly about how a single bank account became the evidentiary spine of a global financial scandal.
The fund that was supposed to build a country
Najib became prime minister of Malaysia in April 2009. Within months he had converted a Terengganu state investment outfit into 1MDB and installed himself as chair of its advisory board, with sign-off authority over major transactions. The pitch was ambitious — strategic infrastructure, partnerships with Gulf sovereign funds, a sovereign wealth approach modeled on Singapore’s Temasek.
Behind the brochures, something else was being built. Between 2009 and 2014, 1MDB raised more than $10 billion in bonds, much of it underwritten by Goldman Sachs, which collected close to $600 million in fees on three bond offerings — an extraordinary multiple of what a sovereign-linked deal would normally pay. Hong Kong regulators later fined Goldman $350 million for its role in the offerings.
Money flowed out of the fund almost as fast as it came in.
The $681 million that arrived by SWIFT transfer
In March 2013, weeks before a general election, two transfers totaling roughly $681 million landed in Najib’s personal accounts at AmBank in Kuala Lumpur. The transfers came through Falcon Private Bank in Singapore, originating from a British Virgin Islands shell called Tanore Finance Corporation.
When the Wall Street Journal first reported the deposits in July 2015, Najib’s office did not deny the money had arrived. The official explanation, repeated for months, was that the funds were a personal donation from the Saudi royal family to support Malaysia’s fight against the Islamic State.
Saudi officials never publicly confirmed the gift. U.S. prosecutors later traced the money back not to Riyadh but to 1MDB itself, routed through a chain of accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore designed to obscure its origin.
The young financier at the center
The architect of the scheme, according to filings by the U.S. Department of Justice and Malaysian prosecutors, was a Penang-born financier named Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low. He held no official position at 1MDB. He carried no government title. But he moved between Najib’s inner circle, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds, and Hollywood producers with a fluency that prosecutors described as the operational core of the fraud.
Low spent some of the diverted money on a $250 million superyacht called the Equanimity, on Picassos and Basquiats, on a stake in EMI Music Publishing, and on financing the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street through Red Granite Pictures — a company co-founded by Najib’s stepson Riza Aziz. The Department of Justice would later seek to claw back the film’s profits as proceeds of crime.
Low has been a fugitive since 2016. Malaysian authorities believe he is in China. He denies wrongdoing.
How the jewelry box became the smoking gun
When Malaysian police raided properties linked to Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor in May 2018, days after his shock election defeat to Mahathir Mohamad, the inventory read like an auction catalog. Officers seized 12,000 pieces of jewelry, 567 handbags including 272 Hermès Birkins, 423 watches, and 234 pairs of sunglasses. The total estimated value reached 1.1 billion ringgit, roughly $273 million at the time.
One pink diamond necklace alone was valued at $27 million.
The seizure became a visual shorthand for the case. Physical objects — handbags, watches, real estate — anchor abstract financial crimes in the public imagination in a way that SWIFT codes and shell-company structures never can. A spreadsheet doesn’t make the news. A wall of Birkins does.
The SRC International trial
The 12-year sentence Najib began serving in 2022 stems not from the full 1MDB case but from a smaller subsidiary called SRC International. Prosecutors proved that 42 million ringgit, about $10 million, flowed from SRC into Najib’s personal accounts between 2014 and 2015.
High Court judge Mohamad Nazlan Mohamad Ghazali convicted him on all seven charges in July 2020 — one count of abuse of power, three counts of criminal breach of trust, and three counts of money laundering. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict in December 2021. The Federal Court, Malaysia’s highest, dismissed his final appeal on 23 August 2022.
He was driven from the courthouse straight to Kajang Prison the same afternoon.
The far larger 1MDB trial — the one dealing directly with the funds that flowed into his personal accounts — ran on for years afterward. On 26 December 2025, the Kuala Lumpur High Court convicted Najib on four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering over more than $700 million channeled from 1MDB into his accounts, and sentenced him to a further 15 years in prison along with a fine of 11.4 billion ringgit — the new term to begin only after his current sentence ends. His lawyers filed an appeal against the conviction and sentence within days.
The global recovery effort
The U.S. Department of Justice filed civil forfeiture actions seeking to recover more than $1.7 billion in 1MDB-linked assets — paintings by Van Gogh and Monet, a Bombardier jet, penthouses in New York and London, the Equanimity yacht, and rights to The Wolf of Wall Street. By 2024, settlements and recoveries had returned more than $1 billion to Malaysia.
Switzerland, Singapore, and Luxembourg opened their own investigations. Falcon Private Bank lost its Singapore license. BSI Bank was shuttered. Several private bankers received prison sentences ranging from a few weeks to four and a half years.
Goldman Sachs settled with the U.S. government for $2.9 billion in 2020 — at the time the largest penalty ever paid under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The bank’s Malaysia unit pleaded guilty. Two former Goldman bankers, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng, were convicted in connection with the scheme.
What the bank account proved
The legal turning point in the SRC case was not testimony or whistleblower documents. It was the bank account itself. Najib’s defense argued he believed the money in his AmBank accounts was a Saudi donation. The court rejected that defense partly because the volume of deposits, withdrawals, and transfers passing through the accounts — and the fact that they continued long after the supposed donation purpose had lapsed — was inconsistent with any innocent reading.
A prime minister with sign-off authority over a sovereign fund, receiving nine-figure sums from offshore shells into his personal account, then spending portions of that money on credit-card bills and political expenses, leaves a paper trail that even sympathetic judges cannot ignore.
The gradual normalization of small ethical breaches can make the larger ones feel routine to the people committing them. A donation here. A consulting fee there. A bank account that no one ever questions.
Life inside Kajang
Najib is now an inmate at Kajang Prison, the same facility that once held opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges Anwar maintained were politically motivated. The symmetry is not lost on Malaysians.
In February 2024, the Pardons Board chaired by then-king Sultan Abdullah halved Najib’s sentence to six years and reduced his fine from 210 million ringgit to 50 million. He then spent more than a year arguing that a royal addendum issued alongside the pardon entitled him to serve the rest of that term at home. In December 2025 the High Court ruled the addendum was not legally enforceable, and in April 2026 Najib withdrew his appeal against that decision, closing off the house-arrest bid.
The transition from high status to incarceration describes a particular kind of disorientation — not just the loss of liberty but the collapse of the deference structures that previously shaped every interaction. For a man who spent nine years as prime minister, addressed as Yang Amat Berhormat, the transition to a numbered uniform and a 6 a.m. roll call is its own kind of sentence.
The number that stays
Of all the figures in the 1MDB case — the $4.5 billion siphoned, the $2.9 billion Goldman penalty, the $1.7 billion in U.S. asset seizures, the 1.1 billion ringgit in jewelry — the one that keeps coming back is the original $681 million that arrived in a politician’s personal bank account in March 2013.
It is a small number compared to the total fraud. It is, by the reckoning of the prosecutors who built the case, among the largest sums ever traced into the personal account of a sitting head of government anywhere in the world.
The wire transfer took seconds. The reckoning took the better part of a decade to reach him. And with a second conviction now stacked on the first — under appeal, but handed down — the years Najib has left in Kajang to think about how it ever got that far stretch well beyond the sentence that first put him there.
Miranda Kerr handed jewelry to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2017, including a heart-shaped pink diamond that had been given to her by Malaysian financier Jho Low, after federal investigators traced the gems to money allegedly siphoned from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. The Australian model told prosecutors she had no idea the gifts were bought with stolen money and surrendered them voluntarily once the chain of custody was explained.
The heart-shaped pink diamond was reportedly purchased from New York jeweler Lorraine Schwartz. The rest of the haul Kerr returned — earrings, a pendant, a bracelet — pushed the total package toward what court filings described as a multimillion-dollar parcel of stones that had moved from Geneva safes to a model’s jewelry box to, finally, an evidence locker in Washington.
None of it would have been remarkable in the world of celebrity gifting if the money behind it had been clean. It wasn’t.
What 1MDB actually was
1Malaysia Development Berhad was a sovereign wealth fund set up by then–Prime Minister Najib Razak, ostensibly to drive long-term economic projects across Malaysia. U.S. prosecutors say billions of dollars were diverted out of the fund through a chain of shell companies, fake consulting fees, and forged bond documents.
The Department of Justice called it one of the largest kleptocracy cases it had ever brought. The money funded penthouses in Manhattan and London, a superyacht called the Equanimity, Picassos and Basquiats, and — improbably — much of the production budget for the 2013 Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street, a movie about financial fraud.
At the center of the spending was Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low, a young Penang-born financier with no formal title at 1MDB but enormous influence over how its money moved. He has denied wrongdoing and remains a fugitive, last reported to be living under Chinese protection.
How the diamond ended up around Kerr’s neck
Kerr and Low met in the early 2010s. According to filings unsealed by the DOJ’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, Low gave her a series of high-end pieces from Lorraine Schwartz over several months — including earrings, a heart-shaped diamond pendant, and a diamond bracelet.
The heart-shaped pink diamond was the centerpiece. Pink diamonds of that size are vanishingly rare — the Argyle mine in Western Australia, which produced most of the world’s pink diamonds, shut down in 2020, and stones in the multi-carat range routinely sell for tens of millions at auction.
Kerr stopped seeing Low and married Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel in 2017. By the time the DOJ contacted her, the jewelry had been sitting in her possession for several years.
The Kleptocracy Initiative
The unit that came knocking was a specialized DOJ team launched to chase stolen foreign-government funds parked in U.S. assets. Its method is unusual: rather than waiting to extradite a suspect, it files civil forfeiture suits against the assets themselves — a yacht, a painting, an apartment, a diamond — and lets the property owner contest the claim.
That structure is why Kerr’s name appeared in court documents at all. The jewelry, not the model, was the legal defendant. Returning the pieces removed her from the proceeding entirely.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in The Wolf of Wall Street and had also received gifts from Low, separately handed over items including artwork. Both Kerr and DiCaprio cooperated; neither was accused of any wrongdoing.
What voluntary return actually means
The phrase voluntary disclosure carries specific legal weight in U.S. white-collar practice. Federal prosecutors offer reduced penalties — sometimes full non-prosecution — to individuals and companies that hand over assets or information before being formally charged. The IRS runs its own version, and recent reporting suggests the agency is trying to revive its Voluntary Disclosure Practice after years of low participation.
The Southern District of New York, which has handled many of the largest financial-crime cases of the past decade, recently formalized its own framework. In February 2026, SDNY announced a new corporate enforcement and voluntary self-disclosure program aimed at companies that come forward early with evidence of misconduct.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission followed in May with a similar cooperation policy for commodities-market participants. The pattern is consistent across agencies: hand things over fast, and the penalty curve bends.
Kerr’s surrender of the jewelry in 2017 was the celebrity-shaped version of the same move.
Where the diamond went
The DOJ sold the returned 1MDB assets — including the Kerr jewelry, DiCaprio’s artwork, real estate in Beverly Hills and Manhattan, and the seized superyacht — and repatriated the proceeds to Malaysia. By the most recent DOJ accounting, substantial sums have been returned to the Malaysian government in what represents one of the largest civil-forfeiture recoveries in U.S. history.
The pink heart-shaped diamond was auctioned privately. Its current whereabouts are not public.
The Equanimity, the superyacht Low commissioned, was seized by Indonesian authorities at the DOJ’s request and sold to Malaysian casino operator Genting. It now sails under the name Tranquility.
The Najib trial and the verdict that followed
Najib Razak, the former prime minister at the center of the scheme, was voted out of office in 2018 after nearly a decade in power — an election upset driven in large part by public anger over 1MDB. He was convicted in 2020 on multiple charges including criminal breach of trust, abuse of power, and money laundering, and sentenced to prison.
Najib has continued to deny knowing the money was stolen, insisting Jho Low misled him. In 2024, his sentence was reduced by Malaysia’s pardons board, a decision that drew significant domestic criticism.
Goldman Sachs, which underwrote bond issuances for 1MDB, paid billions of dollars in settlements to the Malaysian government and pleaded guilty in 2020 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Its Malaysian subsidiary pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe foreign officials.
Why the case still matters to compliance officers
1MDB has become a kind of teaching case for bank compliance teams, partly because the money moved through so many supposedly well-monitored institutions before reaching jewelers, art dealers, and yacht brokers. Modern anti–money-laundering programs lean heavily on transaction monitoring, beneficial-ownership checks, and what compliance specialists call enhanced due diligence on politically exposed persons.
The next phase, industry analysts argue, will be heavier use of AI for pattern detection. A recent Compliance Week piece describing how banks will stay ahead of financial crime in 2026 argues that real-time analytics and behavioral models are replacing the old rules-based screens that 1MDB-era transactions slipped through.
That shift creates its own problem: opaque models that flag transactions without showing their work. Financial regulators have started pressing institutions to use systems that can explain a decision in human-readable terms, a push that one Forbes Technology Council piece frames as the need for transparent, trustworthy AI in financial decision-making.
Jho Low, still missing
Low himself has never been arrested. U.S. prosecutors indicted him on money-laundering and bribery charges. Malaysia and Singapore have also issued warrants. He is widely reported to be living in Shanghai or Macau, and a 2019 Wall Street Journal book co-authored by reporters Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Billion Dollar Whale, documented his attempts to maintain a luxury lifestyle in transit between safe jurisdictions.
In 2019, he agreed to a civil settlement with the DOJ to forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in assets — without admitting wrongdoing — including a Bombardier jet, a Beverly Hills hotel stake, and various real estate parcels.
The detail that lingers
Kerr’s handover is, in dollar terms, a rounding error against the billions the DOJ traced. The heart-shaped diamond was one of thousands of objects that money bought before it was caught.
What it captures is the geometry of modern financial crime — stolen sovereign wealth becoming a stone, the stone becoming a gift, the gift becoming evidence, the evidence becoming a wire transfer back to the country it came from. The diamond moved through Geneva, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington before its proceeds settled, eventually, back in Kuala Lumpur.
Somewhere it is being worn again, by someone who probably doesn’t know where it has been.
Andy Burnham has won Makerfield – and the bond market is watching closely. Gilt yields surged when his name was first floated as leader, and they have already climbed even higher as he closes in on Number 10.
Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers
The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found.
Mega-consumers in this group are concentrated in the global north, accounting for more than half the population of the US and 40-45% of people in the EU.
Humans have always gazed up at the moon in wonder. A generation ago, NASA astronauts did the extraordinary and touched down on its surface, planting an American flag and igniting […]
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