Former Goldman Sach banker Tim Leissner has been sentenced to two years in prison by a judge in a New York court on Thursday (May 29) for his role in the infamous Malaysia’s sovereign fund 1MDB scandal. He became a U.S. government witness in the case after his arrest in 2018, and was allowed to remain free after he agreed to help testify against former banking colleague Roger Ng.
Ng, on the other hand, had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to launder money and violate an anti-bribery law. The former head of investment banking for Goldman in Malaysia was convicted in Brooklyn and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but transported to Malaysia in 2023 to assist investigations. Clearly, Leissner’s light sentence was due to his role as a witness.
At the court hearing, 55-year-old Leissner said – “First and foremost, I offer my sincere apology to the people of Malaysia. I deeply regret my actions.” Leissner also told the court that he had lost his freedom, family and financial independence in the wake of the scandal. The former banker said his health also suffered, and that he took pills and lost the will to live.
However, Malaysia’s Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani has slammed the 2-year prison sentence as too lenient, and is sending the wrong message to global financial institutions. Mr Johari, who chairs the 1MDB asset recovery task force, said – “Leissner was one of the masterminds in one of the world’s most serious financial scandals, which resulted in the misappropriation of billions of dollars from 1MDB.”
Arguing why Leissner should receive the maximum sentence of 25 years, the Malaysian Minister said – “He played a central role in facilitating this fraud, abusing both his position and the reputation of one of the world’s most prominent financial institutions to carry out this scheme.” Johari should look in the mirror before whining, moaning and bitching about the light prison sentence.
At least Leissner has the audacity to apologize to the 34 million Malaysians, regardless whether it was genuine or insincere. As the U.S. government witness, a deal was already struck before the 2-year jail sentence was announced, therefore, the Goldman banker did not actually need to say sorry. But he did, unlike Johari’s former boss whom he glorified – disgraced ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak.
If indeed Leissner’s 2-year jail sentence is sending the wrong message, exactly what type of message that Malaysia is sending after Najib’s 12-year jail sentence was suddenly slashed by half – even though the crook did not qualify for a royal pardon application in the first place? What type of message Malaysia is sending when Anwar government was working hand-in-glove with a former King to pardon the world’s biggest crook?
Whether Leissner was one of the masterminds in the 1MDB scandal is debatable. It’s both hilarious and an insult to the intelligence of human race that the top leadership of Goldman Sachs was not aware of the money laundering plan. But one thing is for sure – Najib and his partner-in-crime, Jho Low (real name: Low Taek Jho), were both the prime masterminds involved in the heist of the century.
If Leissner had abused his position as chief of Goldman in Malaysia to steal money belonging to the country as Johari claims, then Najib is far worse for abusing his position as Prime Minister of Malaysia to plunder money of his own people. Hence, if Leissner deserves the maximum 25 years imprisonment despite being a witness, Najib definitely deserves the maximum 20 years in jail for being a convicted criminal.
The U.S.-DOJ investigation results say that over US$4.5 billion was misappropriated from the 1MDB fund, with some of the money used to finance Hollywood films, and buy hotels, private jet, luxury Equanimity superyacht, Picasso paintings, jewellery and real estate. More than US$700 million (hence the infamous RM2.6 billion) from the fund landed in Najib’s bank account.
So, how come Johari Abdul Ghani was as quiet as a church mouse when unrepentant Najib – both individuals from the same corrupt UMNO political party – was given a light sentence of only 12 years, which later enjoyed a steep 50% discount, not to mention a whopping 76% discount on his RM210 million fine? Did Johari not realize that Malaysia had paid RM43.8 billion of 1MDB debt, with balance of RM9.7 billion in early 2023 alone?
Yes, the 34 million people of Malaysia are still paying Najib’s debt till today, even after almost 10 years since the UMNO-Malay crook started stealing money. Should not Johari express his anger instead about the grand plan by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to design a new law to allow Najib walks out of prison and serves his remaining jail sentence in the comfort of his luxury mansion?
When Najib’s appeal failed in December 2021 after the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision to convict him, not only all the 3 judges had thrown out Najib’s appeal, they also used harsh language, calling the ex-PM’s corruption a “national embarrassment”. Should not Johari, and those who defended Najib for whatever reasons, feels embarrass for keeping quiet over the crook’s crime?
Crucially, Leissner, the former chief of Goldman Sachs’ Southeast Asia operation, had exposed more dirty backroom and bedroom deals – sex, bribes and blackmail – in his testimony in the U.S. federal court during the 1MDB trial of Roger Ng, Goldman’s Malaysian head of investment banking. Mr Ng had received RM35 million in kickbacks to take part in the money laundering scheme.
While Ng’s lawyer said he was a “fall guy” for one of the biggest financial scandals in Wall Street history, as Mr Leissner testified as a government witness against Mr Ng, the United States prosecutors said Ng helped two co-conspirators – his former boss Leissner and Jho Low, Najib’s sidekick, in embezzling money from sovereign fund 1MDB.
Hoping to get a lighter punishment for being the star prosecution witness against his “best friend” Ng, Mr Leissner testified how Jho Low was rejected by Goldman as a client due to Low’s bad publicity – wild parties and bottomless (but suspicious) source of money to fund his lavish lifestyles. Still, Leissner and Ng continued to deal with Low in their private capacity.
Leissner, a German, and Ng, a Malaysian citizen, saw the opportunity to pocket some of the profits as both helped Jho Low to siphon off billions of dollars from 1MDB. Even when the 1MDB scandal was first exposed and exploded, only one name – Tim Leissner – was put forward as the bad apple. He merely resigned in Feb 2016 without being charged.
It would take the downfall of Najib Razak in the May 2018 General Election to reveal the relations between Najib and Tim Leissner, Roger Ng and Jho Low. After admitting to enriching himself to the tune of more than US$200 million in proceeds from 1MDB bonds that flowed into accounts controlled by him and a relative in Hong Kong, Leissner paid only US$43.7 million to the U.S. as part of a deal to turn witness.
But even before the US$6.5 billion in bonds that Goldman helped 1MDB to raise between 2009 and 2014, which allowed the U.S. bank to earn a whopping US$600 million in fees, the bribery in the form of back-scratching had already begun. During one Thanksgiving trip to New York in 2009, Leissner arranged for Najib to meet with Goldman’s then-CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, ahead of major bond deals for 1MDB.
In return for the lucrative business deals, Leissner revealed that Goldman was to get jobs at the bank for Najib’s three children, something that the ex-PM described as “You help me, I help you”. But the U.S. investment bank declined to hire Najib’s daughter (Nooryana Najwa Najib) or any of the children as they were simply “not qualified”, forcing Leissner to pulling some strings to get her a position with TPG Capital, an American private equity firm in Hong Kong, instead.
To prevent a red flag from being raised at Goldman, Leissner and Ng decided to use code names like “friend” (to refer to Jho Low) and “PMO” (Prime Minister’s Office) to hide Jho Low’s identity after the bank officially declined to accept Low as a private wealth client, largely due to his source of wealth. Jho Low was “essential” because he secretly fed Goldman bankers with inside information.
But it wasn’t just all work and no play. Leissner admitted to having several affairs while working for Goldman, including with Anis Jamaludin, the daughter of Jamaluddin Jarjis, Najib’s best friend. A former Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Jamaluddin was appointed as Malaysian Ambassador to the U.S. in July 2009 after he sexually harassed a female worker of a restaurant at a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
As it turned out, besides Anis Jamaluddin, Leissner’s other Malaysian lover was Rohana Rozhan, who was then CEO of Malaysian media giant Astro Malaysia Holdings, a company owned by Ananda Krishnan, one of the richest men in the country. The Goldman banker was in a romantic relationship with Rozana from 2003 to 2013, until he decided to marry U.S. TV personality Kimora Lee Simmons in 2013.
Anis Jamaluddin and Rohana Rozhan were just two of three women whom Tim Leissner managed to fish in Malaysia. The third woman was Elia Geneid, the niece of Abdul Taib Mahmud, the most corrupt former Sarawak Chief Minister (1981-2014) who was promoted as the Governor by the equally corrupt ruling government of Barisan Nasional.
Elia is the daughter of Taib’s powerful sister, Raziah Mahmud Geneid. In his testimony, Leissner revealed the niece of Taib was accompanying him (even though Leissner was legally married to someone else), along with Ng and Jho Low during a trip to Beijing in 2009, which unsurprisingly coincided with Najib’s official visit to China.
While the former Goldman’s top gun admitted to the U.S. court that he was driven by greed and ambition, he also testified that Jho Low had advised him of people in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi who needed to be bribed. The name on the top list was Najib Razak and the United Arab Emirates Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mansour, who was implicated in an audio recording back in 2020.
In the audio recording, which was leaked to former Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Latheefa Koya, Najib asked the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed to help fabricate a loan agreement to show that Najib’s stepson, Riza Aziz, had received financing from the UAE state-funded International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) and not from money siphoned from 1MDB.
Najib was caught seeking help from the UAE crown prince in the audio recording – “The premise is relatively small, if there can be an agreement with Sheikh Mansour to have a loan agreement signed that will show that it is a legitimate financing package, it’s not money laundering“. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan was then chairman of IPIC.
As chairman of the 1MDB asset recovery task force, Johari should be smart enough to know that Leissner would not be able to steal a single penny had Najib not given his approval to plunder the national coffers. Unless he was sleeping on the job, as the former Deputy Finance Minister (2015-2016) and Finance Minister II (2016-2018), Johari was part of Najib’s team when the plundering happened right under his nose.
Other Articles That May Interest You …
- Sex, Bribes & Blackmail – Najib’s Appeal In Jeopardy After Leissner Exposed More Dirty Deals In 1MDB Scandal
- How The Crooked Family Of Najib Almost Got Away With RM100 Million Mansion & Land The Size Of 2 Soccer Fields
- Only In Malaysia – PM Najib Stole People’s Money, Spy Chief Stole His Money, Anti-Corruption Officers Stole Her Money
- 12 Years’ Jail & RM210 Million Fine For World’s Biggest Crook Najib – A Result Of Insulting The Judge’s Intelligence
- Day-72 Of SRC Trial: Najib’s Top-8 Lies That Were So Extraordinary They Might Backfire & Incriminate The Crook
- U.S. Securities Commission – No Saudi Donations, Najib Received RM2.6 Billion Kickbacks From 1MDB
- SRC Trial – Here’re 10 Points Any First Year Law Student Can Use To Nail Najib & Send The Crook To Jail
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May 30th, 2025 by financetwitter
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