Goldman's Tim Leissner pleads guilty to money laundering

• Tim Leissner, a former Goldman Sachs star banker who led the bank’s investment business in Asia, is facing up to 10 years in prison and a lifetime ban from capital markets for his involvement in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, an elaborate cross-border financial fraud that involved the embezzlement of $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s government fund, 1MDB, between 2009 and 2014.
• Leissner — who is a German national living in America — is free on bond as he awaits sentencing on the federal charges he pleaded guilty to last month. 

(L-R) Russell Simmons, Shannon Elizabeth, Kimora Lee Simmons, and Tim Leissner attend The Weinstein Company & Netflix's 2014 Golden Globes After Party presented by Bombardier, FIJI Water, Lexus, Laura Mercier, Marie Claire and Yucaipa Films at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. 

Kimora Lee Simmons' current husband Tim Leissner has been charged with money laundering , after the theft of billions of dollars from 1MDB, a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. Leissner is a former Goldman Sachs partner in Asia who has plead guilty and agreed to forfeit $43.7 million.

The two other people involved include Roger Ng, who is also a former Goldman employee and Malaysian businessman Jho Low. Around $4.5 billion was incorrectly managed from 1MDB fund officials and their associates, which include Leissner along with his accomplices between 2009 and 2014, the DOJ has alleged. Court documents highlight more than $200 million alone went to Leissner and another alleged co-conspirator.

Kimora Lee Simmons' current husband Tim Leissner and her 4 kids

Once the charges were initially filed in 2017, Kimora spoke out and said she and her husband’s finances aren’t connected when it comes to her business endeavors, according to WWD. “I fund my own business. So all my money, not that I want to say it that way, this is my third marriage that I’m on so, no, my husband has nothing to do with my professional life,” Simmons told the publication. At the climax of Leissner’s involvement with 1MDB, The Wall Street Journal reported he earned more than $10 million a year, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Investigations into the $11 billion Malaysian sovereign fund were first reported in July 2015 by a pair of Wall Street Journal reporters, Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, after a Malaysian parliamentary committee noticed unusual transactions between the state fund and Razak’s personal bank account. Razak, who was then prime minister, as well as 1MDB’s board chairman, was believed to be the central figure involved in a series of financial frauds surrounding the fund.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (you might recognize him as the spokesperson for Malaysia during the intense media coverage of missing flight MH370 in 2014), who recently lost power in an election, was arrested by Malaysia’s anti-graft authorities over his alleged embezzlement of nearly $700 million from the  1MDB.

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak (C) arrives for a court appearance in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on July 4, 2018.


Leissner, Kimora Lee Simmons, Prime Minister Najib Razak and Tan Sri Azman in September 2013

The real mastermind behind the 1MDB scandal was Jho Low, a 36-year-old Chinese Malaysian financier whose only known connection to 1MDB was a hollow title called “special advisor.”

Low is the main character of Wright and Hope’s new book, Billion Dollar Whale, in which the two journalists consolidated their findings from three years of investigative reporting on the 1MDB saga into a nonfiction crime thriller about one of the largest financial heists in history.

Jho Low at Angel Ball 2014 hosted by Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation at Cipriani Wall Street on October 20, 2014 in New York City.

In 2009, Low—an unremarkable 26-year-old Wharton graduate who’d just returned to Malaysia—managed to persuade the country’s prime minister (Razak) to form a government investment fund and subsequently enlisted Goldman Sachs to help the fund raise $6.5 billion in debt from global financial markets. Over the six years between 1MDB’s inception and the beginning of a governmental probe, Low moved money from the fund into his personal bank account regularly, under the disguise of sovereign investments, and spent it on lavish parties in Hollywood, where Low bought his way into friendships with the world’s most famous actors and models, including Leonardo DiCaprio (Low financed DiCaprio’s 2013 hit film The Wolf of Wall Street with stolen money), Britney Spears, Miranda Kerr and Paris Hilton.

In 2012 and 2013, Goldman Sachs made $600 million in fees and commissions from three rounds of bond issuance for 1MDB, raising over $6.5 billion in government debt.

At this time, Low remains an international fugitive, who’s being pursued by Malaysian and American officials.  Low is reportedly hiding somewhere in China.

Jho Low reportedly paid $250 million for the “Equanimity” vessel in 2014 with Malaysian government funds. 

The 300-foot-long luxury yacht has been put up for sale by the Malaysian government for a minimum price of $130 million, a steep discount from the $250 million that Low allegedly paid for it in 2014.

Low’s ex-girlfriend, supermodel Miranda Kerr, was once seen on the “Equanimity” shortly after Low’s purchase.

Jho Low / Miranda Kerr 

July 2017: Miranda Kerr handed over $11 million worth of jewels from her Los Angeles safe deposit box to US government agents. Among the jewels Kerr handed over, according to The Wall Street Journal, was a 11.72 carat heart-shaped diamond pendant, a Valentine's Day gift in 2014 from Low.
The gifts to Kerr, who dated Low for a year, are just part of more than $1.6 billion worth of assets — including property, art, jewels, the yacht and even a jet — that the US Justice Department is now trying to recover.

Low spent millions to fly around the world with Leonardo DiCaprio and to gamble with him.

DiCaprio announced through a spokesman that he was returning more than $13 million worth of art given to him by a Hollywood production company, Red Granite, which is connected to Low and which funded the actor’s 2013 movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Red Granite was co-founded by Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and Joey McFarland, a former party booker for Paris Hilton.

The US government charges that the Hollywood production company was founded on money stolen from the Malaysian development fund 1MDB.

More than $4.2 million of the stolen money was used to buy original movie posters, including one for 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” and another, worth $1.2 million, for the 1927 film “Metropolis.”

Aziz plastered his New York condo, also bought with stolen cash, with the posters.

He also gave some as gifts to DiCaprio — who has not returned them — and to Martin Scorsese, director of “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

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“Dr Tim Leissner”

Leissner was sometimes billed as “Dr Tim Leissner” at speaking events and his official Goldman biography listed a doctorate in business administration from the University of Somerset.

• While an institution of that precise name does not appear to exist, one called Somerset University was fined in the UK in 1992 for selling unrecognized degrees.
• A retired US FBI agent testified to a 2004 Congressional hearing on “diploma mills” that Somerset University had once offered to deliver him an MBA within 15 days, complete with grade point average and professorial letters of recommendation, for $1,995. The agent said the Somerset University representative told him the degree was for “professional purposes, to get pay raises, and promotions”.

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Update 17 Dec 2018

Ng Chong Hwa, Low Taek Jho and Tim Leissner (from left to right). 

Malaysia filed criminal charges on Monday against Goldman Sachs and two of its former employees over the alleged theft of billions of dollars, heaping fresh pressure on the Wall Street titan over the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.

Goldman subsidiaries and ex-bankers Tim Leissner and Ng Chong Hwa are accused of misappropriating $2.7 billion, bribing officials and giving false statements in relation to bond issues they arranged for state fund 1MDB.

Allegations that huge sums were looted from the investment vehicle and used to buy everything from yachts to artwork, in a fraud that involved former Malaysian leader Najib Razak, contributed to the last government’s shock defeat at May elections.

Both former Goldman employees had already been charged over the scandal in the US last month, with Leissner pleading guilty while Ng was arrested in Malaysia. Low Taek Jho, a fugitive Malaysian financier accused of masterminding the fraud, was also hit with new charges.

Malaysia’s new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power in part on a pledge to investigate the 1MDB scandal, has been taking an increasingly tough line against Goldman and has accused the bank of having “cheated” the country.

A steady stream of negative news concerning the scandal has come out of the US, focusing on the great lengths the bank went to in courting 1MDB.

It emerged last month that former Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein met with Jho – commonly known as Jho Low – at a reception in 2009 hosted by Najib at a hotel in New York.

Since his election defeat, Najib has been arrested and hit with dozens of charges over the scandal and is likely facing a long jail term.

Malaysian strategic development company 1MDB was set up in 2009 with the ostensible aim of developing the economy, with its work overseen by Najib.

But the US Department of Justice, which is seeking to seize back assets in America allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB money, estimates that $4.5 billion was looted from the fund by high-ranking officials and their associates.