Tim Leissner, formerly with Goldman Sachs, was recently sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the 1MDB fiasco.
The wheels of justice in the U.S. appear to be a little rusty, but they still run, and every once in a while, they remind us of a major scandal or two.
This is proving to be the case for Tim Leissner, a former chairman and participating managing director for Southeast Asia, Goldman Sachs. He was recently sentenced to two years in prison for his role in what became the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.
Grygo is the chief content officer for FTF & FTF News.
To recap, 1MDB was a “Malaysian state-owned and controlled” fund and was launched to help “investment and development projects for the economic benefit of Malaysia and its people,” according to U.S. Department of Justice officials, which led a “longstanding investigation into the 1MDB scheme.”
The scheme involved Leissner and Roger Ng, and Leissner conspired to pay more than $1 billion in bribes to 12 government officials who then facilitated business for Goldman Sachs, according to Justice Department officials. Ng Chong Hwa, also known as Roger Ng, was ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2023; Leissner, who pled guilty, became a key government witness against Roger Ng.
Together, Ng and Leissner laundered “the proceeds of their criminal conduct through the U.S. financial system, including funding major Hollywood films such as ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ and purchasing, among other things, a $51 million Jean-Michael Basquiat painting from New York-based Christie’s auction house, a $23 million diamond necklace from a New York jeweler, millions of dollars in Hermès handbags from a dealer based on Long Island, and a luxury real estate property in Manhattan,” according to Justice officials.
For its work for 1MDB during the period in question, Goldman Sachs got $600 million in fees and revenues, and Ng got $35 million for his bribery and money laundering schemes. In all, Ng and his co-conspirators “misappropriated more than $2.7 billion from 1MDB,” according to Justice Department officials.
For the scheme to work, Ng worked with co-defendant Low Taek Jho, a.k.a. Jho Low, a wealthy Malaysian socialite who knew “high-ranking government officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates.” The government officials received bribes in the “hundreds of millions of dollars” and in return gave business to Goldman Sachs, say Justice officials. (In October 2020, Goldman Sachs admitted its guilt via the 1MDB scandal and paid a fine of $2.9 billion.)
When he was sentenced in late May, Leissner issued an apology to Malaysia and its citizens, saying that they were the “real victims” of the 1MDB scheme, according to an Associated Press report. After his prison sentence, Leissner will be subject to two years of supervised release.
For now, Jho Low has managed to elude authorities, but they are still looking for him. If he is caught, the subsequent trial should be interesting.
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