![]() He said on Tuesday that Ng and Lim attended his meeting with the feng shui master at a Hong Kong hotel, where the master said he would have trouble with authorities over the next five years but that the problems would later resolve themselves. Leissner oversaw the firm's Southeast Asia team. Leissner testified that he and Ng played a key role in that scheme and that he personally transferred $35 million in kickbacks to Ng, Goldman's top banker for Malaysia. Prosecutors say Goldman from 2009 to 2014 raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB through bond sales and earned $600 million in fees, but that $4.5 billion was diverted to officials, bankers and their associates through bribes and kickbacks. The charges stem from one of the biggest financial scandals in history. Ng had left Goldman in 2014, Leissner said. ![]() Leissner testified that after the FBI served him with a subpoena in February 2016, Ng and his wife, Hwee Bin Lim, suggested he consult a feng shui master they trusted to ask whether they "would be in trouble." Leissner, 52, pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2018 and agreed to cooperate with the government. Leissner is the prosecutors' star witness at the Brooklyn federal court trial of Roger Ng, 49, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to launder money and violate an anti-bribery law. investigation into the looting of funds from Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, one of the bankers, Tim Leissner, testified on Tuesday. Two former Goldman Sachs bankers sought advice from a feng shui master in 2016 on how to handle a U.S. This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Leissner had previously admitted that he was twice married to two women at the same time, saying that he had faked a divorce document to marry Chan and later Photo-shopped a divorce decree to marry Simmons. ![]() I wanted to make an effort or appear I was attempting to help him." ![]() “I wanted to protect Judy from him," Leissner said. “Jho was trying to monetize the painting and several others and he wanted to see if Judy or her family could be of help," Leissner said.Īgnifilo asked why he pretended to be Chan while talking to Low. Chan’s family owns China’s top winery, as well as other businesses, he said. ![]() Leissner also admitted Tuesday he’d used the phony email address to communicate with Low after the financier reached out to Chan in 2016 because he was looking to sell fine art including a painting by Vincent van Gogh. “I don’t remember, but I see it here," Leissner said. “But an entire life may be too far."Īgnifilo showed Leissner an email he’d sent Simmons in which Chan claimed she caused the banker to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. “It was an entire life you completely falsified because you made the whole thing up?" an incredulous Agnifilo asked. In one email created by Leissner, Chan told Simmons she’d be unable to visit because she and her children with Leissner had been injured in a car accident. While posing as Chan, Leissner declined Simmons’s repeated invitations for Chan and her children to vacation with the former model and her family in Paris, an Austrian ski holiday and a private Caribbean island. Leissner was questioned Tuesday about the phony email account by Ng’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, who’s trying to undermine the banker’s credibility by showing the jury that he’s a “rare cunning liar," as the attorney told the judge. ![]()
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