An ex-Goldman Sachs executive testifying in an embezzlement trial against another banker revealed that a Malaysian media CEO he had an affair with blackmailed him into buying her a $10 million home in London.
Tim Leissner, 52, who pleaded guilty to taking part in Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal in 2018, told prosecutors at Roger Ng’s trial on Tuesday that he had a decade-long affair with Rohana Rozhan, MEASAT Broadcast executive and former CEO of Astro Malaysia Holdings.
Leissner testified that Rozhan threatened to reveal his involvement in Ng’s alleged $4.5 billion scheme with the Malaysian government to embezzle money from the 1MDB account in 2013 if he did not siphon $10 million from the fund to buy her a London home, Bloomberg reported.
‘Ms. Rozhan was very upset that I was ending our relationship to be with my future wife, with Kimora,’ Leissner told prosecutors, referring to his estranged wife, model and reality TV star Kimora Lee Simmons, 46.
‘If I didn’t buy her a house, she would tell the authorities about my involvement in the 1MDB scandal. She was threatening to expose me. At the time, 2013, I was very fearful of that.’
Former Goldman Sachs executive Tim Leissner (center) testified that he was in a decade-long affair with Rohana Rozhan, MEASAT Broadcast executive and former CEO of Astro Malaysia Holdings. He said the media CEO threatened to expose his involvement in Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal if he did not buy her a $10 million house in London
Rohana Rozhan (above) was in a relationship with Leissner from 2003 to 2013, according to Leissner’s testimony. He said their relationship was an open secret
Leissner claimed Rozhan was upset that he was breaking up with her to marry his now estranged wife, Kimora Lee Simmons (right), a reality TV star and model
Agnifilo told jurors that Leissner (pictured with Kimora) ‘uses people’ and has had an ‘illicit’ relationship with Jasmine Loo
Leissner was called to testify last week against Ng, Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, who is charged with conspiring to launder money and to violate an anti-bribery law.
Leissner agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation and testify against his former associate for a reduced sentence, forfeiting $43million.
Prosecutors said that Ng, 49, received $35 million in kickbacks for helping embezzle $4.5 billion in funds from 1MDB in a ‘brazen’ scam.
The pair allegedly worked with Malaysian financier Jho Low to divert the money to fund their lavish lifestyle.
NG has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Leissner added that he informed his then-boss Richard Gnodde, head of Goldman Sachs’ Asia business, about his relationship with Rozhan, Bloomberg reported.
Gnodde had allegedly told Leissner to ‘be careful about relationships with clients,’ as Astro was one of the businesses Goldman Sachs was working with in Malaysia.
Leissner said their relationship, which spanned from 2003 to 2013, was an open secret.
‘Pretty much everybody in our Southeast Asia territory knew it,’ he testified.
Rozhan, who resigned from Astro in 2019, could not be immediately reached for comment.
During Tuesday’s testimony, Leissner also revealed that he and Ng tried to set up jobs at Goldman Sachs for three children of former Malaysian’ prime minister Najib Razak, who was ousted in 2018 for his alleged involvement in the 1MBD scandal.
Leissner told prosecutors that in 2009, Razak spoke with the Goldman Sachs bankers, along with then CEO- Lloyd Blankfein, at the Four Seasons hotel in New York, asking them to help find positions for three of his five children at the company, Bloomberg reported.
Leissner did not name which of Razak’s kids were part of the proposed deal, only that one daughter had eventually gotten a job at TPS Inc., suggesting it was Nooryana Najwa Najib, who was hired at the company in 2014.
Leissner added that Low was involved in the attempts to get Razak’s children hired as he read an email between him and Ng in the courtroom on Tuesday.
‘Just met PM’s three children with Jho at his apartment,’ Leissner read from the message he allegedly received from Ng. ‘We’ll work on getting them to join GS.’
Leissner replied to Ng: ‘Sounds good my friend. Get them in.’
He said they passed along a daughter’s resume to Goldman Sachs’ office in London, but a company official rejected their request for the daughter to be hired.
‘He basically told me he would not support this so we dropped it,’ Leissner told prosecutors.
He also told the court that he and Ng came up with the codenames ‘Friend’ and ‘PMO,’ which referred to the Prime Minister’s Office, for Low as they worked to secure Goldman Sachs’ ties in Malaysia and the 1MBD account.
Leissner said Low was ‘essential’ to their business because he was a ‘key decision-maker’ in advising Razak and had fed Goldman bankers insider information on how the government was choosing who it would partner with on the 1MBD, Bloomberg reported.
Goldman was competing with JPMorgan Chase, UBS and other major banks for business with the Malaysian government.
Prosecutor Drew Rolle asked Leissner if their information from Low was ‘like having the answers to a test ahead of time.’
‘Yes,’ Leissner said. ‘Because we wrote them.’
Goldman Sachs declined to comment on Leissner’s testimony.
Roger Ng (left, pictured alongside his lawyer Marc Agnifilo), Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, is charged with conspiring to launder money and to violate an anti-bribery law to fund his lavish lifestyle
In total, Goldman Sachs will have to pay out more than $5 billion in fines in the scandal, in which former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (above) and his cronies looted billions from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a supposed government investment fund. Leissner said Razak had requested Goldman Sachs hire three of his fire children
Billions of dollars were looted from the sovereign wealth fund in a fraud that allegedly involved former prime minister Najib Razak and his associates
Tuesday’s testimony was the latest reveal into Leissner’s person life after Ng’s defense attorney claimed the ex banker was a ‘double bigamist’ who ‘uses women.’
Leissner, was allegedly ‘married to two different women at the same time, twice,’ attorney Marc Agnifilo claimed last week.
Leissner has been reportedly married three times, though the dates, and marriage and divorce records are not available.
He was allegedly married to an unidentified first wife before meeting and later marrying Judy Chan, a former analyst at Goldman and the daughter of a coal-mining business owner in China. Leissner has also tied the knot with Simmons.
He met Simmons, who was previously married to hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, in business class on a flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.
The couple reportedly exchanged vows in 2013 – around the time his relationship with Chan fell apart – and had a son, Wolfe, who was born in 2015.
Leissner has been married twice; first to Judy Chan (pictured) a former analyst at Goldman and the daughter of a coal-mining business owner in China
Agnifilo told jurors that Leissman ‘uses people’ and has had an ‘illicit’ relationship with Jasmine Loo, the general counsel at 1MDB, The New York Post reported.
She has since fled Malaysia and is wanted by authorities.
The defense attorney said Leissner and Loo developed a ‘dark trust because of their illicit, intimate romantic relationship’.
Agnifilo said: ‘Leissner uses women, he uses false intimacy, and now he’s trying to use my client to get him to do his jail time.’
If convicted, Ng faces decades behind bars for the alleged embezzlement to fund his lavish lifestyle.
The ex-banker’s attorneys denied the allegations, arguing that US prosecutors scapegoated Ng for ‘corporate-wide’ failures at Goldman that enabled the colossal fraud.
The pair allegedly worked with Malaysian financier Jho Low (pictured) to divert the money to fund their lavish lifestyle
‘Roger is 100% innocent,’ defense attorney Marc Agnifilo told the jury. ‘We’re about to actually have a trial of an innocent man.’
The defense argued Ng’s only role was introducing Low to ‘far more involved’ superiors at Goldman who escaped prosecution. The attorney also claimed his client warned company management not to trust Low.
Among the purchases made from the record heist were a vast superyacht called Equanimity, jewels, and even financing for the hit 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Agnifilo told jurors Leissner should not be trusted, claiming the witness secretly recorded co-conspirators in the scheme, but he never found anything incriminating about his client Ng.
Federal prosecutor Brent Wible alleges Ng secretly agreed with Leissner and Low to take hundreds of millions of dollars raised for three bond deals tied to 1MDB that had been intended for development projects in Malaysia.
Low, the accused mastermind behind the scheme, was indicted in the US alongside Ng in 2018.
He has not been arrested by US or Malaysian authorities and his US lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors say Goldman earned $600 million in fees from the deals, and that around $4.5billion of the funds raised was embezzled.
Goldman paid a nearly $3billion fine and arranged for its Malaysian subsidiary to plead guilty in US court.
Leissner said on the stand Wednesday that Ng was Goldman’s lead banker on 1MDB and had cultivated a relationship with Malaysian financier Jho Low starting in 2008, who was the key intermediary between the bank and 1MDB.
Bringing in 1MDB business to Goldman, which ultimately sold $6.5 billion in bonds for the fund and reaped $600 million in fees, ‘instantaneously made us heroes’ within the bank, Leissner said.
‘My greed and ambition took over,’ Leissner said, adding that the fallout from his actions had destroyed his life.
He also said bankers at Goldman were expected to be hired on every one of their clients’ deals, and that missing one was considered ‘unacceptable.’
Agnifilo has countered that Leissner, who has not yet been sentenced, has lied to prosecutors about Ng’s involvement in a bid to lighten his punishment.
He spent much of his opening statement attacking Leissner’s credibility, portraying him as a socialite with expensive taste.
Before marrying Kimora Lee Simmons, Leissner was married to Judy Chan, who currently runs Grace Vineyard, China’s first family-owned winery.
Chan and Leissner met at Goldman when she was working as a junior analyst. It is unclear when exactly they got married, but Bloomberg Quint reported that the feast ‘included suckling pigs with electric lights flashing in their eye sockets.’
Reports suggest Chan and Leissner divorced in 2013 although divorce records were not readily accessible.
Chan was using her married name in Grace Vineyard promotional materials in 2012. She appears to have begun using her maiden name in 2013.
Authors Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, in their novel Billion Dollar Whale, report that Leissner married Chan after divorcing his first wife.
Information regarding his alleged first wife’s identity was not disclosed in the book and records of a first marriage cannot be found.
Leissner and Simmons met in business class on a flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur. Their initial encounter is said to have begun with an argument and ended in a marriage proposal.
They wed in 2013, however, the exact date and location of the ceremony remains unknown as a marital records search did not yield any results.
The couple was pictured in Saint Barthélemy in December 2013 sporting rings on their left hands. Page Six alleged they may have had a Caribbean wedding during that time.
She gave birth to his son, Wolfe, in 2015. They also adopted Gary, then 10, in January 2020.
The couple has since become estranged, although it is unclear when they split.
There was speculation they were separating in January 2020 after Leissner was ‘seen canoodling with a mystery woman’. Us Weekly reported at the time that news of the interaction ‘seemed to spread rapidly to Kimora’. She was also said to be ‘been spending a lot of time away from Los Angeles’ during that time.
Leissner and Simmons were living in an $11million Los Angeles mansion but sold the home last year. Leissner still resides in the City of Angels.
Before marrying Simmons, Leissner was married to Judy Chan, who currently runs Grace Vineyard, China’s first family-owned winery.
Chan and Leissner met at Goldman when she was working as a junior analyst. It is unclear when exactly they got married, however Bloomberg Quint reported the feast ‘included suckling pigs with electric lights flashing in their eye sockets.’
Reports suggest Chan and Leissner divorced in 2013 although divorce records were not readily accessible.
Chan was using her married name in Grace Vineyard promotional materials in 2012. She appears to have begun using her maiden name in 2013.
Authors Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, in their novel Billion Dollar Whale, report that Leissner married Chan after divorcing his first wife. Information regarding his alleged first wife’s was not disclosed.
Kimora, a former model, was married for ten years to Russell Simmons – the founder of hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings – before they divorced in 2008. They have two children.
Malaysian socialite Jho Low (right) – the other key player in the scheme – remains at large and is believed to have been granted asylum abroad. In 2012, he threw a lavish 31st birthday bash attended by DiCaprio (left), Kim Kardashian and other celebrities. Low and DiCaprio are pictured at The Wolf of Wall Street World Premiere in Paris in December 2013
Malaysian socialite Low, who maintains his innocence, became well known in the New York City and Los Angeles club scenes.
In 2012, he threw a lavish 31st birthday bash attended by DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian and other celebrities – a fête described by The Wall Street Journal as the ‘wildest party [Las] Vegas ever saw.’
Pop star Britney Spears is said to have jumped out of a birthday cake to serenade Low.
He also dated Miranda Kerr, who was forced to surrender $8million in jewelry he gave her amid the 1MDB inquiry.