Tim Leissner stood for his second day of testimony, unveiling details about alleged dealings to get Goldman jobs for the children of ex-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and an extramarital affair with the chief executive of a major media firm in the country. 

Ex-Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein met Najib Razak in 2009 ahead of the $6.5 billion in 1MDB bond deals to help the former Malaysian prime minister’s children get jobs at the American bank, Tim Leissner told the jury yesterday at the Brooklyn federal court. 

«Just met PM’s three children with [Jho Low] at his apartment,» according to an e-mail sent by Roger Ng to Leissner. «We’ll work on getting them to join GS.»

«Sounds good my friend. Get them in,” Leissner responded via email, though he told the jury that he eventually just helped Najib’s daughter get a job at TPG. 

Alerting Compliance

After establishing the relationship between Goldman and Najib, Leissner noted that he would alert compliance if the subsequent deal sizes weren't large enough to avoid the «headache» of the bank’s vetting process.

«It was going to be painful, and it wasn’t going to be big enough for us,» he said on one such deal related to the purchase of a Kazakh gold mine.

But in other situations, more discretion was exercised such as the use of code names for Low («friend») and the Malaysian prime minister’s office («PMO») in order to avoid alerting other parts of the bank.

Selection Criteria

To further ensure the success of Goldman’s ability to win 1MDB deals, Leissner said Low secretly fed the bank inside information about the process for selecting a bank to advise on deals.

When asked by prosecutor Drew Rolle if this was akin to having answers to a test beforehand, Leissner agreed «because we wrote them».

Rohana Rozhan

Also during the same day of trial, the prosecutor questioned Leissner about his extramarital affairs and he cited several, including one with former CEO of media firm Astro Malaysia, Rohana Rozhan, between 2003 and 2013. 

According to Leissner, he bought Rozhan a $10 million home in London in 2013 after she had threatened to expose his involvement in the 1MDB scandal. 

«Ms. Rozhan was very upset that I was ending our relationship to be with my future wife, with [Kimora Lee Simmons],” Leissner testified «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.»