KUALA LUMPUR – An unnamed adviser linked to former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak allegedly received a US$2 million bribe from an offshore account apparently in the name of former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner’s wife.
This was revealed in the ongoing trial of Leissner’s former colleague Roger Ng, who is accused of money laundering and bribery in the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.
While details are scant, the bribery allegedly took place after Leissner and Ng were in Hong Kong in 2012 with fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, reported Bloomberg.
“Please don’t tell Roger about our meeting with the friend,” Leissner wrote in a Blackberry message to another Goldman Sachs banker during the trip. Transaction records showed that there was a transfer of US$2 million after the trip from an offshore account to a then Najib adviser.
Ng’s defence team has been trying to show that its client had limited involvement in the 1MDB scandal and much of it was carried out by Low and Leissner.
Yesterday, Katelyn Giesler, an assistant at the firm of lawyer Teny Geragos, told the jury that Ng was not on the guest list for Low’s extravagant birthday party in Las Vegas – but Leissner was.
She added that Ng was absent from a yacht chartered by Low in July 2013 where it was alleged that a 22-carat pink diamond necklace was gifted to Najib’s wife. Datin Rosmah Mansor, when they were sailing in the Mediterranean.
Ng also did not have dinner with Leissner and Najib in San Tropez a few days later. Giesler said records show Ng was not in Europe at the time.
Earlier, prosecutors had said Low arranged with New York jeweller Lorraine Schwartz to create a US$23 million (RM97.3 million) pink diamond necklace for Rosmah, producing an invoice detailing Low’s request in June 2013.
The court was told that Rosmah had initially asked for an 18-carat diamond, but it was replaced with a 22-carat pink diamond as it was the only gem Schwartz had available.
Schwartz personally delivered the necklace to Rosmah while she and Low were on a yacht off the coast of Monaco, prosecutors said.
Ng, 47, was charged in the federal court in New York in 2018 for bribery and laundering money siphoned from 1MDB during his time as Goldman Sachs’ head of investment banking in Malaysia and faces up to 20 years jail if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.
Low was jointly charged in absentia for fraud.
Leissner also pleaded guilty in 2018 to a count of conspiracy to violate US anti-bribery laws and to conspiring to launder money. But he has yet to be charged.
Trial resumes Monday in Brooklyn, New York.
Some US$4.5 billion in funds had been stolen from 1MDB, according to US and Malaysian authorities, but Malaysia has said that at least US$4.3 billion more remain unaccounted for.
In 2020, Najib was sentenced to 12 years’ jail by the Kuala Lumpur High Court for corruption related to SRC International Sdn Bhd – a former unit of 1MDB. He currently faces a separate trial on 1MDB.
Rosmah was charged separately in court for alleged corruption in a RM1.25 billion solar hybrid project for 369 rural schools in Sarawak.
Both Najib and Rosmah have denied all wrongdoing. Najib is currently appealing his conviction. – The Vibes, March 25, 2022
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