NAJIB SKEWERED: BANKER TIM LEISSNER, AT CENTRE OF 1MDB’S US$6BIL BOND SALES, AGREES TO TELL ALL TO U.S. DOJ – REPORT: ‘HE REACHED OUT TO JHO LOW, LAWYERS & THEY TOLD HIM TO CO-OPERATE WITH U.S. PROBE’

EX-BANKER Tim Leissner has agreed to cooperate with United States authorities investigating the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal that brought down the Najib government this year.

His cooperation is key to unravelling the world’s biggest kleptocracy case that Malaysia says pushed the national debt to some RM1 trillion and sent former prime minister Najib Razak to the dock last week.

The Malaysian Insight learnt that Leissner agreed to cooperate with the US rather than Malaysian authorities after he was stopped while travelling back to his house in Austria two months ago.

“There was a US-Austria joint operation, in which they stopped him and asked him about 1MDB.

“He then reached out to Jho Low and the Malaysian’s lawyers, and they told him to cooperate with the US investigators,” a source told The Malaysian Insight, referring to Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian businessman at the centre of the scandal.

Leissner, once Goldman Sachs’s Southeast Asia chairman, was advisor to 1MDB, the strategic investment fund set up in 2009 to help the nation build infrastructure.

He is married to American model-turned-designer Kimora Lee Simmons.

Under him, the New York bank’s Southeast Asian unit raised almost US$6 billion (RM24.2 billion) for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013. The money was meant for development projects, but US prosecutors allege that the bulk of it was diverted by high-level 1MDB officials and their associates.

He left Goldman Sachs in 2015 and was barred from working in the both the US and Singapore financial markets when 1MDB became embroiled in allegations of financial irregularities that sparked probes in multiple countries.

The sources said Leissner’s cooperation would provide investigators with a clearer picture over the bonds, one of which was guaranteed by Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Corp.

US prosecutors had also alleged that the so-called US$681 million “donation” to Najib’s private bank accounts came from the other bond.

Critics had questioned Goldman’s earnings from arranging bond sales for 1MDB, where it made about US$593 million from three bond sales.

The US bank had previously defended the Malaysian fees as representing underwriting risks and market conditions at the time.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said last month that Malaysia would seek to recoup US$4.5 billion potentially lost through 1MDB, as well as fees paid to Goldman.

“We have to prove ownership of the money,” Dr Mahathir told Bloomberg TV.

“The previous government, in order to avoid accusations of wrongdoing, decided that the money was not theirs, so they are not making any claims. But we know the money is ours. It’s from 1MDB,” he had said.

It is not known if the US authorities will share any information from Leissner with their Malaysian counterparts, particularly with the prosecution against Najib, who has denied any wrongdoing in the 1MDB affair. – THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT