Goldman Sachs asked a Brooklyn federal judge to throw the book at a disgraced former partner who cost the Wall Street investment banking giant billions of dollars in fines over a foreign bribery scandal.
The Wall Street giant’s top lawyer fired off a letter on Thursday to US District Court Judge Margo Brodie condemning Timothy Leissner, the 53-year-old German-born banker, for having “extensively lied to and deceived many people” at the company.
Leissner, Goldman’s former chief of Southeast Asia operations, is due to be sentenced next week after he pleaded guilty in 2018 to crimes committed as part of bilking the Malaysia sovereign wealth fund, called 1MDB, out of nearly $3 billion.
He faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years — though Justice Department prosecutors are asking Brodie to go easy on him when handing down her sentence on May 29.
“In committing those crimes, Mr. Leissner deceived his colleagues for years, culminating in the only criminal case filed against Goldman Sachs in its 156-year history,” Goldman general counsel Kathryn H. Ruemmler wrote in a letter to the judge.
“He has never acknowledged, let alone accepted responsibility for, the extraordinary harm and reputational damage that he caused to Goldman Sachs and his many partners and colleagues who trusted him.”
The Goldman lawyer wrote that the bank “take[s] issue with” Leissner’s “attempt to explain his misconduct by reference to the supposed pressure that Goldman Sachs put on him to generate business.”
Leisser, according to Ruemmler, has also “opposed Goldman Sachs’ efforts to claw back compensation he received while working on the 1MDB bond transactions, even though Goldman Sachs’ right to recover that compensation was plainly stated in Mr. Leissner’s employment agreement.”
In October 2023, a Manhattan federal judge ordered Leissner to pay Goldman $20.7 million in restitution, but the bank says it hasn’t been “repaid one penny.”
Ruemmler’s letter was written in response to a sentencing memo submitted by Justice Department prosecutors asking the judge for leniency, citing Leissner’s extensive cooperation in the investigation.
According to Justice Department lawyers, Leissner’s help led to the conviction of his former colleague Roger Ng and contributed to Goldman Sachs paying a record $2.9 billion penalty.
“While Mr. Leissner only testified in a single jury trial, United States v. Roger Ng, the information he provided touched scores of rich and powerful individuals: sheiks from Abu Dhabi with immense wealth and state power, the former prime minister of Malaysia… and Goldman Sachs, the richest investment bank in the world,” DOJ prosecutors wrote.
They added: “That reality renders additional punishment from this Court unnecessary for Mr. Leissner. A time served sentence is sufficient but not greater than necessary for Tim Leissner.”
Leissner had spearheaded three bond deals totaling $6.5 billion for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013.
Instead of funding development projects, over $2.7 billion was embezzled to bribe officials and finance extravagant lifestyles, including luxury real estate, art and even the production of Hollywood films like “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Leissner admitted to personally pocketing between $50 million and $60 million in kickbacks.
He also confessed to forging documents and creating fake email accounts to deceive colleagues and his then-wife, Kimora Lee Simmons, about his marital status.
The Post has sought comment from the Justice Department and Leissner’s attorney, Henry Mazurek.
Mazurek told Bloomberg News on Thursday that “the chutzpah of Goldman Sachs’s letter to the court today is astounding.”
“Mr. Leissner spent the last several years cooperating with the Department of Justice to expose the corporate culture and institutional greed which fueled the behavior that corrupted the 1MDB project,” Mazurek said in a statement.
Goldman declined to comment.
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