It seemed like a funny question, meant to provoke the star witness: “Do you think you’re good at lying?”
But it is the crucial issue at the heart of what will likely be the only trial on American soil in one of the largest international kleptocracy cases in history, the multi-billion dollar looting of Malaysia’s people.
Roger Ng, a former banker at Goldman Sachs, is accused of participating in a bribe and kickback scheme that enabled the fraud, which involved looting more than $4 billion from a Malaysian state fund and buying a king’s ransom for jewelry, art and real estate from Manhattan to London to Beverly Hills.
Ng’s former boss at Goldman, Tim Leissner, was one of Goldman’s most powerful dealmakers in Asia for many years. Now he is the government’s star witness – and an admittedly prolific maker. In the gallery of a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, he acknowledged misleading colleagues, investigators and all three of his wives. But when Mr Ng’s lawyer poked him to ask if he’s a good liar, Mr Leissner coolly replied, “I don’t think so.”
Mr. Leissner’s ten-day testimony — including six days of torrid cross-examination — exposed the details of a global fraud that toppled Malaysia’s prime minister and forced Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions, to to appear before a U.S. judge and admit, for the first time in its 153-year history, that it was guilty of a crime.
The question for the judges: How much of what Mr. Leissner said was true?
Leissner admitted in court that he “lied a lot,” including issuing a fake divorce decree to his now estranged wife, the model and fashion designer Kimora Lee Simmons, so that she would marry him eight years ago. But he insists he is telling the truth about Mr Ng, who prosecutors say helped fill the pockets of officials in Abu Dhabi and powerful Malaysians close to then Prime Minister Najib Razak.
The looted money from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, state wealth fund financed a massive wave of spending: paintings by van Gogh and Monet, a yacht docked in Bali, a private jet and a clear acrylic wing given to a supermodel. It financed a boutique hotel in Beverly Hills, bought a share of EMI’s music publishing portfolio and helped make “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the Martin Scorsese film about Wall Street corruption that earned Leonardo DiCaprio a Golden Globe.
The trial could be the final act of the scandal. Goldman Sachs has paid $5 billion in fines and pleaded guilty on behalf of an Asian subsidiary. Mr. Leissner pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Mr Najib, the former Prime Minister, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in his home country.
The only other main character of the plot will likely never appear in court: Jho Low, the brash financier accused of being the architect of the plan, is a fugitive believed to be living in China, out of reach of US prosecutors.
Mr. Leissner said that Mr. Low was the “decision maker” on all things 1MDB, but that Mr. Ng was his primary contact at Goldman, which earned about $600 million in fees every $6.5 billion in fees. to arrange bond deals for the fund.
“Roger has made him one of his clients,” Mr. Leissner said.
He testified that Mr Ng had organized many of the meetings to plan the plan, including one at Mr Low’s London apartment, where Mr Low signed boxes on a piece of paper with the names of all the officials who received bribes and gifts. . For helping arrange the payments, Mr. Leissner, he raised more than $80 million. Prosecutors allege that Mr Ng’s share was $35 million.
Mr Ng’s lawyers say Mr Leissner exaggerated and distorted the facts to satisfy prosecutors and get a lighter sentence. The money that Mr. Ng received, they argue, was to repay a legitimate debt owed by one of Mr. Leissner’s wives to Mr. Ng’s wife was indebted.
“I’m ready to show this jury that he is a liar,” Mr Ng’s lead attorney Marc Agnifilo told Judge Margo K. Brodie, the chief justice of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, during a pause in procedures. He described Mr. Leissner as “deceitful” and “sly”.
“There aren’t many guys like him,” said Mr. Agnifilo.
Mr Leissner’s credibility has been an issue since the investigation began. In a campaign to cast Mr. Leissner as a rogue employee, the bank told regulators and law enforcement that he was a masterful con man who had fooled everyone at the bank.
Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and a New York Law School professor who specializes in legal ethics, said it can be difficult to rely on such a witness, but “it’s not a fatal blow.”
She said a prosecutor can claim a witness is “a terrible person” and “a serial liar” who “had a “come-to-Jesus” moment.
“That can work if you have really bad people who have lied a lot,” she said.
Mr Agnifilo had Mr Leissner explain how he – not Mr Ng – oversaw the payment of the bulk of the bribe. He emphasized Mr. Leissner’s close relationship with Mr. Low by having Mr. Leissner confirm his presence at a star-studded 31st birthday party Mr. Low hosted for himself in Las Vegas in 2012 (Mr. Leissner said Mr. Ng had was also present, although Mr. Ng was not on the guest list.)
Mr. Agnifilo also had Mr. Leissner talk about the many ways he cheated on his wives, especially Mrs. Simmons. Mr. Leissner admitted that he used an email account in the name of his second wife, Judy Chan, to communicate with Ms. Simmons while dating her, and that he was still married to Ms. Chan when he and Ms. Simmons married . (Mr. Leissner was also legally married to another woman when he married Ms. Chan.)
And Mr. Agnifilo punched holes in Mr. Leissner’s accounts detailing the 1MDB plan, specifically the pivotal meeting at Mr. Low’s apartment. He urged Mr. Leissner why he told the FBI after his arrest in June 2018 that a Morgan Stanley banker had also been present.
Mr. Leissner said he couldn’t remember saying that and didn’t know why it would be in an FBI agent’s record of the interview. When presented with a copy of the FBI report, Mr. Leissner replied, “I don’t know who wrote this or how that report was written.”
Mr Agnifilo also spoke to Mr Leissner – who was interviewed by law enforcement about 50 times before and after his admission of guilt in August 2018 – about how he had trickled out details of the meeting. Mr. Leissner had no explanation as to why he failed to list people’s names on a map until an FBI interview last April.
When forced to discuss some of his deceptions, Mr. Leissner sounded almost sheepish, including when he testified that he used some of the looted money to buy a $10 million house for one of his girlfriends so she could would not go to the authorities.
Mr. Leissner said he was not proud of his untruths and that after his arrest he lied to the FBI because he was afraid. But eventually he had “gone clean,” he said.
As part of his plea deal, Mr. Leissner agreed to lose $44 million and shares in a company worth hundreds of millions more. Thanks to his cooperation, he avoided spending any time in prison. (Mr Ng spent six months in a Malaysian prison before being extradited to the United States in 2019)
Mr. Leissner’s cooperation helped prosecutors pull a guilty plea out of Goldman, a typical prosecution strategy of making a deal with a white-collar suspect to catch a proverbial bigger fish. But it’s unusual for Mr. Leissner to testify against someone he once accompanied.
“In a case like this you hope to avoid a situation where you have an associate testifying against someone who is a subordinate,” Ms Roiphe said.
Some attorneys speculated that federal prosecutors never expected to put Mr. Leissner on the witness stand. Instead, they may have been counting on an IOU from Mr. Ng for a trial, in which she took many of Mr. Leissner’s dirty laundry.
The trial of Mr. Ng will be at least another two weeks, and it’s hard to predict how Mr. Leissner will play a part in the deliberations of the jury. The government is calling on other witnesses to testify about how both men broke Goldman rules in seeking the lucrative bond underwriting, and to review Mr. Ng and his wife’s banking records.
Even if the jury rejects Mr. Leissner confides, the trial may not be over yet.
The trial had to be adjourned for several days to allow Mr. Giving Ng the time to read tens of thousands of emails and other private documents from Mr. Leissner which the prosecution did not provide until after the trial began. Prosecutors called the delay “unforgivable”.
mr. Agnifilo has said the government’s failure to provide the documents in a timely manner hindered him from preparing for the trial. Legal experts have said the matter could give Mr Ng grounds to appeal if convicted.
“It’s unforgivable and messy work,” Ms Roiphe said. “There’s an obligation to get this right, especially if you have a large, high-profile case.”
