Ex-Goldman banker gets two-year sentence for 1MDB role – report

Former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty for his role in stealing from Malaysian investment fund 1MDB, received a two-year prison sentence, according to media reports.

While he was given consideration for his cooperation with prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn, New York, refused Leissner’s request for no prison time, calling his conduct “brazen and audacious.”

Leissner could have been sentenced as many as 25 years after pleading guilty in 2018 to one count of conspiring to violated bribery laws and conspiring to launder money. Even though he cooperated with prosecutors, his role in the scheme was apparently too pivotal to ignore. “Without you, it’s unclear these crimes would have taken place,” Brodie said, citing a letter from Goldman, as reported by Bloomberg News.

In 2020, Goldman Sachs (GS) agreed to pay more than $5B to settle global investigations related to 1MDB. The Wall Street bank helped raise $6.5B of capital for 1MDB through three bond transactions in 2012 and 2013. Eventually, it was discovered that billions of dollars were stolen from the fund.

In 2023, another former Goldman executive, Ng Chong Hwa, also known as Roger Ng, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for bribery and laundering funds embezzled from 1MDB.