Tim Leissner

Tim Leissner (born October 31, 1971) is a German-born investment banker and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and chairman of the bank's Southeast Asia division.

Leissner helped orchestrate the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, one of the biggest financial scandals in history, in which billions of dollars were stolen.

Leissner was employed by Goldman Sachs from 1998 to 2016.

In 2014, Leissner married Kimora Lee Simmons.

They have one child together, a son, born in 2015.

In February 2022, it was revealed that Leissner and Simmons were estranged from each other, though it is not exactly clear when the couple split.

At the time Leissner married Simmons, he was still married to his ex-wife, Judy Chan.

Leissner gave Simmons photoshopped documents showing that he was divorced from Chan, and created an email address in Chan's name to convince Simmons that the couple had divorced.

He continued the correspondence for over a year and continued using the email account for several years.

He retired in January 2016 after an internal review found he sent a fake letter to Banque Havilland on behalf of Jho Low.

In 2022, Bloomberg called Leissner "Goldman's most notorious banker."

Goldman paid a record fine (over $5 billion) to the Malaysian and U.S. authorities over the scandal.

He was arrested in June 2018 in Washington, D.C.

In 2018 Leissner pled guilty to charges he personally stole $200 million from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and that he broke the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes to corrupt Malaysian and Emirati offices to get Goldman Sachs business.

Leissner was banned for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission and forced to pay a $43 million fine.

Leissner faces up to 25 years in prison.

He testified against his former deputy Roger Ng in a 2022 trial.

Leissner is portrayed in the book Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope of The Wall Street Journal, which focuses on Jho Low, the purported mastermind behind the 1MDB scheme.

The book was published in September 2018.