1MDB Banker Warned by Feng Shui Master That Trouble Lay Ahead

(Bloomberg) -- Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Tim Leissner testified that after the FBI handed him a grand jury subpoena tied to the 1MDB scandal, he consulted a feng shui master to see if more trouble lay ahead over the next decade.

Leissner, the U.S. government's key witness in the trial of former Goldman colleague Roger Ng over the multibillion-dollar scam to loot Malaysia's wealth fund, told a federal jury on Tuesday that it was Ng who suggested the consultation. He said the master's report predicted that “I would have an issue with authorities for the first half of the 10 years but then it would be resolved.”

The former star banker, who has admitted he was twice married to two women at the same time, as well as having a host of mistresses and girlfriends, said the feng shui master also had something to say about that.

“There was a prediction” that “women in my life would always be a problem,” he told the jury in Brooklyn, New York.

Feng shui is a common practice in Asia used to divine favorable and unfavorable signs and energy flows in everything from baby naming to real estate. Leissner testified that he had previously consulted with a feng shui master about how to arrange his Asia offices.

Ng, 49, is fighting charges he conspired with Leissner, 52, and Malaysian financier Jho Low to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from a trio of 1MDB bond deals arranged by Goldman and got millions of dollars in kickbacks along the way. Leissner pleaded guilty in 2018 for his role in the scheme and is cooperating with the U.S. He could receive leniency at sentencing.

Leissner told the jury he gave Ng the time and date of his birth for the feng shui reading. He said he and his ex-wife Judy Chan then met with Ng and his wife, Hwee Bin Lim, at a Hong Kong hotel in 2016 to discuss the report, with Chan translating for Leissner because he doesn't read Chinese.

Leissner testified that he was trying to figure out if he was a target of the U.S. investigation into 1MDB and Goldman Sachs, a subject of the probe or merely a witness.

“It was getting too much,” he told the court. “The investigation wasn't subsiding, it was increasing,” he said, citing Ng's eventual arrest in Singapore. “It just felt like essentially the walls were closing in.”

Leissner said that after Chan left the meeting, he stayed behind with Ng and Ng's wife, Lim, and that Lim then suggested they all tell investigators that a $35 million transfer Leissner made through an entity Chan controlled to one owned by Lim and her family was for a separate business transaction and not part of 1MDB.

Lim, who lives in Malaysia, couldn't immediately be reached for comment on Leissner's testimony. Ng's lawyer Marc Agnifilo has said he will call Lim to testify on her husband's behalf.

The scandal cost Goldman more than $5 billion in fines and forced its Asia division to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge.

The case is U.S. v. Low Taek Jho, 18-cr-538, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).