by Greg Farrell , Andrea Tan , and Keri Geiger
Bloomberg
April 28, 2017

U.S. prosecutors investigating Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in raising almost $6 billion for Malaysia’s 1MDB investment fund are asking questions about money flowing through accounts linked to Tim Leissner, the lead banker behind the transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have been interviewing bankers familiar with 1Malaysia Development Bhd. about Leissner’s network of relationships with politically connected Malaysians, said the people, who asked not to be named because the queries aren’t public.

In interviews as recent as last month, the people said, the U.S. officials asked about the association between Leissner, who left Goldman Sachs in February 2016, and Low Taek Jho, who the Justice Department said in July was at the center of a scheme that siphoned more than $3 billion dollars from 1MDB. U.S. investigators are asking in particular whether money was sent from a Leissner-linked account to an entity controlled by someone tied to the Malaysian government, one of the people said. Leissner’s attorney, Marc Harris, declined to comment. An official who answered the phone at Low’s Hong Kong-based company Jynwel Capital said he wasn’t available. Read the rest of this entry »

Although Finance Minister II Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani has denied contradicting Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak over the arbitration settlement between 1MDB and International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC), he has clearly tried to dissociate and distance himself from the settlement.

It is therefore quite unworthy of him to allege that DAP PJ Utara, Tony Pua, was trying to create a wedge between Najib and him.

When news of the 1MDB-IPIC “arbitration settlement” was first reported in the international media exactly a week ago that 1MDB was on the verge of inking a “settlement” with IPIC, Johari was mentioned as part of the “high powered team” leading the negotiations to resolve the dispute, but this was promptly denied by Johari the very next day from Washington, where he was attending a World Bank meeting – that he was not involved in the arbitration settlement negotiations and that he had not yet been briefed on the final outcome of the settlement.

This has come as a surprise to all Malaysians – as all this while, everyone, including Members of Parliament, were under the impression that Johari as Finance Minister II had become the key player in the whole 1MDB imbroglio, in fact the final “gatekeeper” in the resolution of the 1MDB scandal. Read the rest of this entry »