“
Five months later, Goldman launched Project Maximus, buying another $1.75 billion in bonds to finance 1MDB’s acquisition of power plants from the Malaysian casino-and-plantations conglomerate Genting Group. Again, the fund paid a high price, and, like Tanjong, Genting made payments to a Najib-linked charity. This time, $790.3 million disappeared into the look-alike Aabar. David Ryan, president of Goldman’s Asia operations, argued to lower the fee on the second bond, given how easy it had been to sell the first round. But he was overruled by senior executives, including Gary Cohn. While Goldman was working on the deal, Ryan was effectively sidelined; the bank brought in a veteran banker, Mark Schwartz, a proponent of the 1MDB business, as chairman in Asia, a post senior to Ryan’s. Goldman earned a little less than the first deal, making $114 million—still an enormous windfall. For bringing in the business, Leissner was paid a salary and bonuses in 2012 of more than $10 million, making him one of the bank’s top-remunerated employees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Unknown to his bosses at Goldman, and three months after the first bond, millions of dollars began to flow into a British Virgin Islands shell company controlled by Leissner, some of which he shared with Roger Ng, according to Department of Justice filings. Millions of dollars more moved through Leissner’s shell company to pay bribes to 1MDB officials. Over the next two years, more than $200 million in 1MDB money, raised by Goldman, would flow through accounts controlled by Leissner and his relatives. He could have taken his hefty Goldman salary and disavowed knowledge of the bribery carried out by Low and others. Perhaps he would have gotten away with it, as many Wall Street bankers do in countries far from headquarters. But he decided to take a risk by becoming a direct accomplice in the fraud, rather than just greasing its wheels. He had seen the kind of life Low was leading, and he must have thought that a mere $10 million wasn’t going to cut it, not if he wanted to buy super yachts and host parties himself. Soon he would be doing just that.
”
”
Bradley Hope (Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World)