NEW YORK: A high-upkeep love affair, job offers in return for multi-billion dollar deals, code names for fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho and even a possible bribery in the transfer of funds – these were among the revelations made by the star witness in the bribery trial of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Roger Ng.

       Ng’s former boss Tim Leissner testified that he had had an affair with a media CEO who later blackmailed him into buying her a US$10mil home in London, according to Bloomberg.

       Asked by prosecutor Drew Rolle about his extramarital affairs, Leissner cited several, including one with Datuk Rohana Rozhan, former chief executive officer of Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd.

       The relationship lasted from 2003 to 2013, he said, claiming that he bought her a US$10mil home in London in 2013 after she had threatened to expose his involvement with 1MDB.

       “She was very upset that I was ending our relationship to be with my future wife, with Kimora,” Leissner testified, referring to his wife, American model and TV personality Kimora Lee Simmons.

       Rolle had asked Leissner whether he had ever given Rohana any money he received from his 1MDB work.

       Leissner had pleaded guilty in 2018 to a count of conspiracy to violate US anti-bribery laws and conspiring to launder money.

       The former chairman of Goldman’s South-East Asia business also said a tight circle of Goldman partners had obscured the role of the financier Low or Jho Low in their fund-raising efforts for 1MDB, by coming up with code names for him, including “friend” and “PMO”.

       He said he, Ng and senior Goldman officials including Andrea Vella, a former co-head of investment banking in Asia, used the code names.

       “Had we raised his name in his true capacity, we would not have been approved by Goldman oversight officials,” Leissner, 52, said in his second day of testimony in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

       Leissner also testified that ex-Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein met then Malaysian prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in 2009 ahead of the US$6.5bil bond deals for 1MDB – but that the meeting came with an agenda.

       In return for the lucrative business, Goldman was to get Najib’s three children jobs at the bank, Leissner told the jury.

       “Just met PM’s three children with Jho at his apartment,” Leissner read to the jurors, in Brooklyn, New York, from an email Ng sent him.

       “We’ll work on getting them to join GS.”

       Leissner replied to Ng: “Sounds good my friend. Get them in.”

       In the end, he said he just helped get Najib’s daughter a job at TPG, an American investment company.

       Leissner testified that that Ng had told him that Najib was coming to New York to visit his children in the US for the Thanksgiving holiday and that Low thought it would be a good chance for Blankfein and the prime minister to meet and promote the bond transactions.

       Goldman was competing for the business – which earned it at least US$100mil – with JPMorgan Chase & Co, UBS AG and other big banks, Leissner said.

       In another surprising claim, Leissner alleged that a bribe was paid to get Bank Negara to approve an “overnight” foreign exchange transfer of US$1bil from 1MDB to PetroSaudi International.

       Leissner said Ng told him he had heard from about how the Bank Negara approval for the transfer was given “that quickly”.

       However, Leissner could not independently confirm if the bribe was paid.