The Key to a $4 Billion Fraud Case: A Banker Who Says He ‘Lied a Lot’

It seemed a facetious question, one intended to provoke the star witness: “Do you think you are good at lying?”

But it is the crucial issue at the center of what is likely to be the only trial on U.S. soil in one of the largest international kleptocracy cases in history, the looting of billions of dollars from the people of Malaysia.

A former banker at Goldman Sachs, Roger Ng, is accused of taking part in a bribery and kickback scheme that enabled the fraud, which plundered more than $4 billion from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and bought a king’s ransom of jewelry, art and real estate from Manhattan to London to Beverly Hills.

Mr. Ng’s former boss at Goldman, Tim Leissner, was for years one of Goldman’s most powerful deal makers in Asia. Now, he’s the government’s key witness — and an admittedly prolific fabricator. On the stand in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, he acknowledged misleading co-workers, investigators and all three of his wives. But when Mr. Ng’s lawyer prodded him with the question about whether he’s a good liar, Mr. Leissner coolly replied, “I don’t think so.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/business/tim-leissner-roger-ng-goldman-sachs.html