PETALING JAYA: Datuk Rohana Rozhan, a former girlfriend of disgraced Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner, has returned the US$10mil (RM44.3mil) in cash and assets linked to 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) to the government, according to a news report.
It said the former Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd group chief executive officer had surrendered the cash and assets to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) last year.
“She returned all the money and assets (involved) to the MACC, which then handed them over to the government.
“With that, MACC’s investigations concerning Rohana have been completed.
“At this point, there is nothing more needed from her,” Utusan Malaysia quoted a source familiar with the case as saying in a report yesterday.
However, the source could not provide a detailed breakdown of the funds and assets returned as well as the procedure involved.
On Thursday, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reforms) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said said in a parliamentary written reply that the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) had no knowledge of whether Rohana had returned the US$10mil in assets she gained from Leissner.
Azalina was responding to a question from Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng on whether Rohana had done so.
Lim also wanted to know how much of 1MDB-linked assets had been returned.
In February 2022, Leissner told a US court that Rohana, with whom he had a 10-year affair, had threatened to expose his involvement with 1MDB when he wanted to end the relationship in 2013 to marry US model Kimora Lee Simmons.
He testified in court that she blackmailed him into buying her a US$10 million property in London.
“She was very upset that I was ending our relationship to be with my future wife, with Kimora,” Leissner had testified.
In April 2022, an MACC source told The Star that Rohana had agreed, in principle, to return the US$10mil she had received from the German-born former chairman of Goldman Sachs’ South-East Asian division.
Following that, MACC began investigating Rohana, who said she was ready to assist the authorities in their investigations.
Leissner pleaded guilty in 2018 to a conspiracy to launder money and became the US prosecution’s star witness against his former colleague at Goldman, Roger Ng.
Leissner is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept 6 while Ng was earlier this month jailed 10 years by a US district court in New Year over his role in the 1MDB financial scandal.
